Do Religious Values Influence the Decision of Saudi Arabian Public Sector Employees to Adopt Government Resource Planning Systems?

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the impact of religious values on the adoption of Government Resource Planning (GRP) systems by public sector employees in Saudi Arabia. The study also explores the impact of demographic characteristics as moderating factors between the religious factors and perceptions of GRP systems in Saudi government agencies. Not many studies have been conducted on religious values concerning to what extent technological innovation is embraced. Most research on the effects of cultural norms has been conducted in Western countries and little has been published on Arab nations. This research fills that knowledge gap by investigating the effect of religious values on public sector employees’ adoption of technological innovation in Saudi Arabia. Theoretically, this study related to religious factors will facilitate an understanding of the issues affecting individual employees’ adoption of new technologies in the workplace context where conservative social and religious values hold sway. The study developed a conceptual model based on two theories: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and Theory of Reasoned Action. The sample data comprised 340 responses to an online survey questionnaire sent to employees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Arabia. Data were analyzed using multivariate statistical analysis. Results show that 37% of the variance ( ${\mathrm {R}}^{2}=.372$ ) of employees’ attitudes to GRP application can be explained by the effect of religious variables. Findings show that the religious factors - perfection (Itqan) (t (340) =7.678, $\text{p} < 0.000$ ), cooperation (Ta’awun) (t (340) =4.007, $\text{p} < 0.000$ ), and transparency (Shaffaf) (t (340) =4.700, $\text{p} < 0.000$ ) exerted a significant effect on users’ attitude to the system’s usage. However, responsibility (Mas’uliyyah (t (340) =1.284, $\text{p} < 0.200$ ) did not reveal any level of significance. This research will help managers identify and benchmark strategies to motivate technology adoption in their workplaces and customize them to best fit their users’ unique characteristics in a traditional and conservative society such as Saudi Arabia. Contributions, implications, limitations of this study and what future research could pursue are highlighted in the paper.

Keywords

• Religious values
• unified theory of acceptance and use of technology
• theory of reasoned action
• perfection
• cooperation
• government resource planning systems