In his early work, Karl Weick referred to information technology (IT) as “equivoques” to underline the conflicting interpretations that often arise among users, groups, and organizations interacting with IT. As modern IT systems support a growing variety of uses and applications, this phenomenon intensifies, with important implications for attitude formation and use behaviors. Based on individual sensemaking theory, we define perceived IT equivocality as a user’s difficulty in making sense of an IT and theorize that this psychological phenomenon manifests through perceptions of incompleteness, fragmentation, and uncertainty. Three empirical studies (n = 419, n = 411, n = 345) were conducted to validate this multidimensional construct and examine its relevance in postadoptive use settings. The results indicate that perceived IT equivocality is negatively associated with routine and innovative use and positively associated with behavioral anxiety, confirming its theorized influence on usage patterns. In closing, we discuss the importance of the IT equivocality construct to both theory and practice, along with the limitations of our work. Our distinctive contributions include 1) conceptualizing an IS-specific psychological phenomenon, 2) developing and validating a multidimensional scale, and 3) demonstrating the behavioral potency of the construct.

The covid-19 pandemic crisis presents unprecedented challenges and has profound implications for the way people live and work. Information and communication technologies have been playing a crucial role in ensuring business continuity as lockdown measures have suddenly forced employees from across the globe to telework, often leaving them unprepared and ill-equipped. This paper develops an epidemic-induced telework adjustment model derived from the theory of Work Adjustment and the Interactional Model of Individual Adjustment. It is tested on a sample of 1574 teleworkers in France. The results demonstrate the superiority of the influence of crisis-specific variables that are professional isolation, telework environment, work increase and stress. Implications for research are discussed while concrete and actionable recommendations for organisations are provided.