Enabling agile adoption practices through network organizations
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Enabling agile adoption practices through network organizations Dirk S. Hovorka1 and Kai R. Larsen1 1 Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Correspondence: Dirk S. Hovorka, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 USA. Tel: þ 1 303 492 1175; Fax: þ 1 303 492 5962; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract As distributed organizations increasingly rely on technological innovations to enhance organizational efficiency and competitiveness, interest in agile practices that enable adoption of information technology (IT) based innovations has grown. This study examines the influence of a network organization environment on the ability to develop agile adoption practices. An exploratory case study design was used to investigate the interactions between network structure, social information processing, organizational similarity (homophily), and absorptive capacity during the adoption of a large-scale IT system in two network organization environments within New York State. The data suggest that network organization characteristics and communication processes that reinforced social influence and supported knowledge transfer positively influenced adoption agility. We propose a model of agile adoption practices and discuss implications for the development of theory about network organization characteristics and capabilities to adopt IT-based innovations. European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 159–168. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000606 Keywords: agility; network organization; information system adoption; absorptive capacity
Introduction
Received: 18 May 2005 Revised: 19 June 2005 Accepted: 9 January 2006
As investment in information technology (IT) in organizations has continued to grow, there has been increased interest by the information systems (IS) community in developing practices that increase an organization’s agility or its capabilities ‘to sense and respond to predictable and unpredictable events’ (Baskerville et al., 2005, p. 3). IT innovations have a crucial role in supporting agile organizations, but the traditional view of the adoption of an IT itself is of a slow, multi-stage process (Lyytinen & Damsgaard, 2001). For organizations in rapidly changing and uncertain environments, there is increasing interest in understanding and applying organizational capabilities and environments that underlie agile adoption practices. Agility has been defined as ‘the ability to detect opportunities for innovation and seize y opportunities by assembling requisite assets, knowledge and relationships’ (Sambamurthy et al., 2003, p. 9). Agility, in this sense, is closely aligned with an organization’s absorptive capacity, or its ability to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit new knowledge (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990; Zahra & George, 2003). In the spirit of looking beyond the dominant adoption paradigm (Fichman, 2004), this exploratory case study investigates the effect of network organization form on an organization’s ability to develop agile adoption practi
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