Technology Acceptance As a Trigger for Successful Virtual Project Management: A Study of Business Use of Virtual Worlds

Technology Acceptance As a Trigger for Successful Virtual Project Management

A Study of Business Use of Virtual Worlds

DIPLOMARBEIT

Zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

„Magister/Magistra (FH)”

Fachhochschul-Studiengang:

„Management & IT“

Management Center Innsbruck

BetreuerInnen:
Ilze Zigurs, PhD
University of Nebraska at Omaha

Prof.(FH) Mag. Peter J. Mirski
Management Center Innsbruck

VerfasserIn:
Bernhard Rudolf Hofer

0510174036

14. August 2009

Copyright © 2009, Some Rights Reserved (see Appendix F)

Bernhard Rudolf Hofer

I Bernhard Hofer hereby declare, under oath, that this diploma thesis has been my independent
work and has not been aided with any prohibited means. I declare, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, that all passages taken from published and unpublished sources or documents have
been reproduced whether as original, slightly changed or in thought, have been mentioned as
such at the corresponding places of the thesis, by citation, where the extent of the original
quotes is indicated.

The paper has not been submitted for evaluation to another examination authority or has been
published in this form or another.

………………………………………………………. …………………………………………………….

Place, Date Signature

I. Table of Contents

I.  TABLE OF CONTENTS I 

II.  LIST OF FIGURES IV 

III.  LIST OF TABLES V 

IV.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VI 

1  INTRODUCTION 1 

2  LITERATURE REVIEW 4 

2.1  Technology Acceptance 4 
2.1.1  Introduction 4 
2.1.2  Theory of Reasoned Action 4 
2.1.3  Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Reasoned Action 5 
2.1.4  Further development of the Technology Acceptance Model 6 
2.1.4.1  Model Introduction Period 8 
2.1.4.2  Model Validation Period 8 
2.1.4.3  Model Extension Period 9 
2.1.4.4  Model Elaboration Period 9 
2.1.5  Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 11 
2.1.5.1  Review of Extant User Acceptance Models 11 
2.1.5.2  Synthesis and Formulation of UTAUT 13 
2.1.5.3  Performance Expectancy 13 
2.1.5.4  Effort Expectancy 14 
2.1.5.5  Social Influence 14 
2.1.5.6  Facilitating Conditions 15 
2.1.5.7  Indirect Determinants of Intention 15 
2.1.5.8  Empirical Validation 16 
2.1.6  Outlook for the Future of Technology Adoption Research 17 
2.1.6.1  Future Directions 18 
2.1.6.2  Examples of Interesting New Research 18 
2.1.7  Transition of Technology Adoption to Virtual Environments 20 

2.2  Virtual World Project Management 22 
2.2.1  Introduction 22 
2.2.2  Virtual Project Management 22 

I

2.2.2.1  Projects and Project Management 22 
2.2.2.2  A Paradigm Shift in Project Management 23 
2.2.2.3  A Collaborative PM Approach 24 
2.2.2.4  Virtuality, Virtual Projects, and Virtual Teams 25 
2.2.2.5  Technology 26 
2.2.3  Virtual Worlds 29 
2.2.3.1  A Historical Review 29 
2.2.3.2  Definition of Virtual Worlds, Metaverses and Avatars 30 
2.2.3.3  Metaverse Technology Capabilities 31 
2.2.3.4  Second Life 33 

3  RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 36 

3.1  Introduction 36 

3.2  Methods in Information Systems Research 36 

3.3  Focus Group 37 
3.3.1  Participants 38 
3.3.2  Introduction of Second Life 39 
3.3.3  Survey Based on UTAUT 41 
3.3.4  Brainstorming Session 42 

3.4  Qualitative Interviews 43 

3.5  Integrated Research Approach 44 

4  RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 47 

4.1  Introduction 47 

4.2  The Theoretical and Research Perspective 47 

4.3  Leading IS Researchers’ Perspectives on Technology Adoption 48 

4.4  Key findings of the UTAUT Based Survey 50 

4.5  Leading IS Researchers’ Perspective of Virtual Worlds 54 

4.6  Business Uses of Virtual Worlds 56 

5  LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSIONS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 60 

5.1  Limitations 60 

II

5.2  Conclusions 61 

5.3  Future Directions 62 

6  REFERENCES 64 

7  APPENDICES 69 
 

III

II. List of Figures
Figure 1. Diploma Thesis Overview ............................................................................................................. 2 
Figure 2. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), adapted from Davis et al. (1989) .......................................... 5 
Figure 3. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), e.g. Davis et al. (1989) ................................................... 6 
Figure 4. Chronological Progress of TAM Research, e.g. Lee et al. (2003) ................................................ 7 
Figure 5. Research Model of UTAUT, adapted from Venkatesh et al. (2003) ........................................... 13 
Figure 6. Pictorial Representation of the Process of IT Acceptance, adopted from Schwarz et al. (2006) 19 
Figure 7. A Demographic Overview of the Second Life Focus Group ....................................................... 38 
Figure 8. CIS&T Second Life Welcoming Area.......................................................................................... 39 
Figure 9. The Collider As a Tool in the UNO Chemistry Lab ..................................................................... 40 
Figure 10. Virtual Meeting Room on the CIS&T Island .............................................................................. 41 
Figure 11. Research Design ...................................................................................................................... 45 
Figure 12. Detailed results of “I would find Second Life useful in my job” ................................................. 51 
Figure 13. Detailed Results of “Working with Second Life is fun” .............................................................. 53 
Figure 14. Results of the Brainstorming Session of Business Uses of Virtual Worlds............................... 57 

IV

III. List of Tables
Table 1. Summary of Limitations in TAM Studies, adapted from Lee et al. (2003).................................... 10 
Table 2. Limitations of TAM Comparison Studies, adapted from Venkatesh et al. (2003) ........................ 12 
Table 3. Examples of Each Dimension of Technology, adapted from Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005) ........ 27 
Table 4. Some Relevant Definitions of Virtual Worlds, adapted from Tampieri (2009).............................. 31 
Table 5. General Profile of Activities in SL, adapted from Tampieri (2009) ............................................... 34 
Table 6. UTAUT Survey Scale................................................................................................................... 50 
Table 7. Summary of the Performance Expectancy Survey Results ......................................................... 51 
Table 8. Summary of the Effort Expectancy Survey Results ..................................................................... 52 
Table 9. Summary of the Attitude toward Using Survey Results ............................................................... 52 
Table 10. Summary of the Anxiety Survey Results.................................................................................... 53 
Table 11. Summary of the Behavioral Intention to Use Survey Results .................................................... 54 
Table 12. Summary of the Attitude toward Using Survey Results ............................................................. 58 

V

IV. Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my academic advisor Ilze Zigurs for her great support
during the time of this thesis. She always helped me with words and deeds, provided guidance
during these first steps in the IS research field, and always had time for me. Without her this
thesis would not be what it is right now. Furthermore, I would like to thank the University of
Nebraska at Omaha for the opportunity to stay there for four month having the chance to do
some research and use all the facilities and labs. Special thanks also to Deepak Khazanchi. In
addition I would like to thank all the participants of the focus group and, of course, all the
interviewees, especially Fred Davis and Moez Limayem. All of them provided interesting insides
in their respective research areas. I would also like to thank Prof.(FH) Mag. Peter J. Mirski, the
second academic advisor of this thesis, who arranged this research project with the University
of Nebraska at Omaha and always provided useful tips and advices.

Not forgetting I would like to thank the Marshall Plan Foundation, which supported this research
project with a so-called Marshall Plan Scholarship (MPS). Without this support it would have not
been possible to participate in this research fellowship spending four months at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha, from the end of March 2009 until the end of July 2009.

Last but not least I would like to thank my whole family, who always supported me. Without you
guys I would not be the man I am today. Thank you so much for everything. This thesis is
dedicated to all of you, Mom, Dad, my sister, both grannies and grandpas, both uncles and
aunts, my both godfathers and, of course, Gino!

VI


1 Introduction
The rise of the Internet and evolving collaborative software has opened completely new
dimensions in project management. In this highly connected world of the 21st century projects
are not bound to geographical and organizational boundaries any more. Dispersed teams all
over the world work with members from different regions, cultures and time zones. However,
even under best conditions, project management itself is a challenging task. Due to the
globalization and the desire to maximize the outcomes of projects and additionally be as cost
and time efficient as possible, virtual project teams are getting more and more popular. The
steady increase of travel costs, a new awareness of being a sustainable “green” company and
this, already mentioned, basically loss of time by travelling itself has also supported this trend
towards the use of virtual collaboration tools. Thereby, this new trend is mainly rested on the
fact that enhancements in technologies over the past twenty years enabled completely new
ways of collaboration and thereby this new field of virtual project management (VPM) emerged.
According to Cantu (1997) VPM could also be seen as simple projects and teams connected to
each other over a reduced set of communication channels using information and
communication technologies (ICT). This very basic definition is a very good starting point and
shows that consequently a high grade of technology support – on the software and hardware
side – is necessary to achieve sustainable benefits of VPM. But not only technology as a basic
prerequisite is from importance in this context. Considerably more counts the ability of the
project members to adequately use the available ICT. At this point lays the crux of VPM,
because the technology acceptance of the project members and thereby the end-users of the
technology comes into play.

Technology acceptance, or also called technology adoption, is one of the most investigated
research areas in the field of information systems (IS). Since the first models were introduced in
the 1970ies (see Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) to try and understand why people use technology and
to investigate why believes drive intentions and those intentions drive behavior, some really
good progress was made. One of the most common models nowadays is the so-called
technology acceptance model (TAM) and was introduced by Fred Davis in 1986. Since then a
lot of research was conducted and made the original papers that introduced TAM to the most
cited in the whole field of IS (see Venkatesh, Davis, & Morris, 2007). But especially those, at the
beginning mentioned, new evolving and very interactive and collaborative technologies bring up
the question if those traditional approaches can still describe and explain adoption.

Page 1

Introduction

However, beside those basic problems the main goal of this diploma thesis is to focus on this
link between virtual project management and technology acceptance. Furthermore, the goal is
to take a snapshot of the current knowledge about these two areas and thereby use the existent
literature to evaluate the current state of research. During the literature review several
interesting and important questions evolved and enriched these basic goals. Especially one of
the newest technologies, virtual worlds became of interest and thereby enriched the mentioned
goals by possible business uses of virtual world project management.

Based on the basic problems and the goals mentioned before, the research question of this
diploma thesis is: How and why is technology acceptance triggering the success of virtual
project management, and what are possible business uses of virtual worlds in this context?
Thereby not only a literature review as the foundation is the centre of attention. Furthermore, to
investigate several questions that evolved during the literature review, an empirical approach
was chosen to give insights into those main differences of new technologies, like virtual worlds,
and how they have an impact on technology adoption. Figure 1 gives an overview of the used
methods and also helps to see the connections and the logical structure behind this diploma
thesis. This topic is also addressed in more detail in the research methodology section.

Literature review as a theoretical foundation

Brainstorming Qualitative
Technology interviews to
acceptance survey session to gather
information about complete the
to investigate virtual literature review
world adoption business uses of
virtual worlds and focus on open
questions

Focus Group Qualitative Interviews

Figure 1. Diploma Thesis Overview
Page 2


Due to the fact that this diploma thesis evolved from a cooperation between the University of
Nebraska at Omaha and the Management Center Innsbruck and both universities have a focus
on the respective research areas the preconditions were ideal. Furthermore, it was possible to
actually do some research in Omaha and participate in the metaverse project group, which
opened some great opportunities regarding the empirical part of this diploma thesis. As a result
and in addition to the basic literature review, which builds the theoretical foundation of this
diploma thesis, it was possible to conduct a focus group to cover technology acceptance and
virtual world topics. Furthermore, several qualitative interviews with leading IS researchers were
conducted to further investigate some areas not covered that well in the current literature.

To give a very quick guide through this diploma thesis, the following section provides the
theoretical foundation and handles both, technology acceptance and virtual world project
management. Furthermore, the literature review is concluded with the newest research on
technology acceptance of virtual worlds, which tops this section off. The research methodology
is then described, including the conducted focus group, the qualitative interviews and a
description of the integrated research approach, which was used to compare and evaluate all
the findings. The results and discussion section follows and thereby combines all the findings in
an integrated approach. Last but not least, the diploma thesis ends with limitations, conclusions,
and some directions for future research.

Page 3

Literature Review

2 Literature Review

2.1 Technology Acceptance

2.1.1 Introduction
The adoption of technology has been studied for decades, but first gained a great deal of
attention with the introduction of the technology acceptance model (TAM) by Fred D. Davis in
1989. While earlier research mainly focused on individual-level technology adoption examining
user satisfaction and attitudes, Davis integrated “diverse theoretical perspectives and built on
social psychology research and presented a parsimonious model of adoption and use“
(Venkatesh, et al., 2007, Progression of technology acceptance research, para. 1). TAM was
originally introduced by two papers (F. D. Davis, 1989; F. D. Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989),
which are frequently cited in research of information systems (IS) and other fields, with well over
1,000 citations (Venkatesh, et al., 2007). Based on the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), TAM is thereby “considered the most influential and
commonly employed theory for describing an individual‘s acceptance of information systems“
(Y. Lee, Kozar, & Larsen, 2003, p. 752).

2.1.2 Theory of Reasoned Action
Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) provide an overall approach to predict and describe intended user
behavior. By definition, the theory of reasoned action (TRA) describes a person's behavioral
intention as the attitude about the behavior and subjective norms. Basically it says that if a
person intends to follow a behavior, this person will most likely do so. In the course of this,
behavioral intention is measured as the strength of one's intention to perform a specified
behavior. TRA describes attitude as an individual's positive or negative feelings about
performing the target behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Subjective norm refers to „the person's
perception that most people who are important to him/her think he/she should or should not
perform the behavior in question" (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, p. 302).

TRA is a general model, and, as such, it does not specify the beliefs that are operative for a
particular behavior (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989). Figure 2 illustrates the research model of TRA.

Page 4


Beliefs and Attitude Toward
Evaluation Behavior

Behavioral Actual
Intention Behavior

Normative Beliefs and Subjective
Motivation to comply Norm

Figure 2. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), adapted from Davis et al. (1989)

2.1.3 Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Reasoned Action
Davis (1989) describes TAM as an adaptation of TRA specifically tailored for modeling user
acceptance of IS.

“The goal of TAM is to provide an explanation of the determinants of computer
acceptance that is general, capable of explaining user behavior across a broad range
ofend-user computing technologies and user populations, while at the same time being
both parsimonious and theoretically justified“ (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989, p. 985).

TAM, originally proposed by Davis (1989), assumes that an individual‘s information systems
acceptance is determined by two major variables: (1) perceived usefulness and (2) perceived
ease of use. Perceived usefulness “is defined as the prospective user's subjective probability
that using a specific application system will increase his or her job performance within an
organizational context“ (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989, p. 985). Perceived ease of use “refers to the
degree to which the prospective user expects the target system to be free of effort“ (F. D. Davis,
et al., 1989, p. 985).

Similar to TRA, TAM postulates that computer usage is determined by behavioral intention, but
differs in that behavioral intention is viewed as being jointly determined by the person's attitude
toward using the system and perceived usefulness (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989).

The relationship between attitude and behavioral intention is fundamental in TRA and also
represented in TAM. This “implies that, all else being equal, people form intentions to perform
behaviors toward which they have positive affect“ (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989, p. 986). Although
the direct effect of a belief on behavioral intention runs counter to TRA, alternative intention
models provide theoretical justification and empirical evidence of direct belief-intention links
(Bagozzi, 1982). Figure 3 illustrates the research model of TAM.

Page 5

Literature Review

Perceived
Usefulness
Attitude Behavioral Actual
External
Toward Intention to System
Variables
Using Use Use

Perceived
Ease of
Use

Figure 3. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), e.g. Davis et al. (1989)

Figure 3 also shows that TAM does not include TRA's subjective norm as a determinant of
behavioral intention. Davis et al. (1989) argue that it is difficult to disentangle direct effects of
subjective norm on behavioral intention from indirect effects via attitude toward using. Those
assumptions are also confirmed by other studies (DeSanctis, 1983). However, Davis et al.
(1989) also show in their study, where they measured subjective norm in order to examine TRA,
that the influence of subjective norm on attitude toward using is negligible. Taylor and Todd
(1995) came to similar results by comparing TAM with the theory of planned behavior (TPB).
TPB (Ajzen, 1991) is an extension of TRA, which introduces the concept of perceived
behavioral control as another factor to behavioral intention. Their study showed that both
subjective norm and perceived behavioral control have no substantial influence on the variance
of attitude toward using beyond that which could already be described with TAM (Mathieson,
1991; Venkatesh, 1999).

Overall, TAM was shown to be empirically superior to the more general TRA (F. D. Davis, et al.,
1989; Venkatesh, et al., 2007). This fact was the starting point for a huge increase in the
relevance and importance of TAM. This increase, including the most recent research, will be
discussed in the following section.

2.1.4 Further development of the Technology Acceptance Model
Lee et al. (2003) separated the chronological progress of TAM research into four different
periods: (1) introduction, (2) validation, (3) extension, and (4) elaboration. Figure 4 provides an
overview of these four periods.

Page 6


Venkatesh and Davis Venkatesh et al.
(2003) (2003)

Model Elaboration

Straub Gefen et al.
(1994) (2003)

Model Extension

Adams et al. Davis and Venkatesh
(1992) (1986)

Model Validation

Davis Taylor and Todd
(1986) (1986)

Model Introduction

1986 1990 1995 2000 2003

Figure 4. Chronological Progress of TAM Research, e.g. Lee et al. (2003)

Venkatesh et al. (2007) also provided an overview of the progress of TAM research. In this
study a broader approach to examine the evolution of the technology adoption research as a
whole is used. Furthermore, the progress of technology adoption is compared with two
prominent areas of research, namely psychology and organizational behavior. As a result a
catalog of major milestones in the evolution of technology adoption, including several different
models and comparisons to TPB and job satisfaction, was developed.

Even though this approach (Venkatesh, et al., 2007) is more up to date than the chronological
progress of TAM (Y. Lee, et al., 2003), the latter will be used to outline the further development
of TAM. The latter was chosen for the simple reason that Lee et al. (2003) focus on TAM and
the extensions and improvements based on this model. The broader approach from Venkatesh
et al. (2007) includes several other models and is thereby not as relevant as the TAM focus for
this thesis. However, in the end there are several overlaps in both approaches. One example is
the focus of Venkatesh et al. (2007) on the replication and generalization period on TAM only,
which provides generally the same information as Lee et al. (2003).

Page 7

Literature Review

2.1.4.1 Model Introduction Period

After the introduction of TAM (F. D. Davis, 1989; F. D. Davis, et al., 1989), researchers mainly
focused on two different streams: (1) replication studies and (2) relation of TAM and TRA (Y.
Lee, et al., 2003).

There were several early attempts to test TAM in new settings and with new technologies.
Overall the model and the scales were robust and the predicted relationships were found to hold
in various tests, e.g., Adams, Nelson, and Todd (1992); Hendrickson, Massey, and Cronan
(1993); Mathieson (1991); and Venkatesh and Davis (2000). TAM was tested using various
types of information systems, including email, groupware, expert systems, CASE tools, voice
mail, calculator, digital libraries, spreadsheets, and e-health systems (Venkatesh, et al., 2007).
Furthermore TAM has also been tested in several different countries, including the U.S., Japan,
and Saudi Arabia (Venkatesh, et al., 2007). In general, studies of this early period found that
“TAM maintained its consistency and validity in explaining users‘ IS acceptance behavior“ (Y.
Lee, et al., 2003, p. 755).

The second stream of research was trying to differentiate TAM from TRA. Davis et al. (1989) for
example compared TRA and TAM in how they measure an MBA student‘s relative facility with a
word processor across two time periods. Hubona and Cheney (1994) compared TAM with TPB
and found that TAM offered a slight empirical advantage. Above all TAM “is a much simpler,
easier to use, and a more powerful model to explain users‘ technology acceptance“ (Y. Lee, et
al., 2003, p. 755).

In sum, Lee et al. (2003) conclude that through the studies in this period TAM could
successfully predict information system acceptance behavior under different technologies and
different situations. Igbaria, Zinatelli, Cragg, and Cavaye (1997) came to the same conclusion
and found that “TAM was a much simpler, easier to use, and more powerful model of the
determinant of user acceptance of computer technology than TRA“ (as cited in Y. Lee, et al.,
2003, p. 756).

2.1.4.2 Model Validation Period

The next step in the evolution of TAM is suggested by Bejar (1980), who noted that “robust
instruments greatly enhance the value of research“ (Y. Lee, et al., 2003, p. 756). Venkatesh et
al. (2007) also suggests that the next logical step is to establish the predictive validity of TAM.
Supported by these suggestions “researchers wanted to confirm that TAM truly uses an
accurate measurement of the user‘s acceptance behavior under different technologies,
situations, and tasks“ (Y. Lee, et al., 2003, p. 756).

Page 8


Lee et al. (2003) list several different studies and papers that have proven the validity and
reliability of TAM. Amongst others, Adams et al. (1992) replicated and extended the original
study of Davis (1989) across different settings and different information systems. Hendrickson
et al. (1993; 1996) found that the test-retest reliability of perceived usefulness and perceived
ease of use is reliable and valid. Szajna (1994) also found good predictive validity for perceived
usefulness and perceived ease of use in a discriminate analysis of database management
systems selection behavior of 47 MBA students.

To summarize this period of validation, research has shown that TAM is powerful, consistent,
reliable, and valid (Y. Lee, et al., 2003).

