Understanding User Dissatisfaction: Exploring the Role of Fairness in IT-Enabled Change

This paper examines the role of fairness and how it shapes a user’s view in IT-enabled change. Drawing from several fairness theories, components of fairness are identified and examined in two studies. The first study examines the role of fairness through user interviews and finds that all five components of fairness are considered by users in enterprise system implementations. The second study operationalizes and analyzes the components of fairness through a questionnaire distributed to users. This second study finds that fairness is comprised of all five components that were proposed and a significant relationship exists with user dissatisfaction. The two studies lead to a new theoretical perspective and provide practical implications regarding the role of fairness in IT-enabled change and their strategic implications.