National culture and the adoption of new technologies

This paper and the two that follow examine a simple, yet important, question: To what extent can differences in national cultures systematically influence whether and for what reasons nations adopt – or fail to adopt – available emerging technologies? Unfortunately, little in the way of systematic research has been done on this important topic. In particular, there is a lack of grounded modeling that could help explain the culture-technology adoption relationship, as well as an absence of solid case studies exploring the impact of culture on technology adoption. To address this issue, we first examine some recent thinking about how such relationships may emerge. Based on this, specific country cases studies involving technology adoption in Brazil and South Korea are presented in the two articles that follow. Each of the three articles was researched and written by investigators from two different cultures to enhance the cross-cultural perspective of the analysis. Taken together, we hope this forum on culture and technology adoption will stimulate additional research and theory building in this area.