2.1.4.3 Model Extension Period

After validation had confirmed the reliability of the measurement instruments, efforts began “to
introduce new variables postulating diversified relationships between constructs and the search
of antecedents (or external) variables of the major TAM constructs perceived usefulness and
perceived ease of use“ (Y. Lee, et al., 2003, p. 756). This attempt to introduce new external
variables was one of the two streams in this period. An example was the investigation of effects
of organizational factors by Igbaria and Iivari (1995). This study showed that user training,
computing support, and managerial support significantly affect perceived usefulness and
perceived ease of use, and microcomputer usage.

The second stream in this period represented the need to identify the boundaries of TAM. Lee
et al. (2003) mention the suggestion of Adams et al. (1992) that “the moderating effects for TAM
variables such as culture, gender, task, user type, and information systems type needed to be
examined“ (p. 757). For example, researchers found that culture plays an important role in
attitude toward and choice of communication media (see Straub, 1994).

Both Lee et al. (2003) and Venkatesh et al. (2007) conclude that this period helped to deepen
the understanding of the phenomenon. Furthermore studies made strides to develop a “greater
understanding [that] may be garnered in explicating the causal relationships among beliefs and
their antecedent factors“ (Chin & Gopal, 1995, p. 46).

2.1.4.4 Model Elaboration Period

Lee et al. (2003) characterize this period as “the elaboration of TAM in two key ways: to develop
the next generation TAM that synthesizes the previous effects and to resolve the limitations

Page 9

Literature Review

raised by previous studies“ (p. 757). Table 1 shows a summary of the major limitations that Lee
et al. (2003) discovered by investigating 101 TAM studies.

Limitations Explanation

Self-reported Usage Did not measure actual usage

Single IS Used only a single information system for the research

Student Samples (or Inappropriate reflection of a real working environment
University Environment)

Single Subject (or Only one organization, one department, or MBA students
Restricted subjects)

One Time Cross Mainly performed based on cross sectional study
Sectional Study

Measurement Problems Low validity of newly developed measure, used single item scales

Single Task Did not granulize the tasks, and tested them with the target IS

Low Variance Scores Did not adequately explain the causation of the model

Mandatory Situations Did not classify mandatory and voluntary situations, or assumed
voluntary situation

Others Small sample size, short exposure time to the new IS, few
considerations of cultural difference, self-selection bias

Table 1. Summary of Limitations in TAM Studies, adapted from Lee et al. (2003)

We now return to the synthesis of previous effects, which Lee et al. (2003) defined as being
done in one of two key ways. Several different new models and extensions of the original TAM
were developed in this period. In 2000 Venkatesh and Davis (2000) and Venkatesh (2000)
introduced TAM II, which “synthesizes the previous efforts, and reflected the previous request
for the model‘s elaboration“ (Y. Lee, et al., 2003, p. 757). Most important, key constructs were
identified in TAM II, such as determinants of perceived usefulness and determinants of
perceived ease of use. In addition, several studies were introduced to resolve previous
problems with TAM. Venkatesh (2000) performed a study that included subjective norm, which
had been excluded by Davis (1989), and that measured actual usage instead of self-reported

Page 10


usage. Another study investigated psychological origins of perceived usefulness and perceived
ease of use (see Karahanna & Straub, 1999).

Venkatesh et al. (2007) state that the major findings of this period „helped deepen our
understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of the key predictors of technology adoption and
use“ (Antecedents and Interventions, para. 1). But on the other hand it also seems that “this
domain of research has reached a level of maturity that calls for an assessment of what is
known and a need to identify fruitful directions for future research“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2007,
Synthesis, para. 1).

To address the issue of assessing the current state of knowledge about technology acceptance,
Venkatesh, Morris, G. B. Davis, and F. D. Davis (2003) synthesized well over a decade of
research and introduced a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).

2.1.5 Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
Introduced by Venkatesh et al. (2003), UTAUT is based on a detailed literature review that
assessed “the current state of knowledge with respect to understanding individual acceptance
of new information technologies“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 426). In their study Venkatesh et
al. (2003) presented (1) a review of eight different models of technology adoption including a
summary of prior model comparison studies, (2) a conceptual and empirical synthesis of the
different models to describe UTAUT, and (3) directions for future research (Venkatesh, et al.,
2007). The following section goes through the development of UTAUT step by step, based on
the paper by Venkatesh et al. (2003).

2.1.5.1 Review of Extant User Acceptance Models

Venkatesh et al. (2003) did a detailed review of competing theoretical models in the area of
information technology acceptance research. Several different streams of research were
discovered and categorized. One stream of research, for example, is using intention or usage
as a dependent variable (Compeau & Higgins, 1995; F. D. Davis, et al., 1989). Other streams
are focusing on implementation success at the organizational level (Leonard-Barton &
Deschamps, 1988) or on task-technology fit (Goodhue, 1995), just to mention two more.
Regarding those streams, Venkatesh et al. (2003) defined the main goal of the UTAUT paper in
understanding usage as the dependent variable, because the role of intention as a predictor of
behavior has already been well-established in information systems.

In the end, the eight identified models were the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the technology
acceptance model (TAM), the motivational model (MM), the theory of planned behavior (TPB), a
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Literature Review

model combining the technology acceptance model and the theory of planned behavior (C-
TAM-TPB), the model of PC utilization (MPCU), the innovation diffusion theory (IDT), and the
social cognitive theory (SCT).

One of the results of this review was that all eight models were already tested fairly well in
several studies and research projects, but just four of those studies were found providing
empirically based comparisons of two or more of the eight models (Venkatesh, et al., 2003).
Davis et al. (1989) did a comparison of TRA and TAM, Mathieson (1991) did a comparison of
TAM and TPB, Taylor and Todd (1995) did a comparison of TAM and TPB/DTPB, and finally
Plouffe, Hulland, and Vandenbosch (2001) did a comparison of TAM and IDT. Furthermore,
Table 2 shows five limitations of these prior model comparisons, which have been identified by
Venkatesh et al. (2003).

Limitations Explanation

Technology studied Only relatively easy and individual-oriented information
technologies were studied

Participants Three of the four model comparison studies were based on
student participants

Timing of measurement Except for Davis et al. (1989), the model comparisons examined
technologies that were already familiar to the individuals

Nature of measurement Only one organization, one department, or MBA students

Voluntary vs. mandatory All four model comparisons were conducted in voluntary usage
contexts, which is typically not the case in working environments

Table 2. Limitations of TAM Comparison Studies, adapted from Venkatesh et al. (2003)

Those five limitations basically match the previously described findings of Lee et al. (2003) and
thereby also show the development of technology acceptance research in the elaboration
period. Venkatesh et al. (2003) addressed those limitations in the empirical comparison of the
eight models.

Another important finding of this model comparison was the identification of four key moderating
variables (experience, voluntariness, gender, and age) in conjunction with these eight models.

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2.1.5.2 Synthesis and Formulation of UTAUT

Based on the detailed literature review, the four model comparisons and the consequent
findings, Venkatesh et al. (2003) identified seven constructs “to be significant direct
determinants of intention or usage in one or more of the individual models“ (p. 446). Four of
those seven constructs were theorized to play “a significant role as direct determinants of user
acceptance and usage behavior: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence,
and facilitating conditions“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 447). The other three constructs - attitude
toward using technology, self-efficacy, and anxiety - were theorized not to be direct
determinants of intention (Venkatesh, et al., 2003). Figure 5 shows the research model of
UTAUT including the previously mentioned four key moderators of gender, age, voluntariness,
and experience.

Performance
Expectancy

Effort
Expectancy
Behavioral Use
Intention Behavior
Social
Influence

Facilitating
Conditions

Gender Age Experience Voluntariness
of Use

Figure 5. Research Model of UTAUT, adapted from Venkatesh et al. (2003)

2.1.5.3 Performance Expectancy

Venkatesh et al. (2003) describe performance expectancy (PE) “as the degree to which an
individual believes that using the system will help him or her to attain gains in job performance“
(p. 447). PE is based on five constructs of the eight models, namely perceived usefulness
(TAM/TAM2 and C-TAM-TPB), extrinsic motivation (MM), job-fit (MPCU), relative advantage
(IDT), and outcome expectations (SCT). Previous model tests have also shown that PE is one
of the strongest predictors of intention (Compeau & Higgins, 1995; F. D. Davis, et al., 1989;
Taylor & Todd, 1995).

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Literature Review

As shown in Figure 4, the relationship between PE and behavioral intention (BI) is moderated
by gender and age. Regarding Venkatesh et al. (2003), research has shown that differences
stem from gender roles and socialization processes reinforced from birth rather than biological
gender per se (Bem, 1981; Kirchmeyer, 1997; Lynott & McCandless, 2000). Furthermore,
research outside the IT context (e.g. Kirchmeyer, 2002) has also shown that those gender roles
have “a strong psychological basis and are relatively enduring, yet open to change over time“
(Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 450). On the other hand, age is also playing a moderating role.
Previous studies have shown that gender and age differences exist in technology adoption
(Morris & Venkatesh, 2000). Venkatesh et al. (2003) especially highlight that Levy (1988)
suggests that “studies of gender differences can be misleading without reference to age“ (p.
450).

2.1.5.4 Effort Expectancy

Venkatesh et al. (2003) describe effort expectancy (EE) “as the degree of ease associated with
the use of the system“ (p. 450). EE is based on three constructs from the investigated eight
models, namely perceived ease of use (TAM/TAM2), complexity (MPCU), and ease of use
(IDT). Those similarities between the three constructs have also been mentioned in research by
Davis et al. (1989), Plouffe et al. (2001), and Thompson, Higgins, and Howell (1991).

Very interesting is the fact that the relationship between EE and BI, besides gender and age, is
also moderated by experience. The empirical studies of Venkatesh et al. (2003) have shown
that “each one is significant only during the first time period, becoming nonsignificant over
periods of extended and sustained usage“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 450). These findings also
correspond with prior research (F. D. Davis, et al., 1989; Thompson, et al., 1991).

2.1.5.5 Social Influence

Venkatesh et al. (2003) describe social influence (SI) “as the degree to which an individual
perceives that important others believe he or she should use the new system“ (p. 451). This
definition of SI is based on similarities of the three constructs: subjective norm (TRA, TAM2,
TPB/DTPB, and C-TAM-TPB), social factors (MPCU), and image (IDT). Thompson et al. (1991)
first used the term social norms and “acknowledged its similarity to subjective norm within TRA“
(Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 451).

An important fact is that “none of the social influence constructs are significant in voluntary
contexts; however, each becomes significant when use is mandated“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2003,
p. 451). This moderating role is also shown in Figure 4 as voluntariness of use, which makes
the relationship between SI and BI the only one moderated by all four factors. SI also appears

Page 14


to be important only in early stages of mandatory settings, which describes the moderating role
of experience and suggests that SI becomes insignificant over time with sustained usage
(Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Nevertheless, Venkatesh et al. (2003) state that the “role of social
influence in technology acceptance decisions is complex and subject to a wide range of
contingent influences“ (p. 452).

2.1.5.6 Facilitating Conditions

Venkatesh et al. (2003) describe facilitating conditions (FC) “as the degree to which an
individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the
system“ (p. 453). The definition of FC is based on perceived behavioral control in TPB/DTPB,
facilitating conditions in MPCU, and compatibility in IDT. As one of the newer constructs not
included in the basic technology acceptance research, FC was first introduced by Taylor and
Todd (1995) as a core component of perceived behavioral control in TPB/DTPB. Venkatesh et
al. (2003) argue that compatibility as a construct from IDT is important and “incorporates items
that tap the fit between the individual’s work style and the use of the system in the organization“
(p. 453).

As shown in Figure 4, Venkatesh et al. (2003) see FC as a direct antecedent of usage and not
intention. They argue, “when both performance expectancy constructs and effort expectancy
constructs are present, facilitating condition becomes nonsignificant in predicting intention“
(Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 454). Based on Bergeron, Rivard, and De Serre (1990) the effect on
usage increases “with experience as users of technology find multiple avenues for help and
support throughout the organization, thereby removing impediments to sustained usage“
(Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 454). This describes experience as one moderating role of the
relationship between FC and use behavior. Venkatesh et al. (2003) identified the second
moderator as age, based on organizational psychologists, who “have noted that older workers
attach more importance to receiving help and assistance on the job“ (p. 454). These findings
are also based on empirical evidence from Morris and Venkatesh (2000).

2.1.5.7 Indirect Determinants of Intention

Research has shown that self-efficacy (SE) and anxiety (ANX) are conceptually and empirically
distinct from effort expectancy (Venkatesh, 2000). Although “self-efficacy and anxiety appeared
to be significant determinants of intention in SCT, UTAUT does not include them as direct
determinants” (Venkatesh, et al., 2003, p. 455).

The third indirect determinant of intention is attitude toward using technology (ATUT).
Venkatesh et al. (2003) describe ATUT “as an individual’s overall affective reaction to using a

Page 15

Literature Review

system“ (p. 455). It is based on the four constructs of attitude toward behavior (TRA,
TPB/DTPB, C-TAM-TPB), intrinsic motivation (MM), affect toward use (MPCU), and affect
(SCT). Venkatesh et al. (2003) found that “the attitudinal constructs are significant only when
specific cognitions - in this case, constructs related to performance and effort expectancies - are
not included in the model“ (p. 455). There is also empirical evidence that, for example, intrinsic
motivation operates through effort expectancy (Venkatesh, 2000). Therefore, Venkatesh et al.
(2003) “consider any observed relationship between attitude and intention to be spurious and
resulting from the omission of the other key predictors (specifically, performance and effort
expectancies)“ (p. 455). Previous model tests basically came to the same conclusion (see
Taylor & Todd, 1995; Thompson, et al., 1991).

2.1.5.8 Empirical Validation

As previously discussed, the introduction phase of a new model takes a couple of years and is
then followed by a second phase to check its validity and generalizability (Y. Lee, et al., 2003).
Venkatesh et al. (2003) already provided a preliminary test of UTAUT in their paper as well as
an additional cross-validation study.

UTAUT was first tested with the original set of data (provided by four organizations) used for the
model comparison itself and „found to outperform the eight individual models“ (Venkatesh, et
al., 2003, p. 425). After these first results, UTAUT was cross validated by using data from two
additional organizations. To counter one of the limitations of previous model comparison
studies, Venkatesh et al. (2003) did a longitudinal analysis of all six organizations over a six
month period with three points of measurement. Furthermore, Venkatesh et al. (2003) state that
„these tests provided strong empirical support for UTAUT, which posits three direct
determinants of intention to use (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social
influence) and two direct determinants of usage behavior (intention and facilitating conditions)“
(p. 467). In the end UTAUT accounted for 70 percent of the variance (adjusted R2) in usage
intention, which is a substantial improvement over any of the original eight models (between 17
and 53 percent variance, adjusted R2). This finding is even more important because UTAUT
„was successful in integrating key elements from among the initial set of 32 main effects and
four moderators as determinants of intention and behavior collectively posited by eight alternate
models into a model that incorporated four main effects and four moderators“ (Venkatesh, et al.,
2003, p. 467).

In terms of generalizability very few studies have been published, due to the newness of the
model itself. Moran (2006) investigated college students’ acceptance of tablet PCs based on a
modified UTAUT model. He found that “this study confirms the ability of the unified theory of

Page 16


acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model to determine user’s acceptance of a
technology tool“ (Moran, 2006, p. 93).

Wills, El-Gayar, and Bennett (2008) examined healthcare professionals’ acceptance of
electronic medical records (EMRs) using UTAUT. Similar to the study mentioned before, they
state that “overall, the findings indicate that UTAUT is able to provide a reasonable assessment
of health care professionals’ acceptance of EMR’s with social influence a significant determinant
of intention and use“ (Wills, et al., 2008, p. 396).

As a last example for the generalizability of UTAUT, Venkatesh, Xu, Hong, Tam, and Thong
(2008) proposed a model of consumer adoption and use of information and communication
technology (ICT) services by extending UTAUT. The developed model “received strong
empirical support, with service type moderating key relationships and the moderated model
explaining significantly more variance in intention compared to what was explained by the
baseline UTAUT“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2008, p. 30).

UTAUT has shown its validity and generalizability, but the model is relatively new and still has to
go through more research, refinement and extension. As discussed in the beginning of this
section, Venkatesh et al. (2003) also discussed directions for future research in their paper. This
point, extended to the future of technology acceptance research as a whole, is presented in the
following section.

2.1.6 Outlook for the Future of Technology Adoption Research
Technology acceptance has been around for a long time since it first got a great deal of
attention with the introduction of TAM by Davis (1989) and Davis et al. (1989). In the last couple
of years there “has been impressive progress in technology adoption research“ (Venkatesh, et
al., 2007, Conclusions, para. 1). Lee et al. (2003), Venkatesh et al. (2003), and Venkatesh et al.
(2007) provided an overview of the last decades, compared existing research models, and
came up with new synthesized models. Venkatesh et al. (2003) even concluded that we may be
“reaching the practical limits of our ability to explain individual acceptance and usage decisions“
(p. 471). Considering this prompt, there also have been some studies in the last three years
introducing completely new approaches in how to think about technology acceptance (Schwarz,
Chin, Morris, & Venkatesh, 2006; Sykes, Gosain, & Venkatesh, 2007; Venkatesh & Bala, 2008).

The next section provides a short summary of potential directions for future technology
acceptance research, based on the studies mentioned above.

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Literature Review

2.1.6.1 Future Directions

Based on a comparison of the progress in the area of TAM with TPB and job satisfaction,
Venkatesh et al. (2007) identified some fruitful areas for future research. Basically they called
for research focused on interventions, contingencies, and alternative theoretical perspectives.
TPB research has made some substantial progress “in studying interventions and going beyond
the basic tenets to consider alternative theoretical mechanisms, both of which should be
considered in future work on technology adoption“ (Venkatesh, et al., 2007, TPB Summary,
para. 1). They draw pretty much the same conclusion about job satisfaction, where, in relation
to technology adoption research, the “literature is richer and more sophisticated with a greater
breadth of models, problems studied, contingencies, interventions, and outcomes“ (Venkatesh,
et al., 2007, Job Satisfaction Summary, para. 1). In sum, Schwarz et al. (2006) conclude that
“rather than continuing to rely on the notion of acceptance-as-usage and chip away at the
amount of usage variance explained, we believe that our field needs to move away from a
narrow definition of acceptance and towards a more fruitful theoretical consideration of what
constitutes IT acceptance“ (p. 4).

Lee et al. (2003) come to the same conclusion and suggest “more studies of TAM per se will die
out, unless someone can find a new addition to TAM and the paradigm shifts“ (as cited in
Schwarz, et al., 2006, p. 5). Furthermore, some suggest areas of future directions may require
going “beyond individual acceptance to organizational and societal acceptance“ (Y. Lee, et al.,
2003, p. 767).

2.1.6.2 Examples of Interesting New Research

Considering the findings of the last couple of years, Venkatesh and Bala (2008) introduced
TAM3 and a research agenda on interventions. They state, “there is a need to understand how
various interventions can influence the known determinants of IT adoption and use“ (Venkatesh
& Bala, 2008, p. 273). To address this gap they developed (1) a comprehensive nomological
network of the determinants of individual level adoption and use, (2) empirically tested the
proposed integrated model; and (3) presented a research agenda focused on potential pre- and
post-implementation interventions that can enhance employees’ adoption and use of IT
(Venkatesh & Bala, 2008).

Sykes et al. (2007) proposed and tested a model of acceptance with peer support (MAPS) that
integrated individual research with social network constructs. They showed that “an individual‘s
embeddedness in the social network of the organizational unit implementing a new information
system can enhance our understanding of technology use“ (Sykes, et al., 2007, p. 2).
Furthermore they found that the „social network constructs of network density and network

Page 18


centrality predicted system use over and above the predictors from the individual technology
adoption perspective, i.e., behavioral intention and facilitating conditions“ (Sykes, et al., 2007, p.
42).

Last but not least, Schwarz et al. (2006) introduced a process-based theory of information
technology acceptance. They addressed the need for a change of direction in the technology
adoption research and expressed this with the first sentence in their paper: “Research into the
acceptance of technology is in need of a shift“ (Schwarz, et al., 2006, p. 3). Basically Schwarz
et al. (2006) covered two unanswered questions from prior research into IT acceptance, namely
“(1) What is acceptance, and (2) What is a possible cognitive, process based theory of IT
acceptance?“ (p. 2). Really interesting is their approach of using etymology by utilizing the
derivate definition methodology (DDM) to “define acceptance as the actions of an individual
user psychologically receiving, grasping, assessing, being given, and submitting to an
information technology application“ (Schwarz, et al., 2006, p. 25). To describe the structural,
cognitive process of end user acceptance, Figure 6 shows the four developed stages.

Stage 2: Stage 4a:
Grasp Be Given

Stage 1: Stage 3:
Receive Assess

Stage 4b:
Submit

Figure 6. Pictorial Representation of the Process of IT Acceptance, adopted from Schwarz et al. (2006)

By “taking all of the stages together, this research posits that the cognitive process of end user
acceptance is: Instinctual Response => Cognitive Attitude => Evaluative Attitude => Emergent
belief“ (Schwarz, et al., 2006, p. 39). In their conclusion, Schwarz et al. (2006) suggested that
this was a first step “towards a structural, cognitive process-based view of information
technology acceptance that may help direct researchers interested in this phenomenon down
useful new lines of inquiry“ (p. 47).

At the end of this literature review of technology acceptance, I would like to close by citing Lee
et al. (2003) one last time, at least for now. “While there are still contradictory views on TAM
research considering the previous and current research trends, many exciting directions remain
for making future discoveries“ (Y. Lee, et al., 2003, p. 768).

