Social Capital and User Acceptance of Enterprise System: Mediating Role of Local Management Commitment

This study builds a multi-level research model to investigate how social capital between business units and the headquarters in large-scale organizations influences individual user acceptance of enterprise systems. Drawing on social capital theory and the human agency theory, this study argues that local management of business units plays the role of interpreting signals and messages from the headquarters, such that it can mediate the effect of social capital (which is composed of structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions) on symbolic adoption of the enterprise technology. To test the research hypotheses, a field study is conducted on 222 users of an enterprise system in 29 business units of a major financial institution in China. The results indicate that the effects of relational capital and cognitive capital on user acceptance are mediated by user perception of local management commitment; and relational capital and cognitive capital mediate the effect of structural capital on user perception of local management commitment. Limitations, theoretical implications are discussed, and practical guidance is suggested.