Workplace literacy skills—how information and digital literacy affect adoption of digital technology

Introduction

Digitalisation is radically transforming job design, job resources, professional and economic activities all over the world, which warrant continuous exploration of how workplace digitalisation influences employees' engagement (Chan et al., 2021). Digitalisation is the application of digital technologies and infrastructures in business, economy and society (Autio, 2017). Unexpected incidents could also make the digitalisation process even more complex and add new challenges to digital transformation journey (Iivari et al., 2020; König et al., 2020). For example, recent global pandemic situation has added a fair amount of complexity in, e.g. skills needed to execute remote work, activities and operations of the organisations. This is especially a major challenge for organisations which are used to traditional ways of performing their daily and routine activities. To cope with the challenges imposed by the digitalisation, organisations need to develop digital strategies and strive to identify the key success factors for their digital transformation journey (Hess et al., 2016; Vial, 2019). Organisations that are unable to meet the timely and harmonised adoption, implementation and use of technological solutions will, inevitably, fail to flourish or in the worst case to survive. In addition, the real challenge of digitalisation is not merely technology, as introducing new technology into the workplace is not about hardware or software, it is about workforce who need to adopt to change, know how to use technology and their post-adoptive behaviours (Bala and Venkatesh, 2016; Colbert et al., 2016). In this regard, Farrell et al. (2021) recently discovered that there is widespread agreement amongst policymakers that the existing workforce's literacies are inadequate to meet the literacy demands of the future workplace.

Therefore, organisations not only must adopt strategies to deal with digitalisation but also need to have a coherent strategy that includes a plan to reskill their workforces (Berger and Frey, 2016; Kane et al., 2019). Moreover, in today's complex information landscape, the concept of literacy goes beyond being able to read and write that an individual either has or is lacking (Bawden, 2001). Literacy is considered as a range of competences [1], knowledge, and skills needed by people in different situations of their lives and through relationships with the colleagues, the communities and the environments in which they interact (Panel, 2002). As such, employers are looking more and more to hire new workforces with a high degree of literacies such as information literacy (IL) and digital literacy (DL) (e.g. Mietzner and Kamprath, 2013) and media literacy (Collard et al., 2017). Such literacies have been identified as essential and generic skills as well as personal attributes in the digital age (Bowen and Johnson, 2019; Farrell et al., 2021; Foster, 2019; Dede, 2010). Thus, it can be argued that to deliver an efficient transformative digitalisation and to become a digital prepared workplace, workplace literacies are necessary for all types of organisations, jobs titles, job design and individuals to enhance and fulfil their task performance, or even be evaluated as a productive employee.

We acknowledge that the terms literacies and skill-based literacies (Bawden, 2001; Stordy, 2015), are more suited to complex information settings, incorporating different types of literacy (e.g. information, digital, media, library and computer). However, in this paper, we will focus on IL and DL as they are primary and essential literacies, which have taken a centre stage in debates of individuals' abilities to access, retrieve and critically analyse the information that flows through digital technology in workplace context. In today's information-based digital era, knowing about information processing and technology enhances not only individual performance, but also organisational performance. In addition, we are aware that there are several definitions of IL and DL in the literature (e.g. Bawden, 2001; Lloyd, 2012; Stordy, 2015), and there are no agreed upon definitions for IL and DL. In this paper, we use the American Library Association definitions of IL and DL, which has produced often-quoted definitions.

IL is defined as a set of abilities to recognise when information is needed, to initiate search strategies to locate, evaluate, assess, analyse and effectively use the needed information, and to make decisions in formal and informal learning contexts, at work, at home and at the educational settings (ACRL, 2017, p. 12; Serap Kurbanoglu et al., 2006). DL is defined as the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills (American Library Association, 2012, p. 1). So, while IL deals with information processing, DL is the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use and interact with digital technology (tools) to easily and effectively access information in different formats (e.g. text, videos and images) in a digital environment (Cetindamar et al., 2021; Stordy, 2015; Van Dijk and Van Deursen, 2014).

