Towards Better Understanding of ICT Acceptance by Older Workers : Learning from Polish Enterprise System Practitioners

Population ageing, taking place in a majority of developed countries, results in workforce shrinking and ageing. Prior studies suggest that as employee age increases, their attitudes towards computers tend to be more negative. In addition, with age work capacity changes and older employees experience decline in physical abilities and decreased perception and work pace. Therefore, in the light of a widespread use of information and communication technology (ICT) in today's organizations and an ageing workforce it is essential to investigate considerations of ICT acceptance by older workers. In doing so, the current papers focuses on enterprise systems (ES), which are very complex ICT-related systems supporting the management and integration of the whole company. The main goal of the current paper is to better understand considerations of ICT adoption by older workers. To this end, the study draws from investigations performed among ES practitioners in Poland. The analyzed considerations include impediments, failure factors, problem solutions, and recommendations for improvement perceived by older workers. The findings suggest that the most critical issues perceived by older workers include system and data quality, organizational and system fit, trainings, finance, and project preparation