Carl Westin

20 Strategic Conformance: A Literature Survey Sociology, psychology and information systems communities, on the other hand, have studied factors underlying initial acceptance. Here, the compatibility between human and technology is considered a key construct for overcoming the hurdle toward initial acceptance and technology adoption. “Compatibility” in this case refers to the perceived fit of a technology within the context in which it is used, driven by the user’s values, experiences, and needs. 59 In general, the more compatible a technology is, the more likely it is to be accepted. Presumably, compatibility can serve to mitigate initial acceptance issues of au- tomated decision aids. Previous research has underlined preliminary benefits of matching automation’s problem-solving strategies with the human, for example by modeling human decision-making heuristics 31, 35, 60, 61 tuned to a group of people. Would there perhaps be a greater benefit in terms of acceptance if automation’s problem-solving style were matched to that of the individual? To our knowledge, no theoretical or empirical work has specifically focused on differences in decision aid problem-solving styles and its effect on individual operator acceptance. In this article we introduce the concept of strategic conformance as a potential key factor (and subcomponent of compatibility) influencing the initial acceptance of decision aiding automation. We define strategic conformance as the degree to which automation’s problem-solving style matches that of the individual human. A person’s problem-solving style is made up of both the product (solution) and its associated process (underlying strategies). The latter is only apparent since the pro- cess cannot be determined by knowing the product, only inferred from observable behavior or output. We hypothesize that strategic conformal automation can, first and foremost, promote initial acceptance of new technology, but also improve over- all system performance as operators are more likely to use it. The discussions on the potential benefits and pitfalls of this rather extreme perspective are guided by an extensive literature survey across various different fields that focus on automation acceptance. 2-2 Resolving automation acceptance issues Technology resistance is a widespread concern across several work domains. In health care, physician resistance has been identified as a critical obstacle to greater adoption of robotically-assisted surgery 62 and electronic tools. 52–54 Evidence from the ATC community indicates that current decision aiding systems, intended to sup- port the controller in CD&R tasks, are sometimes rejected or used in unintended ways. 8, 10, 12 Note that whereas some work settings and organizations might man- date automation usage, even then automation can be underused, misused etc. Automation acceptance research has primarily focused on identifying and pre-