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Literature Review

2.1.7 Transition of Technology Adoption to Virtual Environments
One of those exciting directions that Lee et al. (2003) mentioned is the field of Virtual Worlds, to
be more specific, research on user acceptance of Second Life (SL). A brand-new study
introduced by Saeed, Yang, and Sinnappan (2009) at the 17th European Conference on
Information Systems 2009, presented “findings from an ongoing study about the impacts of
using multi-user virtual environments (MUVE) in higher education“ (p. 2964). Their study is
inspired by previous research, which suggested that traditional technology acceptance
approaches may not work well for today‘s entertainment-oriented technologies like MUVEs such
as SL (see Holsapple & Wu, 2007; van der Heijden, 2004). Furthermore, Saeed et al. (2009)
based their assumption on the fact that Hsu and Lu (2004) recommended “to consider those
facets of human behaviour that are likely to capture the hedonic consumption of such
technologies“ (p. 2965). “Since Second Life also inherits a large entertainment element, it is
important to capture its hedonic consumption in order to explain its usage and acceptance“
(Saeed, et al., 2009, p. 2965). In order to explain the user acceptance of SL, they extended
TAM 2 with the theory of hedonic consumption behavior.

Hedonic consumption itself has its roots in marketing research and addresses the facets of user
behavior that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotional aspects of one‘s experience
with products (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982). Saeed et al. (2009) referred to Lacher and
Mizerski (1994) and stated that the “theory asserts that emotional and imaginative responses
are the main drivers of hedonic consumption, which can be explained through the constructs of
emotional involvement, enjoyment and role projection“ (p. 2966). Furthermore, according to
Saeed et al. (2009), several studies have shown significant impacts of hedonic consumption
behaviors on entertainment-oriented technologies like online games, e-learning environments,
online retail shops, music, and gambling. Thus they assumed that hedonic behaviors are a
strong predictor of attitudes towards using MUVEs like SL, which are largely hedonic in nature.

Indeed the findings of Saeed et al. (2009) suggested that hedonic consumption behaviors are
strong predictors of Second Life usage. The model explained “51.4 percent of the users‘
intentions to use Second Life, which is a significant outcome when compared with similar
studies of technology acceptance“ (Saeed, et al., 2009, p. 2965). In more detail, the study
showed that perceived enjoyment was the most important predictor of users‘ intention to use
SL, followed by perceived emotional involvement. Furthermore, Saeed et al. (2009) discovered
that “TAM 2 constructs of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and subjective norms
also had significant impact on user intentions to use Second Life, but with lesser significance
than that of hedonic consumption behaviors“ (p. 2973).

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To understand those findings and the impacts they have, the next section will take a closer look
at virtuality and, in this context, especially at Virtual Worlds.

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Virtual World Project Management

2.2 Virtual World Project Management

2.2.1 Introduction
Until now the term technology was used as a hypernym. This was important to get into
technology adoption at first, but as the transition (see section 2.1.7 Transition of Technology
Adoption to Virtual Environments) has already implied, the general usage of the word
technology is now getting more specified. To be exact, the following section is focusing on
technology as an enabler of virtual projects with a special focus on virtual world technologies.
To accomplish this, in a first step the paradigm shift in project management towards a more
collaborative and virtual approach is covered. Including a basic definition of traditional project
terms, a workup of virtuality, and a definition of technology for virtual projects and virtual teams.
In a second step the focus moves to virtual worlds as a completely new perspective in virtual
project management. In the course of this, Second Life, one of the more popular virtual worlds,
is thereby examined in more detail.

2.2.2 Virtual Project Management
The rise of the Internet and evolving collaborative software has opened completely new
dimensions in project management. It is nowadays possible to set up projects with members in
dispersed locations all over the world. According to Cantu (1997) virtual project management
(VPM) could be seen as simple as regular projects and teams connected to each other over a
reduced set of communication channels using information and communication technologies.
Thereby, to fully understand the complexity of VPM the first step is to take a closer look at
traditional projects and project management.

2.2.2.1 Projects and Project Management

Project management (PM) is one of the most important issues today and vital to the survival of
many organizations. “Ineffective PM can result in budget and schedule overruns, poor quality
products, or even project termination” (Chen, Romano, & Nunamaker, 2003, p. 1303). On the
other hand, Chen et al. (2003) argue that successful PM may shorten product or service time to
market, save development resources, or increase product or service quality. According to
Evaristo and van Fenema (1999) traditional PM focuses mainly on a single project at a single
location and “is more concerned with project inputs and outputs than with project process”
(Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1303). However, the importance of PM is undisputed and also shown by
the rapidly increasing membership of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and rising
numbers of project-related job opportunities (Chen, et al., 2003).

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The PMI defines in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) that “a project is a
temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result” (Project
Management Institute, 2004, p. 5). The PMI also clearly contrasts projects with operational work
and states that operations are ongoing and repetitive in contrast to projects. Furthermore,
projects are different “because the project concludes when its specific objectives have been
attained, while operations adopt a new set of objects and the work continues” (Project
Management Institute, 2004, p. 7). Lewis (2001), for example, defines a project as “a one-time
job that has definite starting and ending points, clearly defined objectives, scope, and (usually) a
budget” (p. 2). There may also be other definitions of projects. Nevertheless, Engwall (1998)
found three features that people agree projects have in common: “(1) a project has a time span,
it is temporary with starting and ending point; (2) a project is to produce a product or service; (3)
every project is unique given that it has a certain starting and ending point, even though some
tasks or activities in projects may be repetitive” (Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1304).

Lewis (2001) defines PM as “the planning, scheduling, and controlling of project activities to
achieve performance, cost, and time objectives, for a given scope of work, while using
resources efficiently and effectively” (p. 5). Pretty much like the definition of a project, there may
be other definitions of PM. However, Chen et al. (2003) identified four essential features, which
PM definitions have in common: “(1) Management of a projects’ inputs such as human, material,
and financial resources; (2) organization, planning, and control of the project process; (3)
achievement of certain project objectives (e.g. performance, quality) within (4) certain
constraints (e.g. time, budget, scope)” (p. 1304). In addition to these definitions, Maurer (1996)
defined the overall goal of PM to reduce costs and improve process quality.

2.2.2.2 A Paradigm Shift in Project Management

Chen et al. (2003) argue that “over the past decade, the project landscape has undergone a
major change” (p. 1306). Powell, Piccoli, and Ives (2004) confirm that “global competition,
reengineered product life cycles, mass customization, and the increased need to respond
quickly to customers’ needs are just some of the more pronounced trends currently driving
organizational trends” (p. 6). Evaristo and van Fenema (1999) support this finding and illustrate
that more and more projects involve professionals from locations distributed geographically.
Those distributed projects are also called virtual projects or, if used in an organizational context,
virtual organizations.

Van Fenema and Kumar (2000) identified three aspects that differentiate single-site projects
from distributed or virtual projects: (1) distributed projects lack face-to-face communication and

Page 23


have reduced communication frequency, (2) cultural differences among different sites may
create communication and coordination problems, and (3) advanced information technology and
infrastructure are needed to support remote communication and cooperation.

Generally, Chen et al. (2003) state that “distributed projects impose higher demands for more
effective PM” (p. 1306). To accomplish these higher demands, they introduced a collaborative
PM approach, which is discussed in more detail in the following section.

2.2.2.3 A Collaborative PM Approach

By introducing a collaborative PM approach, Chen et al. (2003) grouped major PM functions in
five groups, in order to accomplish a variety of management functions. Those five components
or types of support are “(1) basic project support, (2) network view of PM effort, (3) explicit
communication and knowledge representation, (4) project process, and (5) project meetings”
(Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1306). In the following section these grouped PM functions are discussed
in more detail, based on the definitions provided by Chen et al. (2003).

Basic project support is defined as “essential for managing all types of projects and includes
activities such as scheduling, task analysis, resource, time and budget management, simple
status tracking, and reporting” (Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1306).

Network view of PM effort addresses the changed role of project managers and members in
distributed or virtual projects (Chen, et al., 2003). According to Whittaker (2000) virtual project
management takes a flattened network view of a project. “Project members share project
information, decision-making power, and responsibility for project processes and outcomes”
(Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1306). Furthermore, Chen et al. (2003) emphasize the fact that
information flow in all directions is very important in a network view of PM.

Explicit communication and knowledge representation “may not be necessary for simple, co-
located project[s], but it is critical for complex, and/or distributed project success” (Chen, et al.,
2003, p. 1307). Furthermore, knowledge needs to be captured and stored permanently for easy
and fast retrieval. Chen et al. (2003) formulated four components that may help virtual project
members to gain a better shared-understanding of the project context. (1) A project dictionary
“where key terms, concepts, jargon, and methodology are defined and clarified” (p. 1307), (2)
business roles and policies, “which allow project members to follow agreed upon standards for
project activities and document these activities for later retrieval and use” (p. 1307), (3) project
context information, to share “project background, boundary, objectives, and available

Page 24


resources” (p. 1307) with all project members, and (4) complete capture of “all other project
related information” (p. 1307).

Project process often plays a minor role for project members and managers, with the result that
little information is documented about the work process of a project (Turner, 2000). “If people
only manage project inputs and outputs, the process remains a black box and project members
don’t know something has gone wrong until it may be too late” (Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1307).
Furthermore, Chen et al. (2003) illustrated that collaborative PM must focus on project process
tracking in order to increase the process visibility and thereby increase the probability of project
success.

Last, but not least, Project meeting support addresses the fact that meetings are one of the
most important aspects of PM. Holpp (1999) state that “no skill is more critical to the overall
success of a team than the ability of its members to conduct focused, effective meetings” (as
cited in Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1308). Furthermore, Chen et al. (2003) support this position and
define that a “collaboration PM approach should have a very effective distributed meeting
mechanism in place” (Chen, et al., 2003, p. 1308).

Based on the main differences between traditional and virtual projects (see van Fenema &
Kumar, 2000), this collaborative PM approach by Chen et al. (2003) illustrates a big step
towards complex and integrated virtual project management. However, until now the term
“virtual” was used in the context of common sense regarding projects and project management,
but it is important to clearly define virtuality and how it influenced and changed the view of
projects and teams.

2.2.2.4 Virtuality, Virtual Projects, and Virtual Teams

Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005) defined virtuality “as the extent to which project members are
dispersed on geographical and other dimensions and rely on information and communication
technologies for carrying out project goals” (p. 5). Furthermore, they lay emphasis on the fact
that dispersion requires, but is not limited to geography. Other dimension of dispersion might be
time, organizational affiliation, culture, continuity of team membership, experience, availability,
or availability and variability in technology (Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005). In addition Katzy,
Evaristo, and Zigurs (2000) argued that the greater the dispersion, the more virtual an entity is.
Adams and Adams (1997) stated that the “geographical distances involved do not have to be
great; individuals who work in the same industrial complex may be functioning in a virtual
project if then-schedules do not allow them to meet face-to-face” (p. 37). However, they
illustrated that difficulties of communication and team building increase significantly, as

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distances increase (J. R. Adams & Adams, 1997). This is referable to the other dimensions of
dispersion mentioned before like time, culture, and availability (see Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005),
which can be associated with distance.

Based on virtuality and the previous discussed definition of traditional projects, a virtual project
can be summarized as a remote collaborative effort towards achieving a goal (Krill & Juell,
1997). A virtual team on the other side represents this collaborative effort and is thereby defined
as a “group of people who interact through interdependent tasks guided by a common purpose”
and work “across space, time, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of
communication technologies” (Lipnack & Stamps, 2000, p. 18). This definition basically derived
from the description of traditional teams by Sundstrom, DeMeuse, and Futrell (1990). They
defined a team as “interdependent collections of individuals who share responsibility for specific
outcomes for their organization” (Sundstrom, et al., 1990, p. 120). By adding virtuality and the
underlying dependence on communication technologies, Lipnack and Stamps (2000)
transformed the traditional definition of teams to the changed reality. Virtual teams offer a whole
new perspective for organizations and Powell et al. (2004) even concluded that “virtual teams
represent a new form of organization that offers unprecedented levels of flexibility and
responsiveness and has the potential to revolutionize the workplace” (p. 20).

In all those definitions of virtuality, virtual projects, and virtual teams technology, especially
communication technologies, plays an inherent role. To emphasize this fact once more,
Khazanchi and Zigurs (2006) defined VPM itself as the management of any project that is
geographically dispersed and relies on technology for communication and the information
sharing process. Based on the work of Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005, 2006), this reliance on
technology will be discussed in the following section.

2.2.2.5 Technology

The nature of virtuality, as described before, lies on the reliance on technologies, which “is also
recognized as a fundamental component of virtuality” (Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005, p. 5). Very
interesting regarding this are the findings of Staples and Webster (2007). They compared
traditional with virtual teams and found that “using electronic communication technologies
effectively does not relate to any of the effectiveness outcomes for traditional teams; in contrast,
it relates to most of the outcomes for virtual teams” (Staples & Webster, 2007, p. 89). This
emphasizes how important especially communication technologies are for virtual projects.
Furthermore, Powell et al. (2004) stated that “technological support for virtual teams and
collaboration in distributed environments is now viable and widespread” (p. 6), which is also
supported by the fact that a growing number of organizations are implementing them

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(McDonough III, Kahn, & Barczak, 2001). But, the question is how to differentiate technology for
virtual project management?

According to Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005) three dimensions are most relevant when talking
about technology in the context of virtual projects: (1) communication, (2) process structure and
(3) task support. Following these three dimensions, Khazanchi and Zigurs (Khazanchi & Zigurs,
2005) defined “technology for virtual projects as consisting of an integrated and flexible set of
tools for communicating among project members, structuring process, and supporting task
analysis and performance” (p. 6). This definition could also be seen as an aggregation on the
technology level of the collaborative PM approach (see Chen, et al., 2003). Table 3 summarizes
examples of the three dimensions of technology, developed by Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005).

Dimension Example Elements

Communication • Simultaneous input
• Anonymous input
• Input feedback
• Group display
• Physical configuration of communication channels (e.g.,
synchronous or asynchronous, proximate or dispersed)

Process Structure • Agenda setting
• Agenda enforcement
• Facilitation
• Complete record of group interaction

Task Analysis and • Information gathering
Performance • Information aggregation
• Information evaluation
• Information structuring (e.g., allocation, stakeholder
analysis, multi-attribute utility analysis, cross-impact
analysis)
• Project task analysis and tracking (e.g., Gantt chart,
PERT/CPM, Work Breakdown Structure, Resource
Assignment)

Table 3. Examples of Each Dimension of Technology, adapted from Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005)

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Even though the definitions of virtual projects and virtual project management state that a
project is virtual if (1) team members or projects are dispersed and (2) forced to rely on
technologies to mediate communication, the dimensions of technology described by Khazanchi
and Zigurs (2005) further confine this notion of what is seen as technology for virtual projects.

Chen et al. (2003) for example found that “there is no existent well-acknowledged definition for
a PM system” (p. 1308). Furthermore, their literature review and web search indicated that “any
software that helps with the PM effort can be classified as PM software” (Chen, et al., 2003, p.
1308). This overly broad understanding is problematic, because spreadsheet and word
processing, for example, are used by small businesses to conduct PM, but cannot be classified
as a PM system at all (Chen, et al., 2003). The same conclusion could be found with e-mail and
other electronic communication forms, because these technologies support the communication
part of the technology requirements, but not the project management part. However, these
findings lead to the conclusion that there is not one technology or software available to fulfill
virtual project management as a whole. On the contrary, a set of different technologies and
software has to be utilized to successfully engage virtual projects (see Table 1 for some
requirements proposed by Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005).

Basically, virtual teams are using synchronous and asynchronous technologies like e-mail,
audio/video/data conferencing, automated workflow, e-voting, and collaborative writing tools
(Coleman, 1997). However, Hietikko and Rajaniemi (2000) found that even with the latest
innovations of web-based communication and knowledge technologies, e-mail remains the most
popular tool for communicating within projects. Khazanchi and Zigurs (2005) found the same
pattern of relatively low use of distributed project management tools and stated that “there was
generally low use for all of the technologies that we would categorize as providing support for
process structure or information processing” (Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005, p. 68). On the contrary,
all the examined teams relied heavily on e-mail and voice media (Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005).
Furthermore, Chen et al. (2003) found that web-based communication technologies offer virtual
project members an easy way to access project information and enhance the quality of
interaction. This trend is also supported by some newer technologies like wikis, weblogs, and
social media platforms, which are gaining more and more acknowledgment in today’s virtual
project environments (Brown, Huettner, & James-Tanny, 2006). Very interesting in this context
is the introduction of the experience exchange model by Petter and Vaishnavi (2008) to share,
apply, and subsequently reuse knowledge in projects using collaborative technologies like wikis.
“The Experience Exchange model suggests how knowledge seekers and contributors can
create a community around personal war stories” and defines “storytelling via narratives as an
effective method to share experiences (i.e., knowledge) with others” (Petter & Vaishnavi, 2008,
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p. 1800). Overall, Zigurs, Evaristo, and Katzy (2001) concluded that “the technology needs to
create and support a social space in which coordination and task activities can occur – a ‘where’
for the virtual project that gives members a sense of place, even in the midst of the dynamic and
volatile environment that characterizes virtual projects” (p. 19).

Amongst those addressed new technologies are virtual worlds, which got a lot of attention in the
last couple of years. There has been some research on virtual teams and virtual worlds, but
basically this area is new ground in terms of virtual (world) project management, which makes it
even more interesting for further investigations.

2.2.3 Virtual Worlds
This section takes a closer look on virtual worlds as a proposed technology for virtual projects.
As a first step an overview of the history and evolution of virtual environments is given, followed
by the definition and distinction of virtual worlds and metaverses. Finally, Second Life, one of
the more popular virtual worlds, is discussed in more detail.

2.2.3.1 A Historical Review

Virtual environments (VEs), also called virtual reality, first caught a great deal of attention by
public and researchers during the 1990s (Biocca & Levy, 1995). But much more interesting is
the fact that “the seminal ideas and even technical prototypes extend back nearly 45 years”
(Blascovich, et al., 2002, p. 105). Furthermore, social psychologists have been creating virtual,
or synthetic, environments for decades using hard scenery, props, and real people (Blascovich,
et al., 2002). Nowadays we always combine the word virtual with software or computer
hardware, but from the psychological point of view a VE is generally defined as ”synthetic
sensory information that leads to perceptions of environments and their contents as if they were
not synthetic” (Blascovich, et al., 2002, p. 105). Zimbardo (1973), for example, got a lot of
attention with his prison-guard study. He created “a synthetic environment that was so
compelling as to cause Stanford students randomly assigned to the role of prison guard to
abuse fellow students assigned to the role of prisoners” (Blascovich, et al., 2002, p. 106). The
impact of this VE was so great that Zimbardo (1973) had to end the study right before its
planned duration.

Today, however, the continuing developments in information and communication technologies
made it possible to create three-dimensional (3-D) virtual realities, using high-resolution
graphics and sophisticated software. The term virtual reality (VR) was coined in 1989 by Jaron
Lanier, chief executive officer of VPL Research, Inc., to bring all of the virtual projects under a
single rubric (M. W. Krueger, 1991). “The term therefore typically refers to three-dimensional
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realities implemented with stereo viewing goggles and reality gloves” (Steuer, 1992, p. 75). The
first definitions of VR were particularly defined to a special technology based on particular
hardware (Steuer, 1992). This is also apparent in the following definition, provided by
Greenbaum (1992).

“Virtual Reality is an alternate world filled with computer-generated images that respond to
human movements. These simulated environments are usually visited with the aid of an
expensive data suit which features stereo-phonic video goggles and fiber-optic data
gloves” (Greenbaum, 1992, p. 58).

“The key to defining virtual reality in terms of human experience rather than technological
hardware is the concept of presence” (Steuer, 1992, p. 75). Gibson (1979) defined presence as
“the sense of being in an environment” (as cited in Steuer, 1992, p. 75). In a consistent further
development, the construct of presence was transformed to telepresence, which is defined “as
the experience of presence in an environment by means of a communication medium” (Steuer,
1992, p. 76). By using this concept it was possible to formulate VR without referring to a
particular hardware, namely: “A virtual reality is defined as a real or simulated environment in
which a perceiver experiences telepresence” (Steuer, 1992, p. 76).

2.2.3.2 Definition of Virtual Worlds, Metaverses and Avatars

According to Schoberth and Schrott (2001) many researchers pointed out the difficulties to
define the term “virtual world”, because of “the multidisciplinary attitudes needed to approach
the subject and considering the variety of languages used to this purpose by academic and
unacademic authors” (Tampieri, 2009, p. 409). However, Tampieri (2009) stated that “the
threshold to cross from the informatics and technology to business and network dynamics,
defining the virtual world as an environment in which the participants, represented by avatars,
coordinate their business actions with an unknown speediness and overcoming the normal
space and time limits” (Tampieri, 2009, p. 409). Table 4 shows a collection of three other
relevant definitions of virtual worlds.

Author(s) Definition

MacInnes and A virtual world is a persistent synthetic environment where people
Hu (2005) communicate with each other using a virtual person, an avatar.

Jackson (2007) A virtual world is a technical platform; computer-generated worlds where
people participate using avatars, an outgrowth of online gaming, evolving
into rich ecosystems of online communities

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Author(s) Definition

Thomas and Virtual worlds are persistent, avatar-based social spaces that provide
Brown (2007) players or participants with the ability to engage in long-term, joint
coordinated action

Table 4. Some Relevant Definitions of Virtual Worlds, adapted from Tampieri (2009)

These definitions have several things in common, which are also mentioned by Ives and
Junglas (2008). (1) “Virtual worlds are computer-simulated, usually 3-D, representations” (p.
152). (2) A virtual world has to be persistent, which means a 24/7 availability, even “in the
absence of any visiting avatar” (p. 152). (3) People are participating using so-called avatars.
Thereby, an avatar is defined as “a graphic identity that a virtual world user chooses to
represent him- of herself in this environment” (p. 152). (4) Virtual world users use their avatars
to “interconnect and communicate in relatively life-like environments” (p. 152).

