Organizational Assimilation of Innovations: A Multilevel Contextual Analysis
- 1 December 1988
- journal article
- Published by Academy of Management in The Academy of Management Journal
- Vol. 31 (4) , 897-923
- https://doi.org/10.5465/256344
Abstract
This study examined the assimilation of innovations into organizations, a process unfolding in a series of decisions to evaluate, adopt, and implement new technologies. Assimilation was conceptualized as a nine-step process and measured by tracking 300 potential adoptions through organizations during a six-year period. We advance a model suggesting that organizational assimilation of technological innovations is determined by three classes of antecedents: contextual attributes, innovation attributes, and attributes arising from the interaction of contexts and innovations Why and how do organizations evaluate, adopt, and implement innovations? Few research questions have spanned so many social science disciplines, elicited such an outpouring of empirical research, and yielded so few unequivocal findings. The literature on innovation has been described as “fragmentary” (Kelly & Kranzberg, 1978: 164), “contradictory” (Kimberly & Evanisko, 1981: 698), and “beyond interpretation” (Downs & Mohr, 1976: 700). No ...Keywords
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Medical technology and professional dominance theorySocial Science & Medicine, 1984
- A Rule for Inferring Individual-Level Relationships from Aggregate DataAmerican Sociological Review, 1978
- Production efficiency versus bureaucratic self-interest: Two innovative processes?Policy Sciences, 1977
- Size, Centralization and Organizational Adoption of InnovationsAmerican Sociological Review, 1977
- Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and CeremonyAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1977
- Organizational Size and the Structuralist Perspective: A Review, Critique, and ProposalAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1976
- Organizational Innovation: Individual, Organizational, and Environmental ImpactsAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1975
- Middle range theories of social systemsBehavioral Science, 1974
- Elite Values Versus Organizational Structure in Predicting InnovationAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1973
- Organizational Innovativeness: Product Variation and ReorientationAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1971