TASK-TECHNOLOGY FIT - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 179

perceptions of the degree to which corporate data met those task needs. They thus demonstrated
a strong link between organizational theories about environmental uncertainty and MIS theories
about task-technology fit.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The basic idea behind the concept of task-technology fit is that a change in technology improves
performance if the functionality of the new technology has a better “fit” with task requirements
than the old technology. Despite TTF's intuitive appeal, there has been limited progress in defin-
ing precisely what “fit” is, how to measure it, and how exactly fit translates into better perfor-
mance. Below some ongoing work (Goodhue et al., 2001) to advance the conceptualization of TTF
is described.
Task, Technology, and Performance
Delineating how technology affects performance at a task is challenging. A search of the litera-
ture for formal definitions of “task” and “technology” suggests that organizational researchers
often blur the distinction between the two. For example, Perrow (1967) and Fry and Slocum (1984)
define technology broadly as actions used to transform inputs into outputs. Thompson's (1967)
treatment of technology is also consistent with this view. Hackman (1969), Wood (1986), and
Campbell (1988), who all did extensive reviews of the concept of task, define “task” as the col-
lection of stimuli and instructions/goals that are presented to the task doer, and largely ignored the
idea of technology as separate from task. For these researchers, the technologies are the tasks.
By contrast, because of their interest in the impact of information technology, task-technology
fit researchers have sought to differentiate task from technology. For Jarvenpaa (1989) the task was
choosing a restaurant, varied by changing the required choice rule, and the technology was the
graphical format used to display the attribute values. Vessey and Galletta's (1991) task was infor-
mation retrieval, varied by asking for symbolic information (point values) versus spatial informa-
tion (relationships between values), and the technology was two-dimensional tables versus line
graphs. For Goodhue (1995) and Goodhue and Thompson (1995),the task was meeting managerial
information requirements that varied in terms of non-routineness and interdependence with other
parts of the organization; the technology was different levels of MIS support. In fact, these task-
technology fit researchers have tended to conceptualize tasks as existing before the application of
technology, while organizational researchers have tended to conceptualize tasks after the applica-
tion of technology. The former conceptualization of task can be called the “ underlying task ” and
the latter the “ execution sequence ” utilized by the task doer to carry out the task.
To explain performance, all of the above TTF researchers focused their attention on the fit
between the underlying task and the technology. Jarvenpaa looked at the “congruence” between
task demands and information displays. Vessey and Galletta used the term “cognitive fit,” which
they defined as the degree to which the information representation and any tools or aids employed
“match” the information required to perform a task. In this case “match” means that few trans-
formations will be required to go from one to the other. Goodhue and Thompson defined task-
technology fit as the “correspondence” between task requirements and the functionality of the
technology. These are reasonable conceptualizations at a high level of abstraction, but there are
problems in actually operationalizing general measures of “congruence,” “cognitive fit,” or “cor-
respondence.” Is there another way in which this problem of “fit” can be conceptualized? One
approach is to go back and rethink how technology affects performance.