Assessing and managing employees for embracing change: A multiple-item scale to measure employee readiness for e-business

It is imperative for businesses to use network and distributed information technology to integrate resources among organizations, vendors, employees, and suppliers to maximize value-added. Organizations are thus implementing electronic business (e-business) at an accelerating pace, fueling speculation about employee readiness to embrace this new type of firm. Unfortunately, scholarly research on this issue is lacking. Drawing on insights from extant literature and interviews with practitioners, this article first proposes the construct of employee readiness for e-business (EREB) and its conceptualization. Then it describes a program of research undertaken to develop an EREB instrument by defining, operationalizing, and refining the construct to create a multiple-item measurement scale, and assessing the scale's psychometric properties. By strictly iterative processes, a well-validated EREB instrument is constructed. The instrument and its comprehensive model proposed in this paper will be of use to researchers and practitioners interested in designing, implementing, and managing e-business.