According to Bainbridge (2007), metaverses are based on the existing definitions and
generalizations of VWs. Thereby metaverses can be defined as “immersive three-dimensional
virtual worlds (VWs) in which people interact as avatars with each other and with software
agents, using the metaphor of the real world but without its physical limitations” (A. Davis,
Murphy, Owens, Khazanchi, & Zigurs, 2009, p. 91). VW could thereby be seen as instantiations
of metaverses, which have grown into environments that are capable of supporting effective
interaction (Schroeder, Heldal, & Tromp, 2006; Sempsey & Johnston, 2000). Furthermore, A.
Davis et al. (2009) stated that “metaverses provide virtual team members with new ways of
managing and overcoming geographic and other barriers to collaboration” (p. 91). Kahai, Caroll,
and Jestice (2007) also came to the conclusion that “virtual worlds offer a rich range of features
and new possibilities for virtual team collaboration” (Kahai, et al., 2007, p. 66).

Focusing on this range of features of virtual worlds, mentioned by Kahai et al. (2007), the
following section describes a new introduced model to identify and measure technology
capabilities of metaverses.

2.2.3.3 Metaverse Technology Capabilities

As part of the development of a research model, A. Davis et al. (2009) introduced technology
capabilities of metaverses to evaluate what is possible in VWs from the perspective of
technology infrastructure. They basically define metaverse technology as “a set of capabilities
for communication, rendering, interaction, and team process” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 95). The
basic idea of technology capabilities as a way to identify potential features is not new and

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consistent with prior research on groupware and collaboration technologies (see Carte &
Chidambaram, 2004; A. Davis, et al., 2009).

To establish the concept of metaverse technology as a set of capabilities, A. Davis et al. (2009)
basically provided three reasons. (1) Technology plays a key role in virtual teams, (2)
technology capabilities enable the interaction of people and technology, and (3) currently
existing technology capabilities do not yet account for the unique characteristics of metaverses
(A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 95). Furthermore, the capability approach allows to take “a more
flexible view that has potential to incorporate new features as technology evolves” (A. Davis, et
al., 2009, p. 95). Based on the previous cited definition of metaverse technology by A. Davis et
al. (2009) the four basic capabilities are covered below in more detail.

Communication capabilities are “fundamental for metaverse technologies, as they are for any
environment that needs to support collaboration” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96). A. Davis et al.
(2009) defined five particular capabilities related to communication: (1) feedback, (2) multiplicity
of cues and channels, (3) language variety, (4) channel expansion, and (5) communication
support. While feedback, multiplicity of cues and channels, and language variety have been a
long-standing tenet of media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986), channel expansion
“incorporates factors to show how seemingly fixed characteristics of media can be perceived
differently by different people or by the same person over time” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96).
The last capability, the concept of communication support is based on task-technology fit theory
(Dennis, Wixom, & Vandenberg, 2001; Zigurs & Buckland, 1998) and is thereby defined as “any
aspect of a technology that supports, enhances, or defines the capability for a group to
communicate” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96).

Rendering capability “is the process of creating or executing life-like images on the screen and it
is supported by the capabilities of personalization and vividness” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96).
Thereby, Daft and Lengel (1986) defined personalization as the extent to which a technology
allows for a personal focus among people. Davis et al. (2009) defined this more practically by
saying that “people control the rendering of their avatars and can personalize avatar
appearance; they can also have a personal focus through direct contact with other avatars” (p.
96). In this context, vividness stands for the richness of a mediated environment in terms of
formal features (see Steuer, 1992).

Interaction in metaverses “is supported by the capabilities of interactivity, mobility, and
immediacy of artifacts” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96). Based on Steuer (1992) interactivity is
defined as “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of
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mediated environment in real time” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96). Mobility is defined as “the
extent to which avatars are able to move around in a quick and efficient way” (A. Davis, et al.,
2009, p. 96). Finally, Davis et al. (2009) defined immediacy of artifacts as “the real-time ability of
users (represented by avatars) to individually and/or collaboratively create and use in-world
artifacts such as text, images, and three-dimensional models” (p. 99).

Last, but not least, team process consists of capabilities for process structure, information
processing, and appropriate support (Dennis, et al., 2001; Zigurs & Buckland, 1998). Thereby it
is important to mention that “current metaverse technologies do not directly offer these
capabilities, but they can be provided through custom objects and tools that can be built via
scripting” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 99).

Davis et al. (2009) finally concluded that virtual teams are continuing to face challenges with
communication, interaction, and technology limitation, but “the specific capabilities of metaverse
technologies offer ways to address these challenges” (p. 111). Furthermore, their study showed
that “metaverses present a new environment for organizational roles, behaviors, and
expectations” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 111).

So far, virtual worlds as an instantiation of metaverses have been historically worked up,
described and a metaverse technology capability approach was presented. As a last step, the
following section is focusing on one of the more popular VWs in more detail to give a more
practical insight into VWs.

2.2.3.4 Second Life

There are a lot of different VWs available at the moment. Amongst others, the most known are
Second Life (SL), There, IMVU, Kaneva, Gaia, Active Worlds, and Habbo Hotel (Ives & Junglas,
2008; Kish, 2007). Also several open source initiatives are on their way “to free virtual worlds
from proprietary oversight and, perhaps, to allow cross-platform interoperability” (Ives &
Junglas, 2008, p. 153). However, this section is focusing on one of the most popular virtual
worlds, namely Second Life.

Philip Rosedale started working on the concept of Linden World, which was the initial name of
SL, back in 1991. Twelve years later on June 23, 2003, Linden Labs, the company founded by
Philip Rosedale in 1999, introduced SL to the broad public (Rymaszewski, et al., 2007).
Rymaszewski et al. (2007) describe SL as “a 3D online digital world imagined, created, and
owned by its residents” (p. 4). SL is nowadays the most diffused virtual world and uses a very
specialized language (J. B. Thomas & Peters, 2007). A so-called resident, as mentioned in the

Page 33


definition above, is a registered SL user with an active account, who is represented by an
avatar. Residents have the opportunity to “design their own clothing, hair color, dresses and
even appearances“ (Saeed, et al., 2009, p. 2965). Furthermore, avatars can walk, run, fly or
even teleport themselves throughout the mainland and all the islands developed by the users
(Ives & Junglas, 2008). “Many islands, however, are private with access restricted to those who
have been pre-authorized“ (Ives & Junglas, 2008, p. 152). Avatars can communicate with other
avatars “using text, images, gestures or even voice“ (Saeed, et al., 2009, p. 2965). Furthermore,
avatars can create things by using provided proprietary tool for land excavation, graphic design,
and script production (Ives & Junglas, 2008). Saeed et al. (2009) stated that SL “provides
enormous opportunities to imitate real world situations in a virtual environment“ (p. 2966).
Amongst others, Saeed et al. (2009) list the reincarnation of ancient architecture and civiliza-
tions, advertising and selling of real life commodities, experiencing complex medical procedures
discounting dangerous outcomes, library services, conducting classes and labs, and so on (p.
2966). Copyright issues are clearly regulated and say that the “resulting intellectual property is
owned by its creator and can be sold“ (Ives & Junglas, 2008, p. 152). The money used in SL is
called Linden Dollars and could be converted into real life money or vice versa. Ives and
Junglas (2008) ironically compared the SL economy with the Wild West, because of the lack of
regulation. To counter this situation, “Linden Labs has recently outlawed lucrative, but dodgy,
enterprises, including gambling establishments and banks“ (Ives & Junglas, 2008, p. 152).

As mentioned previously, SL is currently the most popular metaverse with nearly 14 million
registered residents in the beginning of 2009, though the actual in-world population at any time
is closer to 50,000 (Ives & Junglas, 2008; Tampieri, 2009). Table 5 shows the continuously
growth of SL since 2005 in relation to several key figures.

Year

2005 2006 2007 2008

Total hours used by all Residents 1,968,905 7,337,424 25,646,287 31,990,070

2
Size of Landscape (Km ) - 293.65 963.66 1,429.65

Balance sheet of Linden Labs ($) 520,703,616 1,418,354,523 4,183,573,385 5,173,515,776

Linden Dollars exchanged (L$) - - 2,031,208,854 2,507,966,464

Number of Residents 99,623 2,267,092 11,704,934 13,830,008

Table 5. General Profile of Activities in SL, adapted from Tampieri (2009)

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From the technology side of view SL is based on a server client architecture, which means that
Linden Labs hosts the server infrastructure where the virtual environment is rendered and all
the user-generated objects are stored. Currently over 20,000 CPUs (Central Processing Units)
are running in three data centers across the United States. This means compared to the actual
in-world population at any time (see Ives & Junglas, 2008) that less than three residents,
including the rendering of the 3-D environment, are operated per server. The actual expansion
rate of the calculating capacity of the server infrastructure is five percent (Rosedale, 2008). To
use SL a client is needed, which serves as a monitor and thereby displays the information it is
receiving from the server. There are clients developed by Linden Labs available for Windows,
Mac OS X and the most common Linux operation systems. Additionally, third party clients are
available for Sun Solaris and OpenSolaris. The client server architecture of SL heavily relies on
high-speed and/or broadband Internet connections. Furthermore, there are some minimal
prerequisites to the hardware of the computer where the client is running to guarantee a
flawless presentation of the virtual 3-D environment.

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Research Methodology

3 Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction
This section introduces the research methodology of this thesis. The literature review (see 2
Literature Review) provided the theoretical foundation for technology adoption and virtual world
project management. The following section is meant to complement the theoretical review and
provides basic information of the empirical methods and the research design used in the course
of this thesis. Basically, a combination of research methods was used to investigate the
research question, “How and why is technology acceptance triggering the success of virtual
project management, and what are possible business uses of virtual worlds in this context?”

First, an introduction into information systems and qualitative research is covered, followed by a
description of the two main methods used to accomplish the research question: (1) a focus
group, and (2) several interviews with experts in the field of technology adoption and virtual
teams and/or virtual worlds. At the end of this section the research design is present to show
how the several methods work together and, of course, to provide a structured and logical
integrated research approach.

3.2 Methods in Information Systems Research
In her dissertation, Lu (2007) stated that “applied information systems (IS) has gradually
evolved from its origins in technology towards dimensions that are organisational and social” (p.
11). Furthermore, based on the findings of Kaplan and Duchon (1988), “the development of the
IS research paradigm has resulted in a broader range of research methods and an increased
use of qualitative research” (Lu, 2007, p. 11). This is also in line with the recommendation of
Galliers and Land (1987) that “research methods must take account of the nature of the subject
matter and the complexity of the real world” (p. 901). Lu (2007) concluded that the “use of
qualitative techniques in IS research is widely accepted today and seen as enhancing the
effectiveness of IS implementation in organisations, as well as enabling effective assessment of
the impact IS has on individuals or organizations” (p. 11).

Qualitative research methods were developed to study social and cultural phenomena in the
field of social sciences (Lu, 2007). Since the 1980s, a broader shift from quantitative to
qualitative research methods occurred, which also underlines the increased use of qualitative
methods in IS research (T. W. Lee, 1999; Litosseliti, 2003). Barbour (2008) stated that

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“qualitative research answers very different questions from those addressed by quantitative
research” (p. 11). Thereby, she argues that qualitative methods cannot answer questions like
“How many?”, “What are the causes?”, or “What is the strength of the relationship between
variables?” (Barbour, 2008). “It can, however, provide an understanding of how official figures
are created through social processes” (Barbour, 2008, p. 11). Furthermore, these qualitative
techniques provide “additional insight and understanding for IS research, especially in the case
of complex phenomena” (Lu, 2007, p. 17).

Qualitative research techniques include documentary and visual sources, observational
fieldwork, interviews, focus groups, diaries, enhanced case records, case study research,
critical incident techniques, and action research (Barbour, 2008). Two of these techniques were
utilized in this thesis: focus groups and interviews. In addition, in order to assess the technology
adoption aspects of the research question, a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods was
chosen. Barbour (2008) states that a mix of methods is often used “to compensate for the
perceived shortcomings of stand-alone methods, with the aim of either providing a more
complete picture or enhancing coverage” (Barbour, 2008, p. 151). In this case, a survey was
used to measure user intention because of the well-established toolset of technology adoption
research with predefined quantitative measurement tools.

3.3 Focus Group
Litoselliti (2003) describes focus groups as “small structured groups with selected participants,
normally led by a moderator” (p. 1). Furthermore, they are set up to explore specific topics and
individuals’ or group experiences, through interaction between the participants (Litosseliti,
2003). Krueger (1994) defines a focus group as “a carefully planned discussion designed to
obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, non-threatening environment”
(p. 6), extended by the fact that “participants share and respond to comments, ideas and
perceptions” (Litosseliti, 2003, p. 1).

The setting of a focus group was chosen primarily to have a representative group of people
getting introduced to virtual worlds, especially Second Life, and to encourage a discussion
about possible business uses. Furthermore, the opportunity to have a group of business
representatives, who have no experience with Second Life, provided a perfect setting for an
investigation in technology acceptance. The focus group took place at a computer lab of the
Peter Kiewit Institute at the University of Nebraska at Omaha on Friday May 29th, 2009, from
1200 to 1300 hours. A box lunch and beverages were provided to create a pleasant and non-
threatening environment, and following the suggestion of Osborn (1963) that some of his best

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sessions “have been sandwich-luncheons in the office” (p. 157). A personal computer (PC) was
provided for all participants with a pre installed and already running Second Life client.

3.3.1 Participants
Focus groups typically have a size of six to ten participants, but can range from so-called mini
focus groups with as few as four participants to as many as twelve, depending on the research
purpose (Goss & Leinbach, 1996; Kitzinger, 1995; Litosseliti, 2003). In this situation, a larger
group with the maximum proposed size of twelve participants was chosen. Even though larger
groups are difficult to manage and moderate, they “can be useful for brainstorming” (Litosseliti,
2003, p. 6), which was the main reason to set up a focus group for this project.

Eleven of the twelve participants were from Omaha based businesses, and the twelfth
participant was a current PhD student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). The idea
was to get a heterogeneous group representing a mixture of different businesses along with one
representative from the research area. Among the eleven participants were representatives
from local banks, insurance companies, the public sector, health care, and software
development firms. All of the companies are members of the Applied Information Management
Institute (AIM Institute), a “not-for-profit membership organization that provides information
technology leadership to Nebraska and the surrounding regions” (AIM Institute, 2009). The AIM
Institute is working closely with the College of Information Science and Technology (CIS&T) at
UNO to inform and increase the awareness of virtual world capabilities. Figure 7 shows the
demographics of the focus group, providing information about gender, age, and work
experience of the participating business representatives.

Work Experience Age
Average 45
Minimum 28
Maximum 64

Gender
Female 3
Male 9

Figure 7. A Demographic Overview of the Second Life Focus Group

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None of the participants had any previous experience with SL, nor was any information on SL
provided before the focus group started. This fact is very important, because it gives the results
even more validity. The focus group session consisted of three parts. First, an in-world
introduction of SL was provided to familiarize the participants with the metaverse. Secondly, a
UTAUT based survey about technology adoption (see Venkatesh, et al., 2003) was conducted.
Third and last was a brainstorming session about possible business uses of virtual worlds.

3.3.2 Introduction of Second Life
After the welcoming words and an introduction by Ilze Zigurs (Department Chair, Information
Systems and Quantitative Analysis in CIST&T at UNO) and Deepak Khazanchi (Associate Dean
for Academic Affairs in CIS&T at UNO), the densely packed program began.

Figure 8. CIS&T Second Life Welcoming Area

The SL session was scheduled for 20 to 25 minutes and took place at the CIS&T island in SL.
Avatars were prepared and ready to go for every participant located at the welcoming area of
the island (see Figure 8). The introduction was designed to give inexperienced participants a
quick and basic overview of SL and how to control and use the virtual world, as well as provide
insight into projects currently underway in the College of IS&T. The introduction covered all
basic control functions of SL and the client itself, including motion controls like walking, running,
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flying, and teleportation, search functionalities, basic orientation functions like maps and the
mini map, and the basic elements in SL like objects and how to handle them. Furthermore, the
basic elements of data visualization in SL were covered in this first part, to show how
information like text, images and data can be displayed. Some time was also provided for
participants to have their own first experiences, especially to walk around the welcoming area
on their own and get to know the controls and become more familiar with them.

After these first in-world experiences, the next part was a showcase of one of the current
projects on the CIS&T island, namely the chemistry lab. The chemistry lab provides a virtual
environment for students to experience the microcosm of atoms in the macrocosm. The so-
called collider, one of several objects in the chemistry lab, allows students to create atoms and
see how they combine to form molecules. For example, if one generates two hydrogen atoms
and one oxygen atom, the collider automatically builds H2O, therefore a water molecule (see
Figure 9). This scenario was chosen to show the participants how to use virtual worlds to make
things visible that are not possible in the real world. The participants had several minutes to try
the collider themselves and take a look around other interesting things in the chemistry lab.

Figure 9. The Collider As a Tool in the UNO Chemistry Lab

Subsequent to this showcase of the chemistry lab, the interaction and collaboration features of
SL became the center of attention. To give the participants an overview of the communication

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capabilities of SL, the situation of a virtual meeting was simulated. The whole group of
participating avatars teleported themselves to one of several meeting areas on the CIS&T island
(see Figure 10). In this virtual meeting room, participants were encouraged to use the text-
based chat function and communicate with each other about their first experiences with SL.
After this short discussion, some additional features of SL were presented, including the use of
slideshows in a meeting room, the voice chat functions, and the capability for logging all the
communication for documentation purposes.

Figure 10. Virtual Meeting Room on the CIS&T Island

After this 25 minute session in SL, the participants were called on to complete a short survey.
The link to this online survey was placed in SL and could be easily accessed by clicking on the
object in the middle of the meeting room.

3.3.3 Survey Based on UTAUT
As mentioned before, in addition to the qualitative methods, a survey based on UTAUT (see
Venkatesh, et al., 2003) was conducted right after the SL session to evaluate the technology
adoption of SL. This special setting of giving inexperienced participants a brief introduction and
the possibility to interact with the investigated system followed by a survey is very common in
technology adoption research. When Davis (1989) introduced TAM he justified his second
study, where he tested the previously developed TAM on two systems, with the fact that “users
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are typically given a brief hands-on demonstration involving less than an hour of actually
interacting with the candidate system” (p. 330). Furthermore, afterwards the participants are
asked to rate the future usefulness and ease of use they “would expect based on relatively little
experience with the systems being rated” (F. D. Davis, 1989, p. 330). Of course, the literature
review has already shown that perceived usefulness and ease of use are not the only variables
affecting attitude and intention towards using a system. That is the reason why a survey based
on UTAUT (see Venkatesh, et al., 2003) was chosen.

Because of the pretty tight schedule of the participants and the consequent limited time for the
focus group, a modified and shorter version of the suggested UTAUT survey was used. The
survey contained the parts of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, attitude toward using
SL, anxiety, and behavioral intention to use SL. In the end the survey consisted of 19 questions,
instead of the 31 questions in the original version, which reduced the estimated time of
completion down to 5 minutes. The complete survey can be found in Appendix A.

In terms of the virtual aspect of the whole focus group and to show how SL could be combined
and interact with the Internet, the survey was delivered in an online format. To be exact,
LimeSurvey (http://www.limesurvey.org), a very common and open source online survey tool,
was utilized. Another advantage of using an online-based survey tool was the automatically
generated raw analysis of the data, which saved a lot of time.

3.3.4 Brainstorming Session
As the last part of the focus group, a brainstorming session was held to gain information about
future business uses of virtual worlds, based on the limited in-world experience of the
participants made during the SL introduction. Brainstorming was originally invented by Alex
Osborn in the late 1930’s. Webster’s International Dictionary defines brainstorming as “a
conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution for a specific problem by
amassing all the ideas spontaneously by its members” (as cited in Osborn, 1963, p. 157).
Thereby brainstorming is a useful tool for groups to develop ideas and create a creative
environment that supports collaboration. Osborn (1963) suggests a group size between 6 and
12 participants for successful brainstorming sessions, which goes along with the previously
mentioned ideal size of focus groups. The session itself was accomplished in two steps. First,
everybody had enough time to come up with ideas and suggestions for business uses of virtual
worlds. In a second step, the participants were encouraged to comment on contributions from
other participants and develop some of the ideas in more detail. The goal was to enable a little
online discussion to increase the quality of the outcomes.

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To address the virtual aspect of this focus group, as with the survey, an online brainstorming
tool was used to manage inputs of the participants and document the whole solution finding
process. Therefore, ThinkTank (http://groupsystems.com/technology/thinktank), an online
collaboration tool from GroupSystems, was utilized to support this virtual brainstorming session.
This fact is very important, because the participants were just allowed to use the online tool for
communication, which guaranteed virtual collaboration.

3.4 Qualitative Interviews
The second approach to complement the literature review was a series of five interviews with
experts on the field of technology adoption and virtual world project management. Barbour
(2008) states that “one-to-one interviews are perhaps the most commonly used method in the
qualitative ‘toolbox’” (p. 17). Qualitative interviews use open questions, which “allow
respondents to focus on the issues of greatest importance to them, rather than the agenda
being determined entirely by the researcher’s interests” (Barbour, 2008, p. 17). To be exact,
semi-structured interviews were used in this thesis, which according to Barbour (2008) “allow for
the ordering of questions to be employed flexibly to take account of the priority accorded each
topic by the interviewee” (p. 17). All five respondents have their own special areas of interest,
but it was still important to ask all of them the same questions to get the full picture, even
though the focus switched from interview to interview.

