Perspectives On The Adoption / Rejection Of Innovative Technologies Revisited - Insights From The IS Outsourcing Context

Adoption of innovative technologies has been investigated using different theoretical perspectives for many years. In the research field of Management, Abrahamson has suggested four perspectives to explain the adoption / rejection behavior. Similarly, in our field, Fichman has provided us with different adoption perspectives. A review and comparison of these adoption perspectives yields common roots, but also some differences. While revisiting the common roots and integrating the perspectives offered by Abrahamson and Fichman in one framework, we identified two additional perspectives: pushed-selection and transfer perspective. The two additional perspectives seem to be particularly relevant for capturing the adoption decision of innovations in interorganizational relationships. As such, we explore our extended framework in the context of a present innovative technology: information technology (IT) outsourcing governance tools. Our results suggest that a combination of theoretical perspectives is appropriate to explain reasons for their adoption / rejection. This study contributes to adoption research by introducing two new perspectives on the adoption of innovative technologies. The two perspectives offer also important implications for practice.

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