The need for IL and DL has been highlighted in the literature as a critical dynamic capability of organisations during their digital transformations (Cetindamar et al., 2021), and both literacies are considered as skills based on knowledge, perceptions and attitudes (Bawden, 2001). For example, Gui and Argentin (2011), have emphasised the need for and the relevance of both IL and DL in various workplace settings. Middleton et al. (2018), and Somerville et al. (2017), highlighted the critical role of literacies to perform tasks to achieve goals, success at workplaces and work performance in general. Moreover, employers are increasingly requiring their employees to acquire and develop critical literacies prior to starting work, as they are needed to meet organisational objectives (Kane et al., 2019), and to cope with increasingly complex information environment at workplace (Raish and Rim-land, 2016; Van Laar et al., 2017, p. 577). Therefore, workforce in digital age not only needs technological skills, but also the ability to adapt to changing and evolving job requirements (Ahmad et al., 2013; Carnevale and Smith, 2013). Such workforces are expected to equip with skills, knowledge and abilities that fill the gap between existing and needed digital competencies (Ancarani and Di Mauro, 2018; Cetindamar et al., 2021; Murawski and Bick, 2017).

From a theoretical perspective, while research on IL and DL mostly focuses on the educational contexts (e.g. Jang et al., 2021; Mohammadyari and Singh, 2015; Ng, 2012), at the workplace context there are limited contributions where IL and DL are conceptualised and integrated into traditional models such as technology acceptance model (TAM: Davic, 1989). We also recognise that there is a wealth of research on intention to use technology and acknowledge that there are a large number of important contributions helping to understand what drives intention to use technology. However, given the importance of literacies at workplace, this paper aims to examine how IL and DL would impact employees' intention to use digital technology. In other words, it is not the aim of this paper to explain adoption/acceptance better, as the usage of these digital technologies in the workplace is now a common thing. Instead, the aim is to understand how IL and DL can be conceptualised at workplace context and how they influence the use of technology at the workplace. The next theoretical advance is to understand the explanatory power (if any) of these literacies on well-established theoretical models on the usage of digital technologies. In this way, our contribution is towards the literacy theory, examining the explanatory power of the IL and DL as a separate construct in a theoretical domain of technology acceptance.

Therefore, we include IL and DL as new antecedents of the TAM model (Davis, 1989). We argue that both IL and DL directly influence the TAM determinants, (perceived usefulness: PU, perceived ease of use: PEoU, and attitude towards use: ATU). Thus, IL and DL indirectly affect the intention to use technology at workplace mediated through the ATU. However, we are aware that the impact of literacies may depend on the type of technology (e.g. newness). If an employee knows well about the information environment (IL) and is able to use technology to retrieve and access information (DL), they may have a better understanding of technology, and find it easier to use (PEoU), therefore appreciating the usefulness (PU).

This paper contributes to both literacy and technology acceptance literature by providing a grounded understanding of the relationship between IL, DL, ATU and intention to use digital technology at workplace. The question directing this research is “what role does information and digital literacy play in the intention of employees to use digital technology at workplace?” To answer the question, we conducted empirical research, and collected data from respondents working in different workplaces in Finland. The data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. This paper expects to contribute to literature, by fostering the understanding of and adding essential knowledge about conceptualisation of IL and DL at workplace context. The remainder of the paper is laid out as follows. The following section will provide background information, followed by a theoretical discussion and the development of hypotheses. Then, we provide the research methodology and discussion of the results and the major findings. Finally, discussion and conclusion are presented followed by discussion on future work suggestions and limitations.

Literature review

In workplaces, information and knowledge are seen as providing a competitive advantage in business and in service provision. Therefore, information literate employees who can locate, evaluate and effectively use information) are an increasingly important strategic resource for organisations (Kirton and Barham, 2005; Lloyd, 2003; Middleton and Hall, 2021; Oman, 2001). Moreover, as information technology has become more flawless and user-friendly (Bilgihan, 2016), it is increasingly important to consider how individuals can interact with and apply the information at workplace context, which advanced technology makes accessible. In a workplace context, where individuals, specifically older generations of workforces, continue to resist adopting information technology (Lapointe and Rivard, 2005), the constant demand for decision-making and problem-solving abilities demonstrates the necessity for a highly skilled, competent and adaptive workforces (Simao and Franco, 2018; Renta-Davids et al., 2014). Such abilities are needed next to the ability to interact with technology and information effectively (Urena et al., 2019). In addition, with the rapidly changing landscape of digital technology at workplaces and demands of local, state, national and global economies (Nafukho et al., 2017), employees are expected to be not only information literate, but also be equipped with other types of literacies, such as ICT literacy, technology literacy, media literacy, net/online literacy (Kasemsap, 2018; Marsh, 2018). These broad arrays of literacies enable workers to interact with technology and understand what the technology is and how to use it (Cetindamar et al., 2021).