Due to the novelty of virtual worlds and virtual world project management, the interviews were
primarily seen as a complement to the available literature. This fact is very important and,
therefore, the interviews are basically handled like literature in this thesis. Furthermore, the
interviews were completely independent from the results of the focus group and focused on the
newest trends in the different research areas. The main goal was to bring some light into the
darkness of those areas not covered by currently available literature.

To accomplish this goal, the leading researchers in each area were identified and asked to
attend in a 20 to 25 minutes interview session. The interviews were held in person or via Skype
telephone/video conferences. Based on the findings of Lee et al. (2003), who examined 101
papers using TAM in the leading information systems journals and conferences, one researcher
was identified for the technology adoption perspective. To be exact, Fred Davis, the founder of
TAM. Davis is currently employed at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of
Arkansas and leaded the list of Lee et al. (2003) of the most active technology adoption
researchers together with Viswanath Venkatesh.

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On the virtual team and virtual project management side, Ilze Zigurs and Deepak Khazanchi
were asked for an interview. Due to the fact that Ilze Zigurs is one of the academic advisors of
this thesis and working together with Deepak Khazanchi at UNO, a personal interview could
easily be conducted. Both researchers are leading in the field of virtual teams and virtual project
management and also head a research group focusing on metaverses, especially SL. In
addition to those three researchers, an interview with Moez Limayem, Information Systems
Department Chair of the Sam M. Walton College of Business was conducted. His research area
is especially focused on virtual worlds and/or metaverses.

The analyzing process is based on a coding scheme to compare the several different
interviews. Even though a systematical and well established approach is important “the
researcher and not the medium of analysis that ensures that analysis is systematic and
thorough” (Barbour, 2008, p. 196). Due to the fact that there just have been five interviews the
comparability is some kind limited. Seale (1999) for example pointed out that “early stages of
coding are therefore more appropriately called ‘indexing’, acting as signposts to interesting bits
of data” (p. 154). Based on this assessment the term indexing is definitely more appropriate to
use in this case. Furthermore, the literature suggests that one should approach the data without
recourse to any preconceived theoretical framework (Barbour, 2008). Even though this is
desirable, “it is simply not possible, as our approaches to qualitative research and even the
questions we ask are inextricably embedded in our own disciplinary and cultural assumptions”
(Barbour, 2008, p. 196). Therefore it is more important to recognize what the reference points
are and to make those explicit in the analysis (Barbour, 2008).

The semi-structured questions and the transcripts of all interviews are included as Appendix C
and Appendix D. The last part of this section is now dealing with the analysis process itself and
describes the approach of how the different research methods were compared with each other
to come to the findings described in the results and discussion part.

3.5 Integrated Research Approach
To finally compare all the findings from the literature review over the qualitative interviews and
the UTAUT based survey to the results of the brainstorming session a qualitative approach was
chosen. Even though the conducted survey is basically a quantitative tool and the basic
analysis of the data is quantitative as well, the results are for this purpose handled like
qualitative data. This means basically that some of the key findings of the survey are included in
the coding and/or indexing scheme and therefore comparable with the other qualitative data.
This decision was basically made due to the fact that a universe of twelve is simply too little for

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a statistical analysis, but the results still contain interesting and applicable data and therefore
must be utilized in the research process.

Figure 11 presents the used research design and is described in more detail afterwards.

Methods Results Meta Findings
analysis

Survey …

…

Research … Research
question Brainstorming question

…

Interviews …
!
Survey

Literature Review

Figure 11. Research Design

Starting from the research question the first step was a thorough literature review on technology
acceptance, virtual teams and (virtual) project management, and virtual worlds. In addition to
this literature review three other methods were used to get further insights into these mentioned
research areas (see the detailed description in this section above). Very important is the fact
that the goal was to see the several methods as an addition to the theoretic foundation resulted
from the literature review. Thereby the results of the empirical research methods are compared
with the literature to see if they support or contradict with this foundation. To compare the
results of the different methods a meta analysis was conducted to find similarities and
inconsistencies. This step could basically be seen as coding and/or indexing, as already
addressed in the qualitative interview section.

The final step was to take a closer look at the information and points compared during the meta
analysis and based on this build the main findings. Furthermore, those findings, as the meta

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analysis before, was always seen in the context of the theoretical foundation. After this
structured approach the key findings were taken and lead back to the starting point, namely the
research question. To get back to the main question is important to evaluate the outcomes of
this research process and to conclude whether the question could have been properly
answered or not.

After the basic description of the research methodology and the research design the next
section now focuses on the results and discussion of those methods and how they support, or
not support, the theoretical foundation identified during the literature review.

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4 Results and Discussion

4.1 Introduction
The following section deals with the results of the empirical methods described above and also
includes the discussion and relevance of the respective results. This combined approach was
chosen to guarantee a logical workup of the results and compare the interdependency of the
several qualitative and quantitative results as well as the findings of the literature review. This is
consistent with the research design and guarantees a logical workup of the results and findings
of the empirical methods. First, the main points of the literature research and how they support
the research question are discussed, followed by the results from the qualitative and
quantitative research based on the focus group and the qualitative interviews. There are some
occasions where the interviewees made points that fit into the discussion of the other methods,
for instance that they support or disagree with points of the technology acceptance literature.
Seen from this angle some of the findings of the qualitative interviews are integrated throughout
this section. Also it is important to mention that by the regulations of the Management Center
Innsbruck the interviews are not listed in the reference list and thereby cannot be cited properly
in APA style. To address this issue the interviewees are addressed with their full name when
they first appear and with the addition “Interview”, if a longer statement is cited. The full
transcripts of all interviews are attached as Appendix D. Finally the last part of this section is
about the practical application of the findings and how they can be of use for organizations. This
last part is based on the brainstorming session during the focus group and on the qualitative
interviews and covers the subtitle of this thesis, namely the business use of virtual worlds.

4.2 The Theoretical and Research Perspective
The literature review has basically shown two main points. The first point is that virtual project
management is heavily dependent on information technologies (see Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005;
Lipnack & Stamps, 2000). Second, technology acceptance plays a huge role when it comes to
the actual usage of technology (see F. D. Davis, 1989; F. D. Davis, et al., 1989; Y. Lee, et al.,
2003; Venkatesh, et al., 2003). Previous research has also shown that the reliance on
technology significantly relates to the effectiveness of the outcomes of virtual teams as opposed
to traditional teams, where technology does not relate to the outcome of projects (see Staples &
Webster, 2007). This fact is very interesting and important, because it shows that to reach
sophisticated outcomes of virtual project teams it is necessary to concentrate on technology
adoption as a foundation. In addition to these findings, Pinsonneault and Caya (2005) found that

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Results and Discussion

“despite several communication difficulties, virtual team members seem to be able to adjust
their work practices and achieve a performance level (i.e., quality, perceived performance,
satisfaction with outcomes) that matches that of their face-to-face counterparts” (p. 10). These
findings, based on early adoption research of virtual teams by Majchrzak, Rice, Malhotra, and
King (2000) and Malhotra, Majchrzak, Carman, and Lott (2001), provide some very interesting
insights and also demonstrate that “dispersed team members are able to modify their
technology, group, and organizatinoal structures to match their informational needs and
ultimately generate outcomes that meet and even exceed previous standards of quality”
(Pinsonneault & Caya, 2005, p. 10). Furthermore, these findings, as discussed above and in
more detail in the literature review, basically cover the main research question of this thesis of
how and why technology acceptance is triggering the success of virtual project management.
Even though these findings look promising, the most current research has indicated that
technology acceptance as we understand it today may not describe all the things that are going
on regarding virtual world adoption (see Saeed, et al., 2009). Thereby and to get an even better
and more comprehensive understanding of the problem, the following section presents the key
findings regarding technology adoption from the qualitative analysis based on interviews with
several leading researchers.

4.3 Leading IS Researchers’ Perspectives on Technology Adoption
Technology acceptance itself is a very diverse field, which actually originated several different
models and approaches to study the phenomenon. From the early beginnings with TRA to the
newer developments of UTAUT and TAM 3, the literature is rich with different models and
approaches. The most common model, TAM, is well studied and has reached a level of
generalizability and elaboration where a lot of researchers think that technology adoption
research needs a shift into new directions and new areas (see Y. Lee, et al., 2003; Venkatesh,
et al., 2007). This point was also made by Moez Limayem during one of the qualitative
interviews. He stated that “we really have a very good understanding, so we don’t need more
research with yet one more factor or one more relationship to TAM, because there are so many
other interesting things to investigate”. For example, Limayem mentioned investigating the
continuous use of technology and the underlying physiological and cognitive phenomenon as
two very promising future directions for technology adoption research. Fred Davis, the founder
of TAM himself, underlined the latter and is now studying the unconscious processes that are
taking place in technology use.

“Mostly the TAM model taps into consciously intended behavior and conscious believes
and motivations. So it doesn’t really directly deal that much with the unconscious cognition

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or intuitive processes. So I think that’s one of the big directions in the future” (Fred Davis,
Interview).

Deepak Khazanchi also took the same line during his interview and stated that “more emphasis
on the cognitive side and how people build mental models about technology use is an
interesting path, but we haven’t studied that really well”. Regarding technology adoption in
virtual teams and the thereby affiliated increase in complexity, Ilze Zigurs mentioned during her
interview that “we need to get a little bit more complex, we need to think about groups and
group use of technologies rather than individual use”. This is also a very interesting direction,
especially regarding the point in the literature review that discussed paradigm shift in project
management towards more collaboration-based thinking (see Chen et al., 2003). Complexity is
thereby seen as a more detailed view of the adoption process itself, because on the technology
side this topic of complexity is also covered by the model of technology adoption by groups
(Sarker, Valacich, & Sarker, 2005). This model suggests that “the complexity of a technology
will negatively affect a group’s attitude toward a particular technology and, thus, overall adoption
or use of the technology” (A. Davis, et al., 2009, p. 96).

Due to the newness of this field of research, one part of the qualitative interviews was specially
focused on future directions of technology acceptance and on the differences in technology and
how they have an impact on adoption itself. The latter subject is one of the big points in
technology adoption research which could hardly be found in current available literature and the
respective research.

Zigurs first called attention to differences in technologies during one of the first interviews. She
mentioned that this leads us to the very interesting question of “how do you characterize
technologies and how do you describe the differences between one technology and another?”
Due to the mutual research of Zigurs and Khazanchi, he also emphasized this fact and,
furthermore, stated that “instead of focusing on specific technologies we should look at what
capabilities are interesting”. This capabilities view (see Khazanchi & Zigurs, 2005) is getting
more and more attention and was actually used by A. Davis et al. (2009) to characterize
metaverses (see 2.2.3.3 Metaverse Technology Capabilities) and has thereby been utilized in
this thesis. In addition, Davis stated during his interview that “differences in technology could
influence the perceptions that people have about the technology” and in the course of that “the
characteristics of the technology should be captured by some extend by believes and
perceptions”. This is very interesting to compare to the technology capabilities approach,
because it brings the concept of perception into the game, thus the underlying psychological
process of how differences are perceived.

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Limayem on the other hand compared traditional technologies with newer technologies like
Facebook, Twitter and Second Life during his interview. He pointed out that “some technologies
are similar, but some technologies, especially the new ones, are really different and it is
interesting to study why people adopt to that”. He then moved completely into the area of virtual
worlds and made the following point.

“I think more traditional TAM like approaches maybe explain small parts of the variance,
but not everything, because these are new technologies, they have other things and
people go there not because it’s easy to use or just because it’s useful. They go there for
different factors, social factors” (Moez Limayem, Interview).

These differences of mainly newer technologies, as Limayem mentioned, are also represented
in the literature review, which has shown that to describe the adoption of virtual worlds a more
hedonic consumption oriented view must be utilized (see Holsapple & Wu, 2007; Saeed, et al.,
2009; van der Heijden, 2004). This is mainly based on the large entertainment element of virtual
worlds, like Second Life, and also shows the growing interdependency of IS research with, in
this case, research in marketing, where hedonic consumption is originated.

In order to get first-hand data and to get further insights into the technology adoption of virtual
worlds, a UTAUT based survey (see Venkatesh, et al., 2003) was conducted during the focus
group (see 3.3.3 Survey Based on UTAUT). The following section presents and discusses the
main findings of this survey and how they compare with the theoretical foundation and/or the
qualitative interviews.

4.4 Key findings of the UTAUT Based Survey
This section presents the main results and key findings of the UTAUT based survey on
technology adoption of Second Life. The entire data set for the analysis is attached as Appendix
B. Table 6 shows the scale that was used for all questions in the survey.

Neither
Strongly Slightly Slightly Strongly
Disagree Agree or Agree
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
Disagree

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Table 6. UTAUT Survey Scale

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Regarding performance expectancy, participants basically agreed that Second Life would help
them to attain gains in job performance, even though they tended to not expect to gain a raise
just because of using Second Life. Table 7 shows the average values for the questions that
relate to performance expectancy.

Statement Average

I would find Second Life useful in my job 5.25

Using Second Life would enable me to accomplish tasks more quickly 4.5

Using Second Life would increase my productivity 4.58

If I use Second Life, I will increase my chances of getting a raise 3.75

Table 7. Summary of the Performance Expectancy Survey Results

Figure 12 highlights the interesting result of the statement that “I would find Second Life useful
in my job”, with which 50 per cent agreed and another 25 per cent slightly agreed.

Figure 12. Detailed results of “I would find Second Life useful in my job”

The second part of the survey dealt with effort expectancy and thereby with the degree of ease
associated with the use of Second Life (see Venkatesh, et al., 2003). Given the fact that all of
the participants have never used Second Life and had no previous in-world experience the
results shown in Table 8 are even more interesting.

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Statement Average

My interaction with Second Life would be clear and understandable 5.4

It would be easy for me to become skillful at using Second Life 6

I would find Second Life easy to use 5.75

Learning to operate Second Life is easy for me 5.8

Table 8. Summary of the Effort Expectancy Survey Results

As shown in Table 8, there was a big consensus that Second Life is easy to use. The second
statement that “It would be easy for me to become skillful at using Second Life” was especially
interesting with an average of 6 (Agree). This high agreement with the ease of use of Second
Life supports the notion that virtual worlds are a new kind of technology, as mentioned by
Limayem during his interview session. These results also support the fact that virtual worlds are
more entertainment-oriented and in the course of that perceived easier to use. This new
entertainment element becomes quite obvious by taking a closer look at the results of the
attitude toward using part of the conducted survey (see Table 9).

Statement Average

Using Second Life is a good idea 5.2

Second Life makes work more interesting 5.8

Working with Second Life is fun 6

I like working with Second Life 5.9

Table 9. Summary of the Attitude toward Using Survey Results

The results are above average and the high agreement with the third statement that “Working
with Second Life is fun” provides especially strong support for the hedonic consumption theory
and the entertainment-based nature of virtual worlds, in this case Second Life. Figure 13
underlines this even more with over 90 per cent of the participants stating that they agree and/or
strongly agree with this statement.

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Figure 13. Detailed Results of “Working with Second Life is fun”

The fourth part of the survey was about the anxieties of the participants regarding using Second
Life. Table 10 presents a summary of the results of the four statements related to anxiety.

Statement Average

I feel apprehensive about using Second Life 3

It scares me to think that I could lose a lot of information using Second 2.4
Life by hitting a wrong key

I hesitate to use Second Life for fear of making mistakes I cannot correct 2.3

Second Life is somewhat intimidating to me 2.6

Table 10. Summary of the Anxiety Survey Results

These results relate to the previous parts and show that the participants have seen Second Life
as an environment where the anxieties of making mistakes are inferior opposed to the ease of
use and the attitude toward using. Furthermore, this could also be related to the more natural
control of a three-dimensional environment, which makes it somewhat more intuitive. Davis also
made this point about the intuitive and unconscious factors and the thereby affiliated anxieties
during the interview session. He even described this area as “one of the big directions in the
future”, especially when it comes to virtual worlds.

The last part of the survey focused on the behavioral intention to use Second Life. Basically all
of the participants stated that they would use Second Life in the next twelve months. Table 11

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presents the detailed answers with an average and the maximum and minimum stated amount
of months.

Statement Average in Maximum Minimum
months

I intend to use Second Life in the next 4.8 12 1
… years

I predict I would use Second Life in 5.2 12 1
the next … months

I plan to use Second Life in the next 5.2 12 1
… months

Table 11. Summary of the Behavioral Intention to Use Survey Results

These results show that the intention to use Second Life in the near future appears quite
positive. Reinforcing these results is the fact that four of the participants have already decided
to participate with their companies in the AIM Institute’s Second Life project and are now
building a presence in Second Life.

Three main findings arise from the results of this survey. First, the participants agreed that
Second Life would help them in their jobs and they perceived it as easy to use. Second and
even more important, Second Life was perceived as “fun to use” which supports the
entertainment-based nature and the advantages of a more intuitive and natural three-
dimensional environment. Third and last the behavioral intention to use Second Life was clearly
there. This last finding is also supported by a Gartner report that Zigurs mentioned during her
interview session that stated that by 2011 nearly 80 per cent of all the businesses will use virtual
worlds. Ives and Junglas (2008) are not that optimistic as Gartner, but they believe that by 2018
“there will be virtual world business applications that go well beyond the current examples” (p.
154) and will thereby attract most of the global acting organizations.

4.5 Leading IS Researchers’ Perspective of Virtual Worlds
After focusing on technology adoption and especially on the question of how differences of
technology have an impact on adoption, the second part of the qualitative interview sessions
focused on virtual world and virtual project management issues. In order to connect to the

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previous discussion about differences in technology, Zigurs mentioned in her interview that
“there are several things about virtual worlds I think that are very different”.

“First of all, I don’t think people see it as a tool the way they see many applications. A
software application is a tool for people; it’s a tool to get jobs done. So spreadsheet is a
tool for me. Word processor is a tool for me. Whereas a virtual world is an environment;
it’s a general environment in which I can do a variety of things” (Ilze Zigurs, Interview).

To see virtual worlds as an environment and not as a tool is very important, especially when it
comes to collaboration. Khazanchi confirmed that point and described virtual worlds as
environments that “are essentially collaboration, whether social collaboration, whether social
interaction, whether social networking and/or actual collaboration in projects”.

Limayem addressed another implication referring to the meaning of the word environment itself.
He stated that, for example, “the interface is completely different, where I think you feel the
presence of others and the co-presence is so important, because you feel others right next to
you without actually being right next to you”. That is another very important step toward a new
understanding of virtual teams and collaboration based on new technologies like virtual worlds.
This phenomenon has also been discussed in the literature review and was first introduced as
telepresence (see Steuer, 1992). Another very tangible term in this context is “being there”,
which Zigurs (2003) suggested to team leaders to consider when they choose a communication
medium. Virtual worlds enable co-presence and give virtual team members the feeling of being
there and having a common place together with others they can see and even touch. Davis took
the same line and mentioned during his interview that “virtual worlds can be effective in
overcoming barriers of time and space and culture to create more of a sense of co-presence”.

After this basic definition and distinction of virtual worlds, a very interesting discussion took
place in all of the interviews about the use of virtual worlds for virtual project management.
Zigurs and Khazanchi had done some experiments on this issue and provided feedback about it
during their interviews. Khazanchi stated that “we actually gave people a brainstorming tool and
they never used it”.

“I think that the project management tools or the brainstorming tools that are used in
traditional environments are not really applicable for Second Life. I’d say the things you
can do in this environment are quiet different from how we have done collaboration in the
past” (Deepak Khazanchi, Interview).

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Zigurs argued that a “virtual environment for project management is more about communication
and bringing the project team together in a shared space”, which also supports this previously
discussed notion of being there.

“It might also be about teambuilding in the project and prototyping and using the virtual
world capabilities to prototype an artifact. But the traditional tools that are associated with
managing the project, like Microsoft Project or whatever it might be, have not been
adapted for virtual worlds yet” (Ilze Zigurs, Interview).

Davis stated that it is important to take “advantage of the natural intelligence that people have
for dealing with a three-dimensional world that has special characteristics and properties”,
instead of trying to push old ideas into new environments. On the other hand, Limayem
concluded that virtual worlds “will include some project management specific tools like Microsoft
Project ” in the future.

But this view of project management tools evolving into virtual words is just one side to look at
in terms of future developments. Khazanchi encouraged looking at other ways and stated that
he thinks “the future lies in taking these capabilities of virtual worlds and merging them into
collaboration tools”. Limayem took the same line.

“So, expect also, that traditional project management tools will have some similar 3-D
interfaces like virtual worlds and also will be compatible with virtual worlds. From the
virtual worlds we will have more tools, but also see it from the project management tools
that will also be compatible with virtual worlds” (Moez Limayem, Interview).

Until now the question remains unsolved as to which way future developments will go, and even
a completely new direction could be a possible solution. Another very apparent fact that this
discussion underlined is that we are just at the beginning of studying the capabilities of virtual
worlds and how users adapt to this completely new type of environment.

4.6 Business Uses of Virtual Worlds
This part closes the results and discussion section by showing possible business uses of virtual
worlds. Considering the previous discussion about brainstorming tools in Second Life, the
decision was made to use a traditional online-based brainstorming tool, accessed by a link from
inside Second Life (see 2.2.3.4 Second Life). The following section presents the results from
this brainstorming session and also compares them with the inputs from the qualitative
interviews. The uncategorized raw data and the full-categorized list of the findings of the
brainstorming session are attached as Appendix E.

