From broken habits to new intentions: how COVID-19 expands our knowledge on post-adoptive use behaviour of digital communication and collaboration

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented surge in digital communication and collaboration. While a rich body of knowledge exists on IS use, our understanding of changes in post-adoptive use behaviour regarding communication and collaboration is comparatively limited. Existing models assume decreasing growth rates over time and are not designed to capture spikes in use behaviour such as the one observed during the pandemic. In this mixed methods study, we propose a hybrid model of sensemaking and post-adoptive communication and collaboration use that explains changes in use behaviour and outlines the influence of external trigger events. Based on real-world data from MS Teams, we show that individual feature use varies over time, with an increasing growth rate triggered by COVID-19. To understand drivers for the heterogeneous changes, we further conduct qualitative interviews. We find habits were deliberately altered during COVID-19 and replaced with new intentions through sensemaking. We derive propositions that may encourage further research into the subject. Extended knowledge of post-adoptive behaviour and its triggers assists practitioners in adjusting to the new normal or reacting to new situations beyond COVID-19.