The importance of DL cannot be neglected, given today's modern workplaces. Eshet (2004, p. 100), argued that “to succeed in today's working environment, individuals must be able to use a diverse range of technologies”. The author asserted that “DL includes a large variety of complex cognitive, motor, sociological, and emotional skills, which users need to function effectively in digital environments” (p. 93). Hunter (2018) also argued that in the digital era and in the workplace context, DL goes beyond functional IT skills and includes a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities, and that DL involves more than the mere ability to use software or operate a digital device. Furthermore, Ng (2012), introduced a framework of DL to investigate the ease of using unfamiliar digital technology amongst students in the educational context. The author found that for digital native (debatable concept) students, the technical aspects of unfamiliar technologies were not of foremost concern and concluded that if individuals are given the opportunity to engage with a purpose for adopting digital tools, they will be able to use and apply them in more appropriate and meaningful ways (Ng, 2012, p. 1077).

The workplace poses a specific context that affects the role of IL and DL, compared to; for instance, the educational context. Some studies (e.g. Colbert et al., 2016) have shown that, in the digital era, different views exist on how employees perceive the impact of technology in their day-to-day activities. For example, Kohnke (2017) stated factors that influence the new generation of workforces' intention to use digital technologies might be different from others at workplaces. The individuals with low literacies are less likely to be critical about the usefulness of technology or may find it difficult to use the work-related technology. Whereas those with higher literacies may be more confident to adopt the technology and establish a positive attitude towards the use of technology (Cetindamar et al., 2021). Mohammadyari and Singh (2015), asserted that individuals with higher literacies would find the cognitive challenges of using different technology less difficult because they may be familiar with the content, interfaces, access choices, terminology and norms of new tools, amongst other things. Forster (2017) also argued that the new generation of workforces uses a wider range of new approaches to deal with information at the workplace and evaluate their interactions with information differently in terms of meaning, value, practices, and purpose. According to Forester (2017), at the workplace context, failure to access and use the most up-to-date and relevant information is not only a professional but also an ethical failure. At the workplace, IL, which is facilitated by a variety of business applications and ICT technologies, is a means to an end, and employees must interact with information both individually and with others to create business values. In contrast, in the educational setting, higher literacies help students to better understand the process of finding, analysing, summarising, integrating and presenting information for the learning and research objectives (Cheuk, 2017). In the workplace context, literacies are central to both personal and organisational performance and success, and are more context-specific, founded in practice rather than norms and generic guidelines, less structured and more collaborative than in higher education (Goldstein and Whitworth, 2015, p. 71).

Theoretical model and hypothesis development

To assess and evaluate the antecedent of intention to use technology at workplace, we draw on conventional acceptance theory (i.e. TAM) and integrated both IL and DL as new antecedents into the research model. In the following sub-sections, we motivate and justify our choice of theory and postulate several hypotheses depicting the path relationships in the research model (Figure 1).

Research methodology

We did not restrict the data collection on any particular sector, workplace domain, or company since this was an exploratory study. An online survey questionnaire was created to collect data before distributing the final version of the survey; we conducted a pilot study with 15 experts (industry and academic experts) to get their feedback on the clarity of the questions in the survey. We used a list of businesses and companies where Finnish workforces are registered in designated platforms to collect data and invitations were sent to potential respondents using that list. We also requested some employees' associations in Finland to share and post a link to the survey on their social media pages. The participants were then asked a series of questions about their personal characteristics (age, gender, education and type of organisation or industry sector).

Data analysis and measurement model results

Gefen and Straub (2005) recommended analysing the path relationships in the research model following first the measurement model and then the structural model. All indicators (survey items) were reflective in our model; therefore, we assessed the reliability and validity of the items (Hair et al., 2013), by examining the outer loadings, composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) analysis. As indicated by Hulland (1999) the values of outer loadings should be above 0.70, in this paper all indicators were loaded on their respective constructs with primary loadings of 0.70 or above (see Table 3). However, items IL2, DL10 and INT7, from IL, DL and intention to use were removed due to low factor loading threshold. But it should be noted that this does not create any validity issues, as we have enough number of items in those constructs. Moreover, the items are reflective, meaning that one item can be replaced for another without affecting the meaning of the scale. The low value of factor loading indicates that the item did not measure its respective construct.

Moreover, composite reliability (CR) test examining the internal consistency was computed and all values were all above the threshold of 0.70 (Hair et al., 2011) or higher with the minimum of 0.878. Also, we performed convergent validity test by computing the AVE values for each contruct. The results showed that all values were above the recommended value of 0.50 (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988), with the minimum value of 0.591 for IL.