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Zigurs talked about her experiences with focus groups, demos, and experiments with virtual
worlds during her interview and she made the comment that people who are introduced to
virtual worlds “seem to have no shortage of ideas about business uses of virtual worlds”. This is
very interesting and consistent with the experience of the focus group conducted in the course
of this thesis. The participants were having their very first contact with Second Life and/or virtual
worlds and there was absolutely no shortage of ideas for business uses. At the end of the
brainstorming session, a total of 59 ideas had been produced, which were summarized into 6
categories by the author. Figure 14 presents the categorized results of the brainstorming
session including the number of ideas in each category.

Figure 14. Results of the Brainstorming Session of Business Uses of Virtual Worlds

The greatest number of ideas (14) was in the category of simulation and visualization, including
ideas like the visualization of process flow charts, architectural usage, and natural disaster
simulation. The public relations and marketing category had 13 ideas, e.g., communicating with
customers, conducting market research, and organizing focus groups. With twelve ideas each,
project management and virtual teams were the third most mentioned category, followed by
training and learning with eleven ideas. In the project management and virtual teams part, the
ideas of collaboration and team-building measures were present. In terms of training and
learning, ideas like equipment and software usage, data visualization, and online classes were
mentioned. The category of social interaction trailed with a total of five ideas, followed by a
summarized category called other with four ideas.

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Table 12 presents the most discussed ideas based on the frequency with they were mentioned
and on the number of comments from other participants summarized into one variable (Counts).

Ideas Counts

Virtual Meetings 7

Communication with Customers 6

Visualization of process flow charts 4

Market Research / Focus Groups 3

Architecture / Building Design 3

Table 12. Summary of the Attitude toward Using Survey Results

The most mentioned and discussed topic was virtual meetings (seven counts), followed by
communication with customers (six counts) and the visualization of process flow charts (four
counts). Market research and focus groups and architecture and building design were
mentioned three times each.

Even though project management and virtual teams were ranked in third place, counting the
initial indications, the idea of virtual meetings was the most discussed in the second step of
commenting the ideas of other participants. These results emphasize the focus on the
collaboration side of virtual worlds and the capabilities of visualizing and presenting data in a
three-dimensional and more interactive way.

Coming back to the conducted interviews, Zigurs also highlighted interactivity and the
advantages of it.

“The best business uses, I think, are about that interactivity where you can create an
interactive experience in a virtual world, so that a costumer can try out your product,
customize your product in a variety of ways. […] The interactivity is the most important
use, the most important aspect of a virtual world that you cannot do in other ways” (Ilze
Zigurs, Interview).

Regarding the two most mentioned categories during the brainstorming session,
simulation/visualization and PR/marketing, Khazanchi stated that the latter is basically the most
common category of today’s business uses. Furthermore, he mentioned that “to get people to

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actually accept the idea of using three-dimensional environments it has to be merged into tools
that can be used for whatever activity we need to do, for example, three-dimensional
visualization of data”.

Limayem also talked about business uses like virtual project meetings, training or learning in a
virtual environment, and the promotion of products and services during his interview. But he
added a very interesting idea as a natural evolution of promoting products.

“And another thing, we don’t see it yet, but probably to sell. Sell products, you know, like
Walmart who is thinking about having stores in Second Life, where avatars can go to a
virtual store and shop in a 3-D environment” (Moez Limayem, Interview).

Regarding the further development of the World Wide Web, Davis suggested using the three-
dimensionality of virtual worlds to present website content in a more natural way. Basically his
point was to take advantage of the “natural navigational and perceptional ability that is oriented
towards three-dimensional space and so it would be possibly more effective to navigating a
complex website compared to a traditional hyperlink structure”. Limayem took the same line and
added the previous discussed interactivity to the notion of Davis. He basically mentioned that
the capability to look at the same website with a team and discussing an idea right at the same
time, “this will make virtual worlds even more useful to project management usage”.

All in all the undertone of the interviews was that virtual world capabilities and, of course, the
resulting business uses still need to gain a lot more attention by future research. Ives and
Junglas (2008) even stated that “virtual world business applications are still at an embryonic
stage” (p. 154). But on the other side, after the initial hype from a few years ago, there is now a
lot of interest in the business world for virtual worlds. Zigurs underlined this at the end of her
interview when she noted that she is “quite amazed and pleased that how much interest we
keep getting with the metaverse project in the different places we go and people we expose it
to”. Based on the experiences obtained during this thesis and especially with the participants of
the focus group, the author completely agrees and shares the belief in the future of virtual
worlds and/or metaverses regarding virtual project management.

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Limitations, Conclusions, and Future Directions

5 Limitations, Conclusions, and Future Directions

5.1 Limitations
As with any thesis and research of this kind, several limitations apply. Even though the literature
review was carried out thoroughly and systematically, there is always the chance of missing an
important study. Also there were several working papers used in this thesis. Due to the
newness of the investigated field this was inevitable. Although working papers are an important
source of the most current research, they are still to some degree not finalized as they have not
been reviewed by journal editors.

The main limitations apply to the empirical and/or research part of this thesis. Only one focus
group was conducted, which implies the possibility of flaws within the results of the focus group.
Usually several focus groups are conducted, either with the same participants to investigate
changes over time or with different participants to have cross-references and data to compare
and validate the results (see Litosseliti, 2003). Furthermore, the conducted UTAUT based
survey, to investigate the adoption of Second Life, had only twelve participants, which is far too
little to actually use common statistical evaluations and thereby limits its validity.

There were also just four qualitative interviews conducted. Even though leading IS researchers
were interviewed, it would have been interesting to include more opinions to compare and
evaluate the findings. Based on this fact, the qualitative interviews were analyzed by indexing
just the main reference points and not by doing a complete coding. Another very common
limitation with using qualitative interviews is that during the transcription there is potential for
information about how the interviewee said or specially emphasized something to be lost.

Finally, this is still a diploma thesis and conducted by just one student, which also implies that
the discussions and conclusions are based on the student’s endeavors and understanding of
the concepts. Nonetheless, this thesis is not meant to be a dissertation nor a published journal
paper and thereby it should be seen in the context of the first steps of an author as a researcher
in the field of information systems.

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5.2 Conclusions
This thesis makes at least a few contributions. First of all the literature review covers the most
current state of technology acceptance and virtual world project management research. A big
emphasis was put on the usage of both, the standard and/or common literature as well as the
newest papers and journals, to illustrate the whole picture and give an insight on the current
state of the respective research areas. Furthermore, clear definitions of key concepts related to
technology acceptance and virtual world project management were provided, based on the
existing literature. Regarding the research question, this thesis showed the reliance of virtual
project management on technology and in this context the importance of technology acceptance
for successful outcomes. Furthermore, it has also been shown that models and constructs of
technology acceptance, as we know them today, can just explain small parts of virtual world
adoption. Based on this fact the investigative goals of this thesis were extended to give some
possible answers and show future directions and business uses of virtual worlds.

Thereby the empirical research, besides the mentioned limitations, provided some interesting
further insights. First, the UTAUT based survey provided some obvious indications of the
differences of virtual worlds and traditional technologies regarding hedonic consumption. It was
shown that the more intuitive three-dimensional interface of Second Life increases the
perceived ease of use and also that it actually is more fun to use these new entertainment-
based technologies.

Second, the qualitative interviews helped to deepen the understanding of future directions of
technology acceptance itself and showed how differences in technologies, especially between
traditional and virtual worlds, have an impact on technology adoption. Thereby it emerged that
current technology acceptance research needs a shift into new directions, for example to
investigate the continuous use of technology and the underlying physiological and cognitive
phenomenon, just to mention two. Furthermore, the notion that virtual worlds are different was
affirmed by the mutual agreement that they have to be seen as environments and not as tools.
Another conclusion of the interviews was that virtual worlds offer a more intensive sense of co-
presence and thereby give the involved virtual team members a feeling of actually having a
shared place of “being there” together. Also the interviews showed that it remains unknown in
which directions virtual worlds will evolve, even though some very interesting forecasts were
made. However, all of those findings support the importance of virtual worlds for future virtual
project management, based on the high collaborative nature and the perceived ease of use
and, especially, the “fun to use” of those new technologies.

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Limitations, Conclusions, and Future Directions

Third, the brainstorming session showed that there is no shortage of ideas for business uses of
virtual worlds. Based on the findings and conclusions described above business uses of virtual
worlds were mainly seen for collaboration, interactivity, and presentation issues. The most
mentioned areas were simulation and visualization, PR and marketing, and project
management and virtual teams.

Basically this thesis project started with the goal of investigating the link between technology
acceptance and the success of virtual project management and by investigating this link
evolved furthermore into an analysis of the main differences between traditional collaboration
tools and virtual worlds and how those differences have an impact on technology adoption.
Additionally, the capabilities of virtual world environments and thereby possible business uses
for virtual worlds regarding a new collaborative project management approach were
investigated.

5.3 Future Directions
The thesis provides a starting point for future research directions. The literature review and the
qualitative research have shown that the currently used concept of technology acceptance has
come a long way, but cannot explain all of the things that are going on regarding adoption of
virtual worlds. Thereby research based on the preliminary investigations in this thesis of
differences in technologies and how they have an impact on technology adoption must be
pushed. Since we do not know in exactly what ways virtual worlds are different, there is no way
to explain the adoption of those new technologies properly. The entertainment-based nature of
virtual worlds with this present “fun-factor” and the more hedonic consumption view mentioned
in the most current literature (see Saeed, et al., 2009) also show some promising directions.
Also the limitations mentioned above give some ideas where refinement and a more in-depth
investigation and analysis are needed. Furthermore, the qualitative interviews with leading IS
researchers also showed numerous interesting areas of further research, for example the
development of virtual project management tools for virtual worlds or the enhancement of
existing tools with the more intuitive three-dimensional features of virtual worlds. Also a
completely new way could be the ideal solution; everything is possible. This is a time of change
and these new technologies had their first boom and are now waiting for the big break-through.

The investigated business uses give some very interesting areas of demanded solutions and
also need some further research, especially to validate or contradict the findings of this thesis.

Page 62


This thesis is published under a creative commons license for one reason, namely to make it
easier to share and distribute these basic and preliminary findings and conclusions to support
the research at least a little bit and to share the enthusiasm of the author for this emerging new
era of virtual worlds and how they could be utilized to enhance current collaboration processes.
Thereby it is not important to validate or contradict these findings; every progress is important
and should be supported.

Page 63

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7 Appendices

Appendix A: Focus Group Survey Based on UTAUT ................................................................................... i 
Appendix B: Results of the UTAUT Based Survey ......................................................................................iii 
Appendix C: Qualitative Interview Guide .................................................................................................... vi 
Appendix D: Transcripts of the Qualitative Interviews ................................................................................vii 
Appendix E: Protocol of the Brainstorming Session .............................................................................. xxxiv 
Appendix F: Creative Commons License.............................................................................................. xxxvii 

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Technology Acceptance As a Trigger for Successful Virtual Project Management: A Study of Business Use of Virtual Worlds

Appendices

Appendix A: Focus Group Survey Based on UTAUT

Scale: Septempartite (except last block: Behavioral intention to use Second Life)

1: Strongly Disagree
2: Disagree
3: Slightly Disagree
4: Neither Agree or Disagree
5: Slightly Agree
6: Agree
7: Strongly Agree

Method: Online survey (LimeSurvey, URL: http://slsurvey.bhofer.eu)
Number of items: 19
Expected duration: 5 to 7 minutes

Part 1: Performance Expectancy
PE1: I would find Second Life useful in my job.
PE2: Using Second Life would enable me to accomplish tasks more quickly.
PE3: Using Second Life would increase my productivity.
PE4: If I use Second Life, I will increase my chances of getting a raise.

Part 2: Effort Expectancy
EE1: My interaction with Second Life would be clear and understandable.
EE2: It would be easy for me to become skillful at using Second Life.
EE3: I would find Second Life easy to use.
EE4: Learning to operate Second Life is easy for me.

Part 3: Attitude toward using Second Life
A1: Using Second Life is a good idea.
A2: Second Life makes work more interesting.
A3: Working with Second Life is fun.
A4: I like working with Second Life.

Part 4: Anxiety
ANX1: I feel apprehensive about using Second Life.

i


ANX2: It scares me to think that I could lose a lot of information using Second Life by hitting
the wrong key.
ANX3: I hesitate to use Second Life for fear of making mistakes I cannot correct.
ANX4: Second Life is somewhat intimidating to me.

Part 5: Behavioral intention to use Second Life
BI1: I intend to use Second Life in the next <n> months.
BI2: I predict I would use Second Life in the next <n> months.
BI3: I plan to use Second Life in the next <n> months.

ii

Appendices

Appendix B: Results of the UTAUT Based Survey

Part 1: Performance Expectancy

Participant ID PE1 PE2 PE3 PE4

1 6 5 4 5

2 5 5 5 4

3 6 5 5 5

4 6 4 5 2

5 4 4 4 4

6 5 4 4 4

7 6 4 5 5

8 4 5 5 4

9 5 5 4 5

10 4 4 4 3

11 6 5 6 3

12 6 4 4 3

Part 2: Effort Expectancy

Participant ID EE1 EE2 EE3 EE4

1 6
6 6 6

2 6
5 5 5

3 7
7 7 7

4 6 6 6 6

5 5 6 6 6

6 4 6 6 6

7 6 7 6 6

8 7 7 7 7

iii


Participant ID EE1 EE2 EE3 EE4

9 5 5 5 5

10 5 7 5 5

11 5 7 6 6

12 4 4 4 4

Part 3: Attitude toward using Second Life

Participant ID A1 A2 A3 A4

1 5 6 6 6

2 5 6 5 6

3 6 6 6 6

4 5 6 6 6

5 4 4 6 6

6 6 6 6 6

7 5 7 6 5

8 5 6 6 6

9 5 5 6 6

10 4 5 6 5

11 6 7 7 7

12 6 6 6 6

Part 4: Anxiety

Participant ID ANX1 ANX2 ANX3 ANX4

1 2 2 2 2

2 3 2 2 4

3 1 1 2 1

4 5 2 2 5

iv

Appendices

Participant ID ANX1 ANX2 ANX3 ANX4

5 6 6 6 6

6 5 2 2 2

7 2 4 2 1

8 1 1 1 1

9 2 2 2 3

10 2 1 1 1

11 5 4 4 3

12 2 2 2 2

Part 5: Behavioral intention to use Second Life

Attention: Another scale is used for these items. The specified values are months!

Participant ID BI1 BI2 BI3

1 12 12 12

2 12 9 9

3 - 6 6

4 3 6 3

5 - - -

6 - - -

7 1 1 1

8 1 1 1

9 1 1 1

10 - - -

11 2 2 2

12 6 9 12

v


Appendix C: Qualitative Interview Guide

Method: Telephone conference and personal interviews
Type: Semi-structured qualitative interview
Duration: 20 to 25 minutes
Number of questions: 5

Question 1: TAM has come a long way since its introduction in 1986. Where do you see the
future of technology acceptance research?

Question 2: How do you think differences in technology have an impact on technology
acceptance research?

Question 3: Regarding virtual worlds, where do you see main differences in technology
acceptance to “traditional” software tools?

Question 4: How would you classify virtual worlds in comparison to other virtual project
management tools?

Question 5: Based on your experiences. What do you think are possible business uses of
virtual worlds?

vi

Appendices

Appendix D: Transcripts of the Qualitative Interviews

Interview with Ilze Zigurs, PhD
Position: Department Chair, Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Address: 6001 Dodge Street, PKI 284E, Omaha, NE 68182-0116
Phone: +1 402 554 3182, Fax: +1 402 554 3400
Email: izigurs@unomaha.edu

Date: June 29th, 2009
Duration: 26 minutes
Type: Personal interview
Place: PKI, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Hofer: TAM has come a long way. Where do you see the future of technology acceptance
research?

Zigurs: Well, there is no doubt that the technology acceptance model has had significant
influence in the field. People keep saying we are done with that now and we need to move on.
But still, at the same time, there are people continuing to do research in that area. I think one of
the reasons that people continue to do research in that area is that, I mean it’s absolutely
fundamental to what we do. This desire to understand the factors behind acceptance and use is
absolutely fundamental. I think that where we need to go… I mean the technology acceptance
model is pretty simple and sometimes the simplest things are the best and the most elegant
things, there is nothing wrong with simple. But it’s based in an individual view and/or individual
use of technology and it’s also based… I think in some, you know, fairly generic assumptions
about a kind of technology that’s being used… the sort of user driven tools. So I think we need
to get a little bit more complex, we need to think about groups and group use of technologies
rather than individual use. We need to think about all the different… you know, a little bit more
about the technology itself, because all of this is from the users’ perspective. I perceive it as
being useful, but why? I perceive it as being easy to use, but why? What is it about from the
technology perspective and the technology capabilities perspective? What is it that makes it
useful or makes it easy to use for particular kinds of tasks? We need more refinement on the
other hand and more complexity on the other hand.

vii


Hofer: There have been a couple of adaptations and enhancements in the last years regarding
TAM, like UTAUT and TAM 2 or TAM 3. Venkatesh, for example, introduced a new thinking of
acceptance as a process. What do you think about these directions?

Zigurs: That makes a lot of sense, a sort of a process approach rather than a variance
approach… a process theory rather than a variance theory. I haven’t really looked that carefully
at Venkatesh’s writing on TAM as a process theory, but that’s the kind of thing I am talking
about that we need to reflect the complexity in the world today. The understanding of the why,
which to me means understanding the process. And it also means understanding not just an
individual’s behavior, but an individual’s behavior in the context of a group and how that group
dynamic or organization level dynamic or whatever it might be, because these decisions about
the technology use get made in groups and at the organization level too. Those are part of a
more in-depth understanding of what’s going on… and more contextual as well. That’s where I
think a process theory often helps is that it really brings the context into play.

Hofer: So what you are basically saying is that it is also important that not only what I think
about the use of technology, but what others think about it and how they influence me.

Zigurs: Yes, that’s exactly right. How it influences me. Let’s face it, it’s a connected,
collaborative world and I don’t just sit in my office and use a technology all by myself. I am
constantly working with people and so that matters.

Hofer: That’s how it was 20 years ago when TAM was introduced and technology was more like
a single “I alone” task.

Zigurs: Very much individual applications like studying spreadsheets with a very individual
adoption.

Hofer: That’s very interesting and brings me to the next question. How do you think differences
in technologies have an impact on technology acceptance research?

Zigurs: Well that leads us to a very, very interesting question, which is how do you characterize
technologies. And how do you describe the difference between one technology and another.
The fact that TAM has been shown to be valid across a wide variety of different types of
technologies… well, ok… but how are people characterizing the differences in those
technologies and what aspect of those differences is really being examined. You know, this gets
down to a whole bunch of interesting questions about how different, different kinds of
viii

Appendices

innovations in technology are over time, right? Like we have talked about before with virtual
worlds and when we were getting our conceptional paper published on virtual worlds… during
the review process, you know, reviewers really pushed us to say how different are virtual worlds
and how do you characterize them. That’s a question everybody always has and so I think that’s
really one of the interesting things to look at. Because if you say well, TAM applies to
spreadsheet, it applies to e-mail, it applies to ERP, it applies to databases, well… exactly what
aspect of that, how can you characterize those technologies, what aspect of that technology is
really in the user’s mind who interacts with it.

Hofer: There was also a point made by Venkatesh that a lot of research is focusing on the
moment and not on the over time development of acceptance. What do you think about the
more longitudinal approach?

Zigurs: Yeah, the longitudinal approach is really important and it’s that way in a lot of IS
research. When people first start studying a phenomenon, you know, they take the easy way to
do it; you have to be practical in research too right. You can’t effort to study something for two
years and wait two years to publish any papers. If you are an assisting professor trying to get a
tenure, that’s the practical side of things. But a lot of studies initially are about a very fixed point
in time, a snapshot in time. This is why as a field the launch of longitudinal studies is very, very
important. And different things then come into play. That’s were the context comes so much
more important, because then over time all of these other factors come into play. Those are the
things you need to examine. You don’t really have a lot of good examples for how to do
research over time.

Hofer: We talked about technology as a whole, but now I would like to go more into virtual
worlds. Where do you see the main differences in technology acceptance to “traditional”
software?

Zigurs: There are several things about virtual worlds I think that are very different. It also
depends upon which role you are playing. I mean if you are just sort of a visitor to a virtual world
and using what’s there you are not really changing the world yourself very much, you are using
what’s presented to you. Then I think it’s a different kind of environment in a variety of ways.
First of all, I don’t think people see it as a tool, the way they see many applications. A software
application is a tool for people; it’s a tool to get jobs done. So spreadsheet is a tool for me. Word
processor is a tool for me. Whereas a virtual world is an environment; it’s a general environment
in which I can do a variety of things. And there might be tools within that environment, but the
environment is very, very flexible, it’s very changeable; I can kind of make it whatever I want it
ix


to be. Whereas with a tool like spreadsheet, I mean yes there are different options and I can
change the interface if I want, but there is still a linear path through the task I have to
accomplish. Most of these tools are specifically associated with a particular kind of task or set of
tasks. Whereas the virtual world is an open environment that is not associated with any
particular task at all. And again, it’s what I think of it and what I create in it. There are
capabilities in virtual worlds that are different than what we have in traditional software tools.

Hofer: Virtual worlds have a unique way of experience, which takes you completely into a virtual
world in comparison to just interacting with a user interface. New research has shown that it is
easier for users in virtual worlds, because it’s a more intuitive experience. What do you think
about these findings?

Zigurs: Well, for instance we just did a demo last Friday out at the Omaha Public Power
District. It wasn’t just a demo, we set up avatars for them and we had them walk through and
those were people who have never seen Second Life before. And then, of course, you did your
focus group with people who have never seen it before. But I think it’s an open question
whether it’s more intuitive or not. You have to ask yourself what’s intuitive for people these
days, in a world that is so full of technology. Our workplaces are just… it’s everywhere, right? In
most of our office workplaces and what does in intuitive mean for people. It might mean
something, you know, I think it’s a very interesting question in the whole world of human
computer interaction. Over time has the very definition of what’s intuitive or what’s easy to use.
It changed, because of the things that we have given to the people that they have been forced
to adapt to. There are studies of different preferences people have in terms of their personality
type and so on.

