Distrust as a Hazard for Future Sustainable Mobility Planning. Rethinking Employees’ Vulnerability When Introducing New Information and Communication Technologies in Local Authorities

ABSTRACT

The implementation of innovative technologies to support the planning and implementation of new transport schemes in cities requires staff to not only gain appropriate technical capabilities but also to have the willingness to adopt innovative technologies. Taking a sociotechnical approach, focussing on the Technology-Acceptance Model (TAM), we highlight employees’ distrust and unwillingness to become vulnerable as an additional challenge for Local Authorities (LAs) to cope with the introduction of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for mobility solutions in their transport departments. Using data from semi-structured interviews and workshops held across Europe (conducted as part of H2020 CIVITAS SUITS), two key indicators have been identified relating to the unwillingness of potential users to adopt new technologies for mobility solutions, i.e., incongruence of values and attribution of negative motives. Furthermore, we show behavioral intentions’ that indicate that users’ are not willing to become vulnerable and thus, provide evidence of signs that an organization can look for that may show that the likelihood of their technological implementation failing is relatively high. The practical guidelines provided at the end of the paper have been derived from our experiences of introducing new technologies for mobility solutions in partner cities of the SUITS project and highlight how users’ can be persuaded to ‘become vulnerable’ and actual using new technologies for future mobility solutions.

Acknowledgments

The data of this research were collected during the SUITS project, which was funded by the European Union, Grant agreement ID: 690650, Programme H2020-EU.3.4. - Societal challenges - Smart, Green and Integrated Transport, Topic MG-5.4-2015 - Strengthening the knowledge and capacities of LAs.

Notes

1. In the following we refer to the broader term technology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann-Marie Nienaber

Ann-Marie Nienaber is specialist on trust challenges in and between organizations with emphasis on safety critical context, i.e. organizational capability during crises and changes or technology acceptance. Her work has been published in journals such as Human Resource Management, Group and Organization Management, or Journal of Business Ethics.

Sebastian Spundflasch

Sebastian Spundflasch is a researcher at the Institute for Media Technology at Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany. Since 2011, he is in charge of different transport projects on a national and European level. His research focus is on the user-centered design of transport systems and services.

Andre Soares

Andre Soares is an Assistant Professor with experience in HR&OB, and Business and Occupational Psychology in universities in Portugal, England and Poland. His research is about using social network analysis, team dynamics and positive psychology to increase the performance both in the industrial and in the sports context.

Andree Woodcock

Andree Woodcock is PI on the HS2020 CIViTaS SUITS, and H2020 TInnGO projects (focussed on gender and transport). Both projects deal with inclusivity and capacity building. She was formerly PI of FP7METPEX project looking at the quality of multi modal end to end passenger journey experiences.