A meta-analysis of relationships between organizational characteristics and IT innovation adoption in organizations
Introduction
An innovation can be an idea, product, program, or technology that is new to the adopting unit. Its adoption is a process that results in its introduction and use that is new to the adopting person or organization. IT adoption presents potential adopters with new means of solving problem and exploiting opportunities. In the past two decades, IS researchers have focused particularly on studying innovation in the adoption of IT. Actual adoption can be initiated by either a response to a change in the environment or when innovation becomes a requirement for the organization's operation or a belief by management that it will improve organizational performance: an organization which possesses the financial and technical resources has a stronger motivation to innovate.
Studies addressing innovation adoption have often yielded inconsistent and conflicting findings; e.g., Rye and Kimberly [14] stated that inconsistency has been a defining theme. Thus it is almost impossible to draw firm conclusions on the effects of the factors that influence IT adoption.
Identifying these factors is fundamental in ensuring successful adoption and implementation of IT. We therefore attempted to fill the knowledge gap by validating the important determinants of organizational IT innovation adoption in an organizational context. Aggregating existing literature allows the validation of their findings and clarification of the inconsistencies that might exist amongst primary studies [8]. The key research question that motivated our study was therefore:
What are the key organizational factors that guide successful adoption and implementation of IT innovation in organizations?
Section snippets
IT innovation adoption
Many papers have been written on IT adoption at both the organizational and individual levels. Organizational level studies have examined the process of adoption and diffusion of IT [12] assuming that IT improves the organization's operational and strategic practices. Similarly, many authors have examined a range of factors influencing IT adoption. Four major categories are technological, organizational, environmental, and individual [1], [5]. In a technological context, perceived benefits,
Research method
By using meta-analysis, we identified the significant relationship between the organizational characteristics and IT adoption. The aim of using a meta-analysis procedure for the study was to evaluate findings of past studies that had examined organizational attributes affecting IT adoption; these were then aggregated to obtain overall conclusions regarding the magnitude and direction of the relationships. This allowed us to examine the effects of different moderators influencing the
Significant test results
Of the 59 studies, a total of 97 innovation adoption relationships with organizational factors were assessed. Six relationships considered the initiation stage of adoption, 58 relationships examined the adoption-decision stage, 27 verified relationships at the implementation stage and six assessed mixed stages.
Table 2 shows the aggregated significance test results for all our independent variables. It shows that, for each organizational attribute, the number of studies found to be significant
Organizational size
Organizational size has been frequently examined in the study of organizational innovation adoption. However, the impact of organizational size on IT adoption has been found to be mixed; in some studies it was found to be an important attribute while in others it was found it to be insignificant. Availability of slack resources in larger organizations facilitates innovation adoption [19] but the flexible organizational structure and centralized decision-making in smaller organizations assists
Implications of the research
We found that the most significant organizational factor for adoption of IT was organizational readiness followed by IS department size, IS infrastructure, top management support, IT expertise, resource, and organizational size. We did not find that centralization or product champion were factors determining IT adoption. Most past studies had suggested that formalization had a negative association with IT adoption; however, we found that it facilitated IT adoption.
We conducted tests for
Conclusions
Our findings have considerable significance in understanding the determinant of IT adoption in terms of organizational context. The study provides researchers and practitioners with a set of factors that affect the adoption of IT in organizations. Results serve as a guideline for practitioners to identify and address the facilitating and inhibiting issues in the organizational context in the process of IT adoption. Managers need to consider these issues when embarking on IT adoption.
In our
Mumtaz Abdul Hameed is pursuing a PhD degree at the Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University London, United Kingdom. His current research focused on information technology innovation adoption, technology diffusion and the use of information technology in organizations.
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Mumtaz Abdul Hameed is pursuing a PhD degree at the Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University London, United Kingdom. His current research focused on information technology innovation adoption, technology diffusion and the use of information technology in organizations.
Steve Counsell is a Reader in the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel. Prior to his PhD, he was a developer in industry. His research interests include empirical software engineering with specific interest in refactoring, software metrics and business information systems.
Stephen swift is currently a Research Lecturer in the Department of Information Systems and Computing at Brunel. He spent four years in industry as a web designer, programmer and technical architect prior to his PhD. His research interests include multivariate time series analysis and evolutionary computation.