Organizational Information System adoption: A network perspective

Abstract

As distributed organizations increasingly rely on technological innovations to enhance organizational efficiency and competitiveness, interest in agile environments that enhance the diffusion and adoption of innovations has grown. Although Information Systems has confirmed that social influence factors play an important role in the adoption of technological innovations by individuals, less is understood about the mechanisms within social communication networks that facilitate the flow of social influence and knowledge and about the organizational capacity to acquire and absorb new knowledge. This exploratory study helps to specify interactions and feedback within social communication networks and organizational capacities in a network organization environment. We use an exploratory case study design to document how the flow of knowledge within social communication networks affected the adoption of a large-scale software system in several counties within New York state. Data from decision makers in two comparable network organizations were analyzed for differences in social communication networks and the organization's capability to absorb and exploit new knowledge. The data suggest that information system adoption was influenced by communication processes that reinforced social influences and supported knowledge transfer, and hampered when those processes were absent. Implications for the development of theory about the relationship between social information processing and the ability of an organization to absorb and adopt new technology are discussed. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing. All rights reserved.