To examine the internal consistency of latent constructs, Cronbach's alpha values were assessed, and the results showed that all constructs had higher value above the recommended threshold of 0.70. Nevertheless, as indicated by some authors (e.g. Bagozzi and Yi, 1988; Hair et al., 2012), Cronbach's alpha (α) tends to provide a conservative measurement in PLS-SEM and it is often used to measure internal consistency reliability; therefore, it is recommended to use the CR as a replacement (Hair et al., 2012), see Table 3.

We also checked the common method bias (CMB), to see if any bias attributed to the measurement method could be found by following two different approaches. In the first approach, we computed Harman's one-factor test, as recommended by Podsakoff et al. (2003). The test result showed that none of the constructs had a value of more than 50% of the variance. In the second approach, the CMB was assessed via the common latent factor (CLF) technique. Podsakoff et al. (2012) argued that the CLF provides a more robust understanding of the CMB than from Harman's one-factor test. So, we compared the chi-square values of two models: unconstrained model and a model where all the paths were constrained to zero. The result showed that no path in the model was affected by CMB.

Finally, the discriminant validity test was computed to assess for the uniqueness of a measuring construct, using the value of the square root of AVE in each latent variable Henseler et al. (2015). The results indicated that data are free from discriminant validity issue (Fornell and Larcker 1981) and provided evidence suggesting reasonable discriminant validity in the data, see Table 4.

We assessed the discriminant validity using the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations to establish that a reflective construct has the strongest relationships with its own indicators. The results of HTMT showed no issue that our data suffers from discriminant validity, see Table 5.

Discussion

According to Prensky (2001a, b), one of the main reasons for the disparity in perceptions of technology's impact is that many employees come from a generation that is essentially resistant to change. As such, this may cause a divide between workforces who embrace digital technologies and those who do not, necessitating the need to study IL and DL in relation to technology acceptance. However, we acknowledge that there is fairly strong (Kirschner and De Bruyckere, 2017) and seems to be widespread debate about the Prensky's classification of individuals based on their age as digital natives and digital immigrants (Vodanovich et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2012), suggesting that the terms need to be refined further through more extensive research on individual's interactions with information, and digital technology. Therefore, in this paper, we developed a conceptual model, integrating IL and DL as antecedents of TAM model to examine the intention to use technology at the workplace. The SEM results reveal that both dimensions of modern literacies, i.e. IL and DL significantly, but indirectly, impact the intention to use technology at workplace context.

We also found that while IL and DL both positively influence the perception of ease of use (PEoU) technology, they do not have any impact of the employees' PU of technology. A plausible reason for such results could be as if an individual knows better how to use technology, or how to process digital information, then it seems easier to her or him to use the digital technologies at workplace. Whereas the technology does not become directly more useful if she or he knows how to use technologies. To put it another way, we argue that individual with higher level IL and DL are more comfortable to use digital technology to retrieve information from information sources. A potential explanation is that people that understand how to retrieve information from (digital) technologies find it easier to use these technologies. Possibly, highly literate workers are more comfortable dealing with technologies, making them more positive about the expected ease of use. Arguably, the impact could differ between technologies: well (or poorly) designed technologies may in fact be recognised to be so by highly literate workers, and thus be evaluated more positively (or negatively) on ease of use. In our study, we focussed on well-known and established workplace technologies, and it would be interesting to replicate our findings for novel technologies that have not yet found their dominant design.

Another interesting finding is that, in line with our expectation, literacies have no influence on the PU of digital technologies in the workplace environment. Apparently, workers do not evaluate the utility of technologies, for instance for achieving their tasks, in light of their literacy skills. This interpretation lends support to a core idea in the TAM model, which is that ease of use and usefulness are separate concepts, and that ease of use is a necessary yet not sufficient condition for usefulness. Alternatively, the literacy skills play no role in the assessment of utility of a technology. This would imply that workers need no literacies in order to appreciate (or disapprove of) the usefulness of a technology to achieve their goals. Once more, a caveat is the type of technology being discussed: for well-designed and appropriate digital technologies, workers with high literacies may be more appreciative of the usefulness, while the same highly literate workers may be more capable of seeing through less appropriate technologies.

The findings also revealed that both IL and DL influence the development of a positive attitude towards the usage of technology at work via PU and PEoU. This is an interesting result, as we found a significant positive relationship between attitude towards technology use (β = 0.40, t = 5.136, p 0.001), and intention to use technology at workplace.

