Communication competence factors as moderators to the relationship between user participation and information quality

participation and system success.
HYPOTHESES
The research questions that this study attempts to
answer are: 1.) “Does user participation affect the
information quality of a system?” and 2.) “Do
communication-related factors influence the relationship
between 
user 
participation 
and 
the 
quality 
of
informational outputs of a system?” To answer these
questions, the theories presented in the literature review
section are applied to the user-participation context. The
following section presents the hypotheses and their
rationale.
The Main Effect of User Participation on
Information Quality
The surrogate for system success used in this
study was the quality of informational outputs of a
system. The main reason for selecting this dimension of
quality was that users share knowledge about their jobs
and system usages with systems developers. Such
knowledge helps improve the quality of informational
outputs such as quality of interfaces and contents of the
informational outputs rather than the quality of system,

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COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE FACTORS AS MODERATORS TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN USER
PARTICIPATION AND INFORMATION QUALITY
Journal of Information Technology Management Volume XX, Number 4, 2009
5
which is rather influenced by systems developers' skills
and expertise. Consequently, the first hypothesis states
that:
H1: There is a positive correlation between user
participation and information quality of a system.
User’s Experiences, Communication Skills,
and Communication Apprehension as
Moderating Effects
The participative decision-making theory posits
that participation allows one to share his/her useful
information with another, and, information sharing
increases productivity. A question needed to be
investigated is: “What then influences the information
sharing process during user participation?”
It is indisputable that sharing information from
one person to another requires some kind(s) of
communications among them. According to Spitzberg and
Cupach [37, 38], the concept of communication
competence suggests that a competent communicator
must a.) possess the cognitive knowledge, b.) be able to
deliver his/her messages skillfully (i.e., appropriately and
effectively), and c.) be motivated to communicate. In the
user-participation context, the knowledge of users that are
useful for the system development is measured here by
the users’ work experiences on their jobs, the current
systems, and the organization. It is assumed in this study
that the more experienced a user is, the more knowledge
the user possesses. The second hypothesis proposes that
the user’s relevant experiences (i.e. their cognitive
knowledge on the subject matters that is important for
developing a successful system) will positively moderate
the 
relationship 
between 
user