Combining Technology Acceptance and Culture in One Tool: Implications for Information Sharing within Coalitions

This paper describes a prototype relational database management system (RDBMS) that can help leaders in a coalition military headquarters understand the technology perspectives of individual members of their multinational staffs. Information sharing is an essential requirement and a primary challenge for coalition operations. How coalition members share information with technology and how well they share information due to procedures is related to more than hardware and software. National culture informs a person´s perspective about technology. The national culture of people within coalitions may influence the success or failure of an information system or technology intensive tactics. An RDBMS containing technology perspectives of individuals and characteristics of national culture can help leaders relate culture and attitude of individual users to the systems within a coalition headquarters. Once technology perspectives are understood in the context of a particular organization, leaders can design strategies to take advantage of capabilities or mitigate shortcomings due to different perspectives about technology.