Competencies, Attitudes, Acceptance and Their Impact on ICT Diffusion in Educational Institutions in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Despite the fact that information and communication technology (ICT) utilisation has been seen to enhance organisational effectiveness and efficiency, the human feature has been identified as the most important contributor to the success or failure of ICT’s full implementation. In order to ensure the success of information and communication technology’s full implementation in organisations, it is critical that the users possess the requisite competencies, have the right attitudes towards ICT utilisation, and accept the use of ICT as necessary for organisational effectiveness and efficiency. These attributes were accessed among a sample of 220 secondary school administrators consisting of school heads, deputy school heads and heads of departments by using a questionnaire as an instrument of data collection for a quantitative research design study. An overall 94 per cent response rate was achieved in this study. The results indicated that public schools’ administrators possessed moderate ICT competencies; their attitudes towards the utilisation of ICT were indifferent, leading to low levels of acceptance of ICT utilisation among the education institutions in Bulawayo. The results also revealed that there is a significant relationship between the administrators’ ICT competencies and acceptance and ICT utilisation among the secondary schools in Bulawayo, with ICT competencies and acceptance contributing 52.5 per cent of the variance in the utilisation or diffusion of ICT among the secondary schools in Bulawayo