Hofer: I’ve read this really thrilling working paper from Schwarz and Venkatesh. It is from 2008
and they basically stated that we are investigating acceptance for a long time now, but haven’t
even answered the question what acceptance itself is. They took an etymological approach to
describe acceptance and transferred these findings into a process theory approach of
technology acceptance. Do you think that’s one of the big problems that a lot of people are just
using TAM and not paying that much attention on the depended variable?

Zigurs: That’s always. I mean that has been an issue in a whole variety of ways. Ultimately
acceptance… I mean, what is it what you really want. You want a set of positive outcomes and
whether you call it acceptance or user satisfaction or effective use technology or efficient use of
technology. I mean there are whole multiple dimensions of that depended variable that you
could name and that you could define. So yeah, it is. It’s definitely still an issue.
x

Appendices

Hofer: Coming back to virtual worlds with a focus on project management. How would you
classify virtual worlds in comparison to other virtual project management tools?

Zigurs: The small experiment that we did with our virtual project management tools was just a
tiny baby step and we couldn’t get in that one hour of time that we forced people to work
together and create something in a virtual project. We couldn’t get them to use the specialized
tools we’ve designed for them. The brainstorming tool for instance, because they were so busy
building their artifact. I think this kind of gets back to the differences we talked about earlier. A
virtual world is an environment in which many things are possible and the software applications
are the tools. So bringing those tools into the environment is something we haven’t done really.
We have experimented with it a little bit. The virtual environment for project management is
more about communication and bringing the project team together in a shared space. It might
also be about teambuilding in the project and prototyping and using the virtual world capabilities
to prototype an artifact. But the traditional tools that are associated with managing the project,
like Microsoft Project or whatever it might be, have not been adapted for virtual worlds yet.

Hofer: So you would say it’s more about the social part of a project?

Zigurs: Yes, it’s the social part and the artifact building part like prototyping. The social part, the
teambuilding or communication part and then being able to create something together.

Hofer: Based on your experience. What do you think are possible business uses of virtual
worlds?

Zigurs: I actually see a lot of business uses and I have seen the people that we have done this
focus groups and the demo with OPPD and the other people we have exposed to our island and
to this idea. They seem to have no shortage of ideas about business uses of virtual worlds.
What we come down to typically… I mean, there is the usual let’s display what we have
available to the public and the virtual world; the same way we could at the web, just in a three-
dimensional way. But beyond that, when they have passed this first step, they think about what
we can do that is interactive that engages either our clients in what we are doing or our supply
chain partners or our own internal employees. So the best business uses I think are about that
interactivity where you can create an interactive experience in a virtual world, so that a
costumer can try out your product, customize your product in a variety of ways or you know, if
you are talking about internal communication then we get back to things like meetings and
supporting communication with inside the company or trying out new ideas. The interactivity is
xi


the most important use, the most important aspect of a virtual world that you cannot do in other
ways.

Hofer: So you are basically saying that a virtual world makes it easier for dispersed teams all
over the world.

Zigurs: Yes, it takes care of all this geographic barriers, but it also creates an interactive
opportunity.

Hofer: Do you think in about five to ten years that project management tools we use now will
evolve into virtual worlds?

Zigurs: Yes, I definitely think there is an opportunity there for that to happen. And I think there
is a Gartner report on virtual worlds that makes some sort of forecast that 80 per cent of all
companies will get into virtual worlds by the year 2011. That’s a natural thing, right. Vendors are
looking how can take things into this new environment.

Hofer: Do you have any other aspects you would like to add or something you think is of great
importance?

Zigurs: I am quite amazed and pleased that how much interest we keep getting with the
metaverse project in the different places we go and people we expose it to; so many different
links, educational partnerships, business partnerships, academic partnerships, research
partnerships. And after this initial wow effect we are in a second phase now where we are really
looking at some things that are unique we can take advantage of. I am quite amazed about the
level of interest.

Hofer: That’s sounds very good.

Zigurs: Yeah it is, and it is fun too.

Hofer: Yeah, it is and this is what a lot of people say that it is fun and this makes it easier to use
in a business environment.

Zigurs: You know, and there is sort of a natural link to the new generation, right. People of your
generation and sorts of interesting things they hope to do at the work place.

xii

Appendices

Hofer: Because you just mentioned it… just a very quick statement to generation differences
and how do you see this issue?

Zigurs: I think those generation differences we have yet to see how they play out. There is a lot
of literature about this whole thing of digital natives and how things will change when this
generation has more influence on the workplace. So I think there are a lot of unknowns and they
are interesting.

Hofer: Thank you very much for the interview.

Zigurs: You are very welcome!

xiii


Interview with Deepak Khazanchi, PhD
Position: Professor of Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Address: 6001 Dodge Street, PKI 172C, Omaha, NE 68182-0116
Phone: (402) 554-2029, Fax: (402) 554-3284
Email: khazanchi@unomaha.edu

Date: July 7th, 2009
Type: Personal interview
Place: PKI, University of Nebraska at Omaha

research?

Khazanchi: Wow. I guess the traditional technology acceptance model has been expended to
include many more variables, but I think that one facet of it that would be of interest is how does
it actually explain behavior in terms of technology use at the ground level. What happens is that
we might have perceptions of how technology can help, but in reality there are so many
contents and factors that influence that perception. So I think even though we have the larger
model with ratio of corporate culture, ratio of even team culture, ratio of how people actually
incorporate technology into work practices. That is really… I think from a behavioral perspective
the important factors to address. From a technology acceptance perspective the question really
is if acceptance is a cognitive outcome or behavioral outcome. I personally have the notion that
it maybe a cognitive outcome. If I have success with technology in the past I build a mental
model that allows me to use next generation of technologies better. If you take, for example, the
Windows operating system. Even though it is a very difficult operating system, people are
comfortable with the way it works; they like the features and they like to see the same features
in subsequent generations. So I think this is because our mental model of what a graphical
interfaces look like is almost build on top of what Windows looks like. So I think people haven’t
really explored this idea or maybe there is this alternative explanation of why people accept
technology and actually use it. I think more emphasize on the cognitive side and how people
build mental models about technology use and that’s an interesting path, but we haven’t study
that really well.

Hofer: So you basically mean to go back to the roots of the problem?

xiv

Appendices

Khazanchi: No, I think what we know is good. Just what it tells is really… you know, we ask
people what do you think will happen with technology. Will you use it based on what you have
seen now? Will you actually behave in a way that will result in the usage of technology?
Essentially we are arguing that it is a good recommendation. The whole TAM is based on the
theory of reasoned action, right? That believes drive intentions and intentions drive behavior.
But I am saying that it has nothing to do with that. Maybe it has to do with the whole structure of
believes. So that’s what I mean. My dissertation about 20 years ago was about a cognitive lens.
I created this concept called a cognitive lens that people make decisions based on prior
experience and beliefs and filter them through this lens. Essentially when I come to a new
decision this lens kind of helps you to make choices. Especially when the decisions are
unstructured. I think technology acceptance is a very unstructured decision, because there are
now things there, where you can look at and know for sure. If there is a different tag that can be
taken to understand belief structures and cognitive structures about how our mental model is
build.

Hofer: Basically this drives us into the next question. How do you think differences in technology
have an impact on technology acceptance research?

Khazanchi: Well, I think a part of TAM is right there. If I have good experiences, if I believe that
anything that Apple makes is going to work for me… so in some sense this believe drives my
intention to use new Apple technology, right? If you use the iPhone, I mean people are fanatic
about that. But I think, again, it’s not about the fact that technology differences are driving it, I
think it’s because it’s, of course, easy to use or at least it is perceived as easy to use, which is
what TAM says. But on the other hand there is also the whole issue of… you know, even if
technologies are different why do people choose the one or another? I think a lot of it just
depends on comfort and also I think those decisions depend on prior experiences.

Hofer: So it comes back to the cognitive aspect.

Khazanchi: Still, it has to do with the cognitive aspect.

Hofer: We were talking about how to characterize technology. Where do you see a possible way
in future research to compare technologies or make them comparable?

Khazanchi: Well, I think then you have to go to what we, Ilze and I, have talked about in our
papers about this idea of technology capabilities. So I think instead of focusing on specific
technology we should look at what capabilities are interesting. Why people use devices that
xv


have such capabilities. So are there distinguishing capabilities? I don’t think there are actually. I
mean between a BlackBerry and an Apple iPhone, they really have the same features. You can
do e-mails, you can do messaging, you can do games. But I think in that specific instance to
compare boils down to and people are willing to pay a higher price and that’s another thing. It’s
not like it’s cheap. It’s not price sensitive. I think what makes a difference is branding, so a little
bit of it is psychology and influence on your behavior by marketing. And then the other part of
this is that people find it fits better with their way of doing things. So, again, there is this a
mental model where they think how this thing should work. It seems like there are no age
differences. Younger people and older people like that. So I’d say that.

Hofer: About diffusion of innovation. Based on what you just said, how would you see this model
in this context?

Khazanchi: I really don’t know. Again, it really depends on organizational use or personal use
of technology. I think when we are talking about an accounting application the diffusion of
innovation is maybe different than from a personal device. When I am talking about devices that
are used on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s an iPhone or a cell phone or a computer, I have a
different… I would say the diffusion would be influenced by different factors than if it’s a
transaction system or accounting or finance. I would say the difference lies more in the nature of
the system. And I think marketing and branding have a big influence on the personal choice of
technology. Organizations look at whether they can do the job they wanted to do, people look at
not just something that is doing the job, but also should look cool and nice. It should be
interesting, it should be different. So I think those factors affect personal technology
acceptance. You have to look on it from many… actually almost like categorizing technologies
and things that people use on a daily bases like personal systems or organizational based
systems.

Hofer: Let’s move a little bit away from technology acceptance. Where do you see the main
differences from virtual worlds to “traditional” software tools?

Khazanchi: First of all I think there will be a convergence between traditional software. Let’s
just talk about collaboration software. Virtual world environments are essentially collaboration,
whether social collaboration, whether social interaction, whether social networking and/or actual
collaboration in projects. Ultimately the capabilities of virtual worlds allow us to do all of that. Be
socialized, be interactive, be engaged, be immersed. So I think to that extend virtual worlds are
quite different from any technology that exist. But I think the future lies in taking these
capabilities and merging them into collaboration tools. Or incorporating it into the Internet, like
xvi

Appendices

Google’s Lively. It failed, because they tried to do the same thing as in the web. It was actually
rendered by the browser itself. I think social sense or presence and all these factors that the
virtual worlds provide and also this ability of immediately build something, we call this elegancy
of artifacts. These capabilities I think ultimately will be the once that will stay. I think what will
happen in the next five years is a convergence between virtual world applications and real world
applications and collaboration tools. Actually they will share features and in fact there are
already products, for example QWAQ, which is actually a collaboration software that uses a
three-dimensional environment. That’s the other way, because it is actually designed for
collaboration but it uses avatars by using the virtual world kind of context. It is very focused
collaboration. So I think that convergence will happen, even in the near future.

Hofer: If you think about Virtual Worlds, especially Second Life, and available brainstorming or
collaboration tools. What do you think about the nature and level of development of those
existing tools?

Khazanchi: I think that the project management tools or the brainstorming tools that are used in
traditional environments are not really applicable for Second Life. Because Second Life
provides a very different… I’d say the things you can do in this environment are quiet different
from how we have done collaboration in the past. To some extend that and the environment
itself allows to do what you do in face-to-face interaction. And so to that extend traditional
collaboration tools may not be able to be successful in this new environment. We tried it in our
experiments where we actually gave people a brainstorming tool and never used it. We told
them how to use it and how to generate ideas. They didn’t really like it. I really think that what
will happen is that there will be tools like QWAQ that will actually incorporate a three-
dimensional experience.

Hofer: So, you say basically that the “good” parts from virtual worlds will be taken into traditional
collaboration tools?

Khazanchi: Yes, exactly. Those things will be incorporated. I think that’s the way it will be.
There will be three-dimensional rooms, because now Allen K., the inventor of SmallTalk, had a
project for the last two years, which is called Kobalt. It is basically a peer-to-peer virtual world.
This is very interesting, because instead of running it on a server you can create you own virtual
environment on your machine and invite other people to it. Now you have your virtual world.
That’s a tool for collaboration and it’s in its alpha phase.

xvii


Hofer: That’s very interesting. Based on your experience. What do you think are possible
business uses of virtual worlds? Or in this context also tools that incorporate virtual world
aspects, like QWAQ.

Khazanchi: I think those things we talked about are the future. Traditional ideas that virtual
worlds can be used for branding and marketing and for selling products that don’t exist today.
So actually get buying consumers for products that you are currently designing. I think that’s
really in the current use of virtual worlds, but I think to get people to actually except the idea of
using three-dimensional environments it has to be emerged into tools that can be used for
whatever activity we need to do, for example, three-dimensional visualization of data. Maybe we
should have virtual world environments where avatars can go in and plug-in data from
databases and visualize it. Or maybe even in the context of… you know, like we said project
management has tools that use three-dimensional components to do virtual teaming. So I think
you can create features in current tools that will allow you to have these capabilities, without
having to actually take everything. So I think Second Life as a standard will go away, in my
view. It will not exist in the same way.

Hofer: How do you think businesses can use virtual worlds nowadays?

Khazanchi: I think training, education… you can do real life… like we talked about this nuclear
energy company to teach nuclear safety… to teach employees nuclear safety. We can build
realistic models and you can use Second Life there. So I think very realistic three-dimensional
training can be one area, clearly. And virtual collaboration is another area. Those are the two
and, of course, marketing and branding. So there are these three key areas, I don’t think you
can use it for anything else. Until somebody comes up with an innovative way to show
accounting statements (laughs). But I think there are possibilities that allow you to do design.
You know, if I want to buy a product, if it could be done inside Second Life with some tools…
that would be interesting.

Hofer: So that the consumers are an active part of the whole process?

Khazanchi: Yes, you can actually engage them to develop something that would be very
interesting. There are capabilities to do that, but I don’t think we have the tools to manage the
process. So process tools or maybe collaboration doesn’t have to be that way… I don’t know. I
am kind of… I look at my children and I think maybe that’s not the way… people don’t
collaborate the way we talk collaboration ship, right? Collaborating of people, together to do a
task is not as relevant as almost chaos. Chaotic collaboration is my concept. It is almost like… it
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looks like chaos, but people are actually working together and trying to do something. So if I see
my son who is dealing… it’s a great example, he is trying to schedule an activity for his friends
and he wants to have them over to the house. So the goal is to get 16 to 17 friends all together
on a single day at a given time to do something at our house, just to get together, to hang out.
And it’s amazing how many communication mediums they use. For example Facebook chat and
he put it on Facebook events to share it with his friends and then he is doing instant messaging
with his cell phone, answering questions if his parents will be there, because it’s kind of the first
time. But my point is that it seems very chaotic and my wife and I are like... this is very difficult
to manage, how many people are actually going to attend? And you know they all go to
Facebook and say maybe, they don’t say yes. So I call it chaotic collaboration.

Hofer: That’s very interesting, because even when I grew up there were no cell phones and no
Internet, so we met at school and tried to arrange us there. But know the situation is changing
every minute… they grew up with this kind of technology and this highly flexible environment
seems to become normal.

Khazanchi: For their experience it’s very normal and they are comfortable with it. You know,
Twitter and Facebook or cell phones. My son has already started to update his status from his
cell phone and I said don’t do that… it’s drastically, but to them it’s natural. I think we have to
come up with a new theory of collaboration, something like chaotic collaboration. It’s a totally
different way… I think there are differences when people, young people, collaborate.

Hofer: It shall be interesting to see when this generation is starting to work and will bring all
these technologies and habits with them.

Khazanchi: Right, they have to force the structure and that’s hard for people. In fact that’s why I
think collaboration systems don’t work. Collaboration software doesn’t work, because they are
too structured.

Hofer: So basically virtual worlds, for instance Second Life, gives you this environment where
you just meet each other and see how it will work out for you.

Khazanchi: Yes, you can figure it out. But I think that’s not completely there, but it has a lot of
the capabilities.

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Hofer: There is this one article and report from Gartner, which says that in 2011 80 per cent of
all business will use Second Life. What do you think about this approximation? Do you think this
is realistic?

Khazanchi: No, I really don’t think so. I think Second Life won’t exist that long, as I said before,
or at least not in it’s current form. It will evolve in something more useful I believe.

Hofer: Do you have a specific picture in your mind how it will evolve?

Khazanchi: I really think it will have to be tool based. You would have three-dimensional
formats on your cell phone. So you’ll have some services that will be three-dimensional.

Hofer: So, in your opinion, it will change to a more service based architecture?

Khazanchi: Yes, service based. I mean like if I want to talk to you I can do it over the phone or
maybe with an avatar right on my PDA. I can imagine doing that on the iPhone or an iPod and
having the chance to seeing each other. And then there is the whole research on real… I mean
creating more realistic avatars, to allow people to customize their avatars that they look more
like them. To me that’s a problem that will not going to work. Because from a behavioral
perspective the reason people are having avatars is, because it allows them to be a person they
are not in some way.

Hofer: I think that’s one of the main points of virtual worlds now. People are using it to be a
better me.

Khazanchi: Yes, or a different me.

Hofer: Sure, that’s right. And probably there will be the possibility to take oneself into the virtual
word and use it as it would be the real world.

Khazanchi: That’s also very unlikely. I don’t think that will happen either, that we will
completely… well, I guess there are people how don’t distinguish between themselves and what
is virtual, their avatars, but I think the most people know the difference between the real and the
virtual world. And so I think it will never be equivalent.

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Hofer: At the end, I would like to close this discussion with the technology acceptance
perspective. Based on our discussion, do you think that the acceptance of virtual worlds is
different than the acceptance of traditional project management tools like Microsoft Project?

Khazanchi: No, I don’t think so. I think they are the same. In terms of this just overcoming
resistance to trying something new and in terms of it is being useful for me and would I use it. I
think those are all still the same issues. I’d say that there are probably some demographic
differences and there are some people who are more comfortable with these 3-D environments,
but I don’t think it’s… you know, from a straight technology acceptance view I would say it’s
pretty much similar with any new technology.

Hofer: Basically it’s just to go back to the differences in the technologies themselves. For
example is it possible to compare the technology acceptance of Microsoft Project with the
acceptance of virtual worlds.

Khazanchi: If you are saying there is a difference in virtual world project management and
virtual project management, the only difference you are able to be synchronously, which you
cannot in virtual projects. So I think virtual worlds also help you to build and show your ideas,
that’s interesting.

Hofer: So you say it’s the more social part that is important in virtual world projects.

Khazanchi: Yes. I think that’s different and it allows us to change how we think about virtual
projects. We can create more trust. So the question is and I think one of my PhD students, I
think you met her, Dawn Owens.

Hofer: Yes, I met her ones and read two of her papers.

Khazanchi: She is now working with me on the issue of trust in virtual worlds. So if you have a
virtual team, it’s interesting how the trust is different in virtual projects and virtual world projects.
My theoretical view is that you get better trust if you use virtual worlds than traditional
collaboration tools like e-mail and so. So let’s see, we will study that.

Hofer: Thanks a lot for theh interview.

Khazanchi: No problem. You are welcome.

xxi


Interview with Fred Davis, PhD
Position: David D. Glass Chair in Information Systems
Organization: University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business
Address: 301 Business Building, Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone: (479) 575-5980
Email: fdavis@walton.uark.edu

Type: Skype telephone conference

Hofer: TAM has come a long way since you introduced it about 20 years ago. Where do you
see the future of technology acceptance research?

Davis: One of the important areas in the future of it is going to be to investigate more of the
unconscious processes that are taking place in technology use. For example, when people
acquire skills the behavior of using the technology becomes automatic. There has been some
research, but that part of it needs to be better understood. Mostly the TAM model taps into
consciously intended behavior and conscious believes and motivations. So it doesn’t really
directly deal that much with the unconscious cognition or intuitive processes. So that’s I think
one of the big directions in the future.

Hofer: There is this fairly new paper from Schwarz et al. about a more process based thinking of
technology acceptance. What do you think about this new process theory approach?

Davis: Well, I am not sure about that one. There has been for years some interest in
investigating process theory as opposed to variance theory. I think there is something promising
about that, but I am not really too sure about it.

Hofer: Basically they described the process of acceptance in four steps. The first one is how
someone is receiving information about new technology, followed by grasping. The third step is
about how people assess the information and then it splits up in two ways. They divided it into
two different areas. On the one hand some information is given and on the other hand oneself
also submits information.

Davis: Yes, I mean I am not too sure about that.

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Hofer: Of course, that’s absolutely no problem. Let’s move on to the next question. How do you
think differences in technologies have an impact on technology acceptance research?

Davis: I think that differences in technology would be… or could influence the perceptions that
people have about the technology. And it would depend on their tasks and their needs and
preferences and so on. What form different perceptions of usefulness or ease of use or other
things depending on the characteristics of the technology. So the characteristics of the
technology should be captured by some extend by believes and perceptions.

Hofer: We were talking about characterizing technology. Do you see any differences in
technologies there? Especially when we are looking at single task technologies like Word
Processor for example or more multi-user tasks like collaboration tools?

