Would Technology Obliterate Medical Transcription?: The Antecedents and Consequences of Technology-driven Obsolescence Perceptions on Turnover Intentions of Medical Transcriptionists

Abstract

Increasingly, the adoption of speech recognition technology (SRT ) by various hospitals has posed a threat to the medical transcription profession. As turnover intentions among medical transcriptionists are on the rise, understanding the role of technology in shaping turnover intentions requires attention, and yet is a significant gap in the literature. Drawing upon the theories of stress and turnover intentions, and prior work on professional obsolescence, we propose a new construct called technology-driven obsolescence perceptions in the medical transcription domain. We posit that technology-driven obsolescence perceptions positively impact turnover intentions, and antecedents such as work-family conflict, fairness of rewards, work excellence and job commitment have differential impacts on technology-driven obsolescence perceptions. Results indicate that all the hypotheses in the study are supported. Our study makes important contributions to the obsolescence and turnover intentions literature, and has important implications for research and practice alike.