Business professionals' perceptions related to the influence of information technology in individual work

According to the literature, much has been said about the impact of Information Technology on organizations, but little about its impact on the individual. This study aims to identify Information Technology benefits in individual work, choosing as a proxy some "latu sensu" post-graduation students, from a federal university in the south of Brazil. For data collection, a questionnaire based on the studies by Torkzadeh and Doll (1999) and Pereira (2003) was prepared. Torkzadeh and Doll dealt with the process of working; Pereira, with the four phases of the decision-making process. The final instrument, after being validated and tested, amounted to 21 questions to detect the potential benefits of Information Technology. The results demonstrated that users are satisfied, by pointing an average of 2.69 on a scale of "1" (little satisfied) to "5" (very much satisfied). The framework, work process, got an overall average [2.82]. Managerial control [3.10] and productivity [3.06] had the highest ratings; innovation [2.34], the lowest one. With technologies fully implemented, greater satisfaction was observed for all constructs of the survey, with statistically significant differences. Such differences were also proven in the Information Technology solutions that use Enterprise Resource Planning technology, the best-evaluated one. When comparing age, it was found that younger users were more satisfied with the benefits of technology. Concerning the number of employees, small business users were less satisfied with Information Technology.