Management Information Systems Department, Ohio University, 209 Copeland Hall, Athens, Ohio 45701; C. T. Bauer College of Business Administration, University of Houston, Melcher Hall 280D, Houston, Texas 77204-6282; Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street North, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7; Centre for Innovative Management, Athabasca University, 22 Sir Winston Churchill Avenue, St. Albert, Alberta, Canada T8N 1B4
Proper measurement is critical to the advancement of theory (Blalock 1979). Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) is rapidly becoming an important theoretical paradigm for comprehending the impacts of advanced information technologies (DeSanctis and Poole 1994). Intended as a complement to the faithfulness of appropriation scale developed by Chin et al. (1997), this research note describes the development of an instrument to capture the AST construct of consensus on appropriation. Consensus on appropriation (COA) is the extent to which group participants perceive that they have agreed on how to adopt and use a technology. While consensus on appropriation is an important component of AST, no scale is currently available to capture this construct. This research note develops a COA instrument in the context of electronic meeting systems use. Initial item development, statistical analyses, and validity assessment (convergent, discriminant, and nomological) are described here in detail. The contribution of this effort is twofold: First, a scale is provided for an important construct from AST. Second, this report serves as an example of rigorous scale development using structural equation modeling. Employing rigorous procedures in the development of instruments to capture AST constructs is critical if the sound theoretical base provided by AST is to be fully exploited in understanding phenomena related to the use of advanced information technologies.