A behavioral approach to organizational innovation adoption

The effective adoption of continuously developing new technologies is a critical determinant of organizational competitiveness. However, the current literature provides scant understanding on the issue of how organizations actually adopt innovations, instead offering divergent and contradictory conceptualizations, as well as models of adoption, as a dichotomous choice rather than organizational behavior. Respectively, this study introduces a customer-dominant logic lens in the organizational adoption context to provide a behavioral approach on organizational innovation adoption. The study examines four qualitative cases and contributes to the literature by conceptualizing the continuous and specific adoption activities that organizations engage in for adoption, identifying goals and technical infrastructure, business relationships, and key individuals as the main elements in organizations that shape the activities and thus adoption behaviors, and providing an example typifying different kinds of adoption behaviors. These new conceptualizations and the empirical accounts regarding organizational adoption behavior provide implications for further research and for management.