Cultural Construction of what?: Stakeholders’ Cultural Bias and its Effect on Acceptance of a New Public Information System

This study examines stakeholders’ cultural bias and its impact on the acceptance of a new public information system. Different attitudes toward the same information technology, the National Educational Information System (NEIS), brought out social conflicts in Korea. This article argues that social relations and cultural biases influenced stakeholders’ positions in this policy conflict. Our analysis begins by reviewing Cultural Theory, developed by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky. Then we show how, to a large extent, four cultural biases (hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism) are supported by five stakeholder groups (three teacher groups, bureaucrats, and private system developers). Finally we find that, having different cultural biases, the five groups show different attitudes toward technology acceptance and risk perception as well as different emotional responses. Our analysis is based on empirical survey data from 628 employees sampled from five stakeholder groups.