A36. Rice, R.E. & Aydin, C. (1991). Attitudes towards new organizational technology: Network proximity as a mechanism for social information processing. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 219-244.

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This study explicates and tests three network-based mechanisms whereby individuals’ attitudes toward an integrated health information system may be influenced by the attitudes of proximate sources of social information. Estimates of the attitudes of generalized others are not convincingly associated with the actual attitudes of specified others. Overall, specific others’ actual attitudes have only a small effect on ones’ attitude. Social information operates positively through communication and work-unit mechanisms (especially when weighted by importance), and negatively through the mean attitude of ones’ structurally equivalent position, but not through overall organizational proximity or spatial proximity. Differences in attitudes among occupational groups may have been due to implementation policies.