Davis: Yes, I think for one thing there is greater complexity. There is also greater
interdependency between individuals so that the nature of the process of using it is collective
behavior involving multiple individuals opposed to a single individual acting alone. So this
creates more challenges in terms of whether people have the same preferences. That various
people are using a collaborative tool whether they agree on the benefits and the costs of the
tool and also there are some situations where a technology that is collaborative provide more
advantages to some of the users involved and provide less advantages to others. So it might be
desirable or favorable only for a subset of the multiple users of the technology, which means
that the ones who perceive it as an unfavorable benefit cost ratio might reject it. And if they
reject it than it means that the functionality is not available to deliver the benefits to those who
do see a favorable pattern of benefits and the technology could fail even though some people
see positive benefits regarding the acceptance.

Hofer: So basically it is very important to be more focused on this social networking and peer-to-
peer part of technology?

Davis: Yes, I think more applications that are being introduced today are once that are multiple
users and multiple stakeholders involved and all of them must see a positive benefit, net benefit,
in order for the overall technology to be successful and accepted.

Hofer: You talked about innovations. How different do you think are innovations over time?
Basically in the last twenty years and how do you see the impact of innovations in the future?

xxiii


Davis: I guess one of the answers to that would be a lot of the earlier research was focusing on
the initial adoption of innovations and now a lot of the attention has shifted from initial adoption
toward sustained adoption, which is sometimes called continuants. And there maybe some
different variables involved with sustained adoption as opposed to initial adoption. There has
also been some interest in how the use of an innovation or use of a technology can evolve over
time as opposed to just being adopted as a static technology. In other words people who learn
new ways of using the technology and they alter the way they use the technology to try to better
fit their needs and there has been some interest in that aspect as well. In terms of how they can
band or shape or extend a technology to capture their evolving needs. So I think one of the
dynamics that takes in place is in terms of the technologies themselves with enterprise systems
like SAP and large packages have been fairly large and monolithic and not very flexible. And
then there have been a lot of interest in, and it created a lot of problems, the inflexibility made it
difficult to do this adaptation to adjust to evolving requirements. And then another paradigm
coming along, actually two different paradigms, one would be service oriented architectures,
pushed a lot by IBM, where it emphasizes smaller units of functionality that can be deployed
fairly quickly and add to existing functionality in a modular way that would allow more of a
flexible and agile adaptation as requirements evolve and I think this is a shift in a direction of
how innovations are being structured. Related to that is the interest in agile methodologies,
where similarly the emphasize is placed on extreme programming and paired programming and
developing just the minimum functionality that is needed and developing and deploying it quickly
to get it into use and then dealing with change in terms of adding increments of functionality
more frequently. We are heading away from this monolithic paradigm.

Hofer: How do you see the impact of these more service oriented and agile approaches to the
technology acceptance of the end user?

Davis: I think one of the benefits there is that the degree of change required for the behavior of
the users is a smaller amount of change and the functionality is often times more relevant and
so it is often times easier to accomplish the change. Maybe there is less resistance to the
change, because it is not a large disruptive change as much. So it is less radical in terms of the
degree of change and maybe it is possible to create new versions of systems that are more
compatible with the way people are currently performing their work. So I do think its… I do
believe it generates higher user acceptance.

Hofer: That’s very interesting. But for now I would like to go more into virtual worlds. Where do
you see main differences in technology acceptance to “traditional” software tools?

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Davis: I think there are some consideration or attributes of the technology that are salient,
which are not as salient in traditional. For example, there maybe in some cases a fantasy
component as people can take and have avatars that take on different personalities. There can
be an emersion, a high degree of interactivity. There maybe a fantasy emersion and there
maybe also some sense of anonymity that people can experience. There maybe additional
factors or attributes that were not as salient or important in more traditional productivity tools
that come into play with virtual worlds.

Hofer: If we are talking about more conventional virtual project management tools, like what we
are doing now with using Skype or online brainstorming tools. Where would you see virtual
worlds in this context?

Davis: I think one example of an opportunity in virtual worlds is to really leverage more the idea
of simulating the business process that is being supported and maybe simulating the
functionality of a new system so it can be more realistically experienced and evaluated by
users. Taking advantage of natural intelligence that people have for dealing with a three-
dimensional world that has special characteristics and properties. I think that part of it is the
ability to simulate at the level of prototyping whether or not a new system is going to be effective
in carrying out what purpose it is supposed to achieve in supporting the real world. So I think
there are some advantages there. Another one would be the potential for the use of personas.
There is a thing going with software development in terms of expressing requirements by
creating sort of idealized users or examples of users who have a real identity and give them a
story. So that as the developers are developing the system they are not developing it relative to
a set of written requirements that are some sort of abstract and removed from context but rather
they trying to deal with entities that are very much more like humans. People that have a story,
people that have personalities, people that have needs and concerns. And this seems to
activate something within the developers that makes them more empathetic to the needs of the
users and to take their true requirements more seriously. So I think that’s another advantage
when it comes to project management of what might be leveraged with virtual worlds.

Hofer: Based on your experience. What do you think are possible business uses of virtual
worlds?

Davis: I think that one example would be if we had a three-dimensional presentation of
websites that this would enable users to take advantage of their natural navigational and
perceptional ability that is oriented towards three-dimensional space and so it would be possibly
more effective to navigating a complex website compared to a traditional hyperlink structure.
xxv


Hofer: So you basically say that virtual worlds would be more natural for users to interact with
the system and/or with other people.

Davis: Yes, just as a desktop metaphor, which is contagious with previous operating system
interfaces. Similarly three-dimensional would be a powerful step beyond two-dimensional
desktop metaphor in terms of making a natural and powerful environment for rich interaction.
Not just between one user and a website, but it could also provide a context for collaboration
that is closer to what people are costumed to and become more natural I think.

Hofer: At the end, how do you see technology acceptance and, of course, the technology
acceptance model regarding virtual worlds. Would you say it’s easier to handle virtual project
management in virtual worlds than with traditional software tools?

Davis: I think it can help, but when I noticed that there is a pretty steep learning curve in
Second Life for example. I am not sure that it’s obviously automatically going to be easier to
use. I think it’s unclear to me at this point. I believe it can be, but there is a lot of design work
that might have to be done to make it cognitively easier.

Hofer: Thank you so much. Based on our discussion, do you have any points or comments you
would like to add? Something that is important for you regarding these topics we talked about.

Davis: No, I think… well, a big challenge with virtual project management is that you are
dealing with virtual teams and people who are not co-located and so to the extent that the virtual
world can become a platform that helps to reduce that sense of social distance. I believe virtual
worlds can be effective in overcoming barriers of time and space and culture to create more of a
sense of co-presence. I think it could be very promising for that. But I also encourage you
contacting Moez Limayem, our department chair. He probably has more insights about virtual
worlds than me. He is doing work on a research project with regards to Second Life and so I
think you should interview him too.

Hofer: That would be great, I would love to. Thank you very much for the suggestion!

Davis: He has also done some work on technology acceptance. So it would be a perfect match.

Hofer: Yes, that’s right. Sounds perfect to me. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk
with you.
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Davis: Ok, you are welcome and have a great day.

Hofer: Thanks, have a great day too and I wish you a good recovery from the surgery.

Davis: Thank you. Take care.

xxvii


Interview with Moez Limayem, PhD
Position: Information Systems Department Chair, Walton Professorship in Information Systems
Organization: University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business
Address: 301 Business Building, Fayetteville, AR 72701
Phone: (479) 575-4500
Email: mlimayem@walton.uark.edu

Type: Skype telephone conference

research?

Limayem: Good. I think this is a very good question. Now we have a very good understanding
of the underlying mechanism and the factors that affect users acceptance of technology.
However, I think research that will add yet one more factor, one more relationship… I think we
are ok and we don’t need this type of research anymore, because we had enough. However, we
still need a much better understanding of, for example, other related phenomenon. For
example, the continuous use of technology. I think we still don’t really understand it and we
need some good research there. We also need to investigate the switching behavior. So, why
people are switching from one technology to the other? I also think we need to better
understand this and we have to move a little bit more to the organizational level, where we say
ok, how can we translate what we know on the individual level to explain how organizations
adopt technology. And what for example Fred and Paul are doing is also very interesting,
because they say ok… what are the underlying physiological phenomenon and cognitive
phenomenon. What really happens in our brain that makes us accept or reject a technology? So
these are very promising areas of research. So, just to summarize it, we really have a very good
understanding, so we don’t need more research with yet one more factor or one more
relationship to TAM, because there are so many other interesting things to investigate.

Hofer: How do you think differences in technologies themselves have an impact on technology
adoption?

Limayem: Once again, I think you are asking really good questions here.

Hofer: Thanks 
xxviii

Appendices

Limayem: How would I classify categories of technology? So for example, you know, if you
talking about Windows 3.1 versus Windows XP. I think for me, the differences are not that
much. These are operating systems, a lot of factors are included and organizations are using
them. However, if you compare it to another types of technology, like social media. That is a
very different ball game, you know, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace… I think these are new
types of technologies where more traditional theories do not apply the way they are. Just to
continue this, if you take for example virtual worlds. I think more traditional TAM like approaches
maybe explain small parts of the variance, but not everything, because these are new
technologies, they have other things and people go there not because it’s easy to use or just
because it’s useful. They go there for different factors, social factors. The gap between the
virtual and real life is getting smaller and smaller. Maybe they are going there to run away from
their real life. You see, these factors are not accounted for like traditional technologies and
approaches like TPB, TRA, or TAM. So, to summarize my answer to your question is that yes,
some technologies are similar, but some technologies, especially the new ones we talked
about, are really different and it is interesting to study why people adopt to that.

Hofer: That’s actually a part of my next question. Regarding virtual worlds, where do you see
main differences in technology acceptance to more “traditional” software tools?

Limayem: Ok, I think first of all they are much newer technologies and we really don’t know
very much and still don’t have a very good understanding of who goes there and what they do
there, how long they stay there and what are companies finding when they use these
technologies. The fact that I think that whole thing is newer, a new ball game, I think that’s
interesting by itself. Another thing is for example… I take an e-mail system. You go there and
use it in your job and it’s easy to use and the usefulness, but virtual worlds, they are not unique
content there. You need content there and other people to talk to and that will affect and comes
into play more than just using something like e-mail. The interface is completely different, where
I think you feel the presence of others and the co-presence is so important, because you feel
others right next to you without being right next to you. These virtual worlds bring new
dimensions of affiliating real life that other technologies don’t. If I am using e-mail and sending
an e-mail to a person I don’t see that person, I don’t feel the person to be here. However, when
my avatar is in the same room and there is another avatar in this room in the virtual world, this
is a completely different sensation. That you don’t get when you are sending an e-mail or doing
a phone call or even talking face-to-face to a person, it’s very different. And just to give you an
idea, I have even given courses in Second Life and people are behaving very different as they
behave in face-to-face.
xxix


Hofer: So do you think there is a big difference of how people act in virtual worlds with their
avatars as opposed to how they act in face-to-face communication in the real world?

Limayem: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, in so many times I met some avatars or the
people behind the avatars and they even refused to answer any questions about their real life.
So they are saying something or doing something and they think they feel more liberated and
less pressure to say or to be politically correct or to say things that… that makes it very
interesting to study.

Hofer: Yes, it is very interesting. Because there are a lot of other facts, like trust in the
technology itself or the age difference of users. Do you think there is a difference in how people
use a virtual world and especially act in it based on their age?

Limayem: Yes, I really think so. I think this new generation, the X or Internet generation. I think
they are very different from older generations, they communicate differently. They use
technology differently. Technology plays a much more important role in their lives than it plays
for other people. So that’s a big challenge because we were in a meeting with some managers
just a week ago and they were saying it’s challenging for companies, because companies have
policies like not to use Facebook or Twitter. But they say these people we are hiring now, they
cannot function without these tools. So we are artificially limiting their productivity while we think
we are doing something good by prohibiting these tools. So you see, this is where the
generation gap is. So for now it would be smarter to say how we can use these tools in a
productive way, so that this new generation feels comfortable and creative in the job. But the
gap is absolutely there. I hope that answers your question.

Hofer: Yes, for sure. That was exactly the point. Let’s talk a little bit more about project
management. How would you classify virtual worlds in comparison to other virtual project
management tools?

Limayem: I think it could be very useful. Why? Of course, you have these classic resources,
but now people who are working at the same project can work in different parts of the world. So
getting them together could be very expensive. And unfortunately also using technologies like
videoconferences or anything, it is not cheap. Phone and let’s face it, it’s not cheap. So the time
and the costs and all that is very classic how we now it. However, I think what virtual worlds
bring is that capacity to work on a free environment and to simulate. For example, you work on
designing a room. It could be anything. Now, in a 3-D environment you could design it in a team
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Appendices

and the team members, even they are in the same virtual room, some of them could be in
Europe, Asia, Australia, and so on… So that capacity of building and simulating in a 3-D
environment is just amazing. And so that’s why I think virtual worlds are more than adequate for
that. In addition of the classic reasons for virtual teams and virtual meeting tools that allow them
to meet without travelling.

Hofer: Nowadays, when we are talking about traditional project management tools like Microsoft
Project, there is a lot of functionality that is not build into virtual worlds like Second Life, at least
for now. So where do you see the trends here?

Limayem: Yes I think some of those functions will evolve into virtual worlds. And, of course,
vice versa. Virtual worlds and as we move on in development they will include some project
management specific tools like Microsoft Project and the others. I think… and people will predict
that in about ten years the web as we use it know will slowly change to a 3-D environment
where people are represented as avatars. So, expect also, as mentioned before, that traditional
project management tools will have some similar 3-D interfaces like virtual worlds and also will
be compatible with virtual worlds. You see, from the virtual worlds we will have more tools, but
also see it from the project management tools that will also be compatible with virtual worlds.

Hofer: You talked about this forecast of how the web will evolve. I really like this idea. If we think
about that we are sitting in front of a PC and look at a website alone, virtual worlds as opposed
give you the opportunity to actually see who else is watching the same page or reading the
same content at the same time. That’s amazing.

Limayem: Absolutely. I think you mentioned this and a lot of progress is made. This will make
virtual worlds even more useful to project management usage.

Hofer: This is basically the last question. Based on your experience. What do you think are
possible business uses of virtual worlds?

Limayem: Oh, that’s a very good question. I think meetings for project management or others; I
mean that’s great. Training also is very good. I think it eventually will be a very good way of
promoting products and services. And another thing, we don’t see it yet, but probably to sell.
Sell products, you know like Walmart who is thinking about having stores in Second Life, where
avatars can go to a virtual store and shop in a 3-D environment.

Hofer: Interesting. So they have their cart and they can put in it whatever they want.
xxxi


Limayem: Yes, they have their cart, go to the shelves and pick the merchandize and they
check out.

Hofer: That’s a nice idea.

Limayem: I think also maybe research and development. Test some new processes, test some
new products. So I think these are the main directions I see.

Hofer: At the end and based on our discussion, would you like to add something? Something
that is important for you regarding these topics we talked about.

Limayem: I think the whole topic is really important. I mean virtual worlds, maybe not Second
Life, for different reasons, maybe technical issues like the client. It is very heavy, but I think the
concept it is very appealing and I believe it will stay. It’s not really a game any more and I don’t
like it when people still call it a game. I see companies spending a lot of money and even
universities are offering degrees, it’s not longer a game.

Hofer: You were talking about Second Life and that new technologies will evolve. Do you think
there is one platform that will be successful, maybe a more open platform or what do you think
the optimal virtual world technology should look like?

Limayem: I heard about a version of Second Life that is open source. I think new technology…
it has to be open source. Otherwise I think… it has to be open source so that people can easily
add things or change something. But also I think and this is really important that the client have
to be thin. What I mean by a thin client is that if you need an extremely high speed internet, a lot
of memory in your computer, a certain soundcard, a certain graphic card, that is really making
the usage more difficult. So the thinner the client is, the better the solution will be. And I think
people do understand these things and I think new technologies have to have these two
characteristics.

Hofer: Ok, thank you so much.

Limayem: Yes, I really appreciate. If you have anything finished I would like to read it.

Hofer: Yes, of course. I will send you my literature review.

xxxii

Appendices

Limayem: That would be great. I also have some articles for you and I will send you them to
you.

Hofer: Sure, I would love to use these articles and include them into my thesis.

Limayem: Ok, sounds good. Thank you very much and please say Hi to Ilze.

Hofer: Sure, I will. Have a great day and thanks again.

xxxiii


Appendix E: Protocol of the Brainstorming Session

Uncategorized Ideas (Original Data)

communication - let clients talk with support reps
At some point clients need to speak in person to rep's
agreed with the first comment
we could use Second Life for Training (we do a lot of physical training)
What kind of training?
Safety, general plant training--how to enter different secured areas,etc.
virtual meetings
I would expect this to be a very heavy usage of Second Life
There are already many applications that support online meetings. The ability to move
around makes this application unique. I don't see how it would enhance our current
online meetings. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
If you have the ability to intigrate the webcams, you can see everyone virtually in the
virtual room.
I see it as an advantage if you have lots of people (like >10)
otherwise, I've got 10+ windows open on my desktop, one with each person in it
SL is much more 'collaborative' in this aspect
Thank you! Great points.
brain storming
Training sessions
Currently used for auditing training
web walkthroughs, like screen sharing, but 1 to many rather than 1 to 1
Demonstrations of equipment and software use
I was thinking of this too. Building simulators of our real plant equipment could save us
time and dollars by doing virtual walk through training.
Online classes
Would significantly enhance participation in online classes.
I am not sure how it would enhance participation. Maybe I just can't see it...
Could be used to create online programs for nursing.
Process flow simulation.
Substitute for six sigma
Market research eg focus groups
Test social interaction such as dating online services
Test leadership in specific work environments
I think this is a great idea!
A very interactive social networking site
Project Teams?
I wonder how it would tie in with project mgt software
This could be used with the daily standups implemented in the Agile process
Maybe Second Life could be used as Edutainment for our internal staff as well as external customers...
communicate with Gen Y customers and constituents
THis could easily appeal to older generations as well - especially those shut ins and thise
with disabilities
data visualization
Use it to demonstrate software
Wonder how
if the software is web based, you could show the website on a 'wall' in second life
Wouldn't webex let you do that today?
true, but this is free :)
once this becomes popular, I'm sure there will be a price tag to this.
Meetings
walk through of building design -- architecture to test layout
Good Idea
xxxiv

Appendices

market to Gen Y customers/constituents
Good idea
Student group projects
use it for networking and meeting others with similar interest
Process flow demonstrations
giant, walk through flowcharts! I love it
Great idea! Making the process multi-demensional will improve retention
communicate with Gen Y customers/constituents
demonstrate advertising and marketing options - billboards, signs, tshirts, etc
Presentations
Collaboration between project team members (located in geographically different locations)
how is this better than a live meeting for project teams??
This is a live meeting not asynchronous
demo workspace changes - use SL to rearrange your cubes, see what it looks like
great idea; virtual design w/ or w/o a professional
Great idea
Trade conference or seminar
This would be a good precursor for a trade conference; eventually participants want to
touch/feel, etc. the actual product but would work well to guage interest without investing
the resources for a physical show.
Use it to build a knowledge bank where we can direct our clients (or co-workers) to find the information they need
Is there database or history functionality or an addin that would help this?
Have to dig deeper into the development tools options
to find out
Technical demonstrations
focus groups for web sites
Use it to build software applications with programmers located in other places
The next best thing to the Holodeck
beam me up Scotty
Is there database or history functionality or an addin that would help this?
Customer Complaints
Interesting if it where anonymous, you might get more feedback about your services (both
negative and positive)
How to deal with customers --training
A multimedia launching point
How to approach customers for sales
Simulating new ideas to be installed in bank branches, and guaging market interest
you could demo ATM or other self-serve bank interfaces
Suggestion box
Use as a media for negotiating deals
Give feedback on architecture design
Using anonymity, an opportunity to elicit responses from the ENTIRE team
Use it for locating specific information about products
Could we do a disaster scenario?
Interesting idea...
This seems to be a good use of the system
How about a library or different libraries (book clubs, reference, education, etc....)
simulation - model your office building, start a fire, see how long it takes an avatar to get out
Prescreening interviews for new hires
Simulations of real events with active interaction of participants, not sure how rich the environment is at present?
Training for interviewers
Go to a movie theater and see movies or read reviews
go to the moon
and back?

xxxv


Categorized Ideas

Categories / Subcategories Counts (without comments)

Simulation / Visualization 14
Visualize process flow charts 4
Architecture / Building design 3
Desaster scenarios / natural, fire alarms 2
Data Visualization
Workspace changes / rearrange things
Technical demonstrations
First step to a Holodeck
Simulation of UI's / ATM e.g.
PR / Marketing 13
Communicate with custormers 6
Market Research / Focus groups 3
Building a knowledge bank for customers
Billboards, Signs, T-Shirts, etc.
Trade conferences
Product informations
Project Management / Virtual Teams 12
Knowledge management / Database 2
Brainstorming sessions
Advantage if more than 10 people at a meeting
Collaborative aspect of SL
Daily standups in Agile process
Meetings in SL
Student group projects
Presentations
Collaboration
Software development environment
Anonymus feedback of team members
Training / Learning 11
Equipment and Software usage / demonstration 2
Safety issues of plants
Auditing
Web walkthrough
Online classes
Online nursing programmes
Leadership test in different environments
Edutainment intern/extern
Sale reps training - how to deal with customers
Job interview training
Social Interaction 5
Mulitmedia lounging point
Dating service
Social network
Networking
Movies in SL
Others 4
Negotiating deals, media support
Recruiting / Job interviews
Digital Libraries
Travelling where it's very hard to get normally, e.g. Moon

Total 59

xxxvi

Appendices

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Technology Acceptance As a Trigger for Successful Virtual Project Management: A Study of Business Use of Virtual Worlds

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