A meta-analysis of relationships between organizational characteristics and IT innovation adoption in organizations

doi:10.1016/j.im.2012.05.002

Information & Management

Volume 49, Issue 5, July 2012, Pages 218-232

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2012.05.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

Adoption of IT in organizations is influenced by a wide range of factors in technology, organization, environment, and individuals. Researchers have identified several factors that either facilitate or hinder innovation adoption. Studies have produced inconsistent and contradictory outcomes. We performed a meta-analysis of ten organizational factors to determine their relative impact and strength. We aggregated their findings to determine the magnitude and direction of the relationship between organizational factors and IT innovation adoption. We found organizational readiness to be the most significant attribute and also found a moderately significant relationship between IT adoption and IS department size. Our study found weak significance of IS infrastructure, top management support, IT expertise, resources, and organizational size on IT adoption of technology while formalization, centralization, and product champion were found to be insignificant attributes. We also examined stage of innovation, type of innovation, type of organization, and size of organization as moderator conditions affecting the relationship between the organizational variables and IT adoption.

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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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.

View full text

A meta-analysis of relationships between organizational characteristics and IT innovation adoption in organizations

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

IT innovation adoption

Research method

Significant test results

Organizational size

Implications of the research

Conclusions

International Journal of Production Economics

Information & Management

Journal of Engineering and Technology Management

Information & Management

A qualitative study of information technology adoption how ten organizations adopted web-based training

Information Systems Journal

Research report: empirical test of an EDI adoption model

Information Systems Research

Characteristics of innovation and innovation adoption in public organizations: assessing the role of managers

Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory

E-commerce adoption: perception of managers/owners of small and medium sized firms in Chile

Communications of the Association for Information Systems

Determining factors for the adoption of e-business the case of SMEs in Korea

Applied Economics

Business-to-business adoption of e-commerce in China

Information & Management