These findings point to the relevance of workplace literacy and show that employees' IL and DL may have direct impact on their personal achievement and organisation performance. As a result, a greater understanding of technology acceptance in the workplace may aid in better predicting the use of new information resources. In addition, our findings regarding the impact of IL to workforce's intention to use technology supports earlier findings of Durodolu (2016), who also indicated that IL has a significant effect on adoption of new technology. The results obtained in this paper are also in line with Yu et al. (2017), who also found that both IL and digital skills impact adoption behaviour and concluded that the level of IL of the individuals is an important factor. The results also showed that our proposed conceptual model is an appropriate model for literacy research at workplace context, and differs to some extent, to educational models, as the effect of both IL and DL in workplace is central to both professional and organisational performance. Our findings are similar to Forester's (2017), who argued that at workplace context, ability to access and use of relevant information is directly associated with the professional and also organisational achievement.

Conclusion

This is one of the first studies which includes IL and DL as new antecedents of TAM in the workplace context measuring the workforce intention to use digital technology. Building on the IL and DL, we theoretically contribute to the acceptance literature by showing that these two dimensions of literacy in modern workplace impact workforces' decisions to use digital technology at their workplaces. Given that the inclusion of IL and DL, in addition to PU and PEoU explained as much as 52% of the variance in the ATU of technology, we argue that we may be approaching the possibility to explain individuals' decision to use digital technologies in the workplace context. This paper additionally contributes to the literature by making a case for the importance of conducting literacy related IS research in workplace context. We also contribute to research stream on literacy by showing that although age character has commonly been used as a denominator to classify individuals as digital natives and digital immigrants and use of digital technology (e.g. Nikou et al., 2019), other influential factors such as perception of IL and DL could be used instead to assess the intention to use technology at workplace context (Paganin and Simbula, 2021). Such findings represent fresh theoretical contributions to the literature on literacy and technology acceptance.

Our research results also provide some practical implications. For example, decision makers and managers should pay a careful attention to their employees' literacy levels. As literacy skills are critical skillset in the digital age, managers or chief information officers may first aim at identifying the work groups or individuals who needs literacy training and then aim at providing specific and relevant training or literacy instruction to enhance those with a low level of literacy. This is important as employees' literacy skills will have a significant impact on organisations that rely on a skilled workforce to stay competitive in the digital age (Farrell et al., 2021). The importance of literacies skills can further be emphasised as interests in such skills in the workplace continues to grow (Forster, 2019), as well as in many workplaces job performance dictates that employees should be competent and keep skills up to date (Ali and Richardson, 2018). Furthermore, the findings of the study may help managers in comprehending how and why IL and DL are important, particularly as new generations enter the workforce. In addition, managers can ensure that their employees' anxiety when encountering new tools is reduced by creating an environment where digital technology engagement can be built and strengthened. This allows them to interact with new technologies more easily and comfortably (Tufts, 2010; Vodanovich et al., 2010). Another implication is that, for managers faced with low literacies amongst their workforce, they should demonstrate the ease of using digital technologies, and not the usefulness of those technologies. In other words, scarce resources should not be spent on convincing workers that a digital technology is helpful for their purposes. Instead, those resources should be spent on teaching how to use the technology or convincing workers that a technology requires little effort to learn.

It is also necessary to discuss the limitations of this research. For example, using self-report to evaluate both dependent and independent variables raise questions regarding the validity of causal inferences due to systematic answer distortions, method variance bias and survey items' reliability and validity. We did, however, control for potential bias by doing rigorous statistical analyses to ensure our data were free of it. Furthermore, the participants studied in this study are assumed to have a high degree of DL and IL skills. This assumption is supported by Sulkunen and Malin's research (2018), who found that, in terms of literacy proficiency, adults in Finland exceed many other countries in the world, including their peers in other Nordic countries. Nonetheless, we recommend that future study include other participants with lower or higher literacy skills who may demonstrate different behaviours on the path relationships proposed in the research model. Further studies could examine how other socio-demographic factors influence the employee's decision to use digital technologies in their workplaces. Finally, while the aim of this study was to look into the impact of IL and DL on intention to use, future studies could look into if using technology increases IL and DL and test whether this assumption is theoretically correct in other words testing the causality. Needless to mention that our sample size was rather small, and future studies with a larger sample size could replicate our research to see if other and different results could be gained.