Towards a Nuanced Explanation of Cloud ERP Adoption in SMES

Abstract

This study presents a longitudinal model for investigating cloud ERP adoption. Previous work on technology adoption mostly has investigated adoption by looking at one specific phase of adoption. However, we argue that the cross-sectional research design does not sufficiently represent the complexity and the highly volatile process of adoption as a whole. Based on an archival analysis of eighty-seven firm level technology adoption studies, we identified 24 transition factors (TF) contributing to the adoption of information technology. Building on Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory (1995) this research attempts to explore which transition factors are relevant in the distinct phases of cloud ERP adoption. In our work, we model the transition factors as “triggers”, where the desirable outcomes of the transition factor within a specific phase of adoption, will lead to the next stage adoption. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, we make a context-specific contribution by extracting the different factors which have been studied in the context of cloud ERP systems and categorizing them according to the Diffusion of Innovations theory. Second, we also make a theoretical contribution by employing a longitudinal research design.