Learning new uses of technology: Situational goal orientation matters

We study the decision to learn a new use of technology within a post-adoption context. This particular nuance of technology adoption is interesting because while the technology has been adopted at some level by both users and organizations, expanding technology use relies on users adopting additional tools and features within a given system on their own accord. This study addresses how situational goal orientation moderates the effects of ease of learning perceptions within the post-adoption context. We find that when a potential user has a situational learning goal orientation, they indicate intent to learn a new use of technology regardless of whether the technology is perceived to be easy or difficult to learn. However, potential users with a situational performance goal orientation indicate intent to learn the new system feature depending on ease of learning. These results have implications for future research using traditional technology acceptance parameters in the post-adoption context, and provide evidence that situational goal orientation is an effective managerial intervention for use in organizational training.