The Impact of American Organizational Leaders’ Perceptions on their Acceptance of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data (BD), Blockchain (BC), Cloud Computing (CC), Fifth Generation (5G) Wireless Network, and Internet of Things (IoT) are the six technologies that constitute the Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies (FIRT) in the context of this quantitative study. The purpose of the quantitative study which was based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Cognitive Model (CM) was to understand how the perceptions of the America-based organizational leaders would affect the leaders’ acceptance of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies (FIRT). The researcher created a questionnaire which was pre-tested by conducting a pilot study with 13 participants after which a total number of 135 respondents participated in the full study by responding to a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire through an online data collection platform. Cronbach’s Alpha, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Kendall’s Tau Correlation techniques were adopted using R and SPSS statistical packages to determine the impact of the leaders’ perceptions on their acceptance of the technologies. The findings of the study indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between organizational leaders’ Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and the leaders’ Perceived Usefulness (PU) of the six technologies, between Perceived Usefulness (PU) and the Intention to Use (ITU) Cloud Computing technology, between Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and the Intention to Use (ITU) Cloud Computing technology, and between Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and the Intention to Use (ITU) 5G Network technology. There was however no statistically significant relationship between the leaders’ Perceived Usefulness (PU) or Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and the Intention to Use (ITU) the Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Blockchain, and Internet of Things technologies. There was also no statistically significant relationship between the leaders’ Perceived Usefulness (PU) and the leaders’ Intention to Use (ITU) 5G Network technology. Recommendations for future research include investigating the impact of participants’ age on the acceptance of the technologies, targeting different and more narrowed sample populations, considering additional and new technologies, and repeating the research at a later point in time.