Understanding SaaS adoption from the perspective of organizational users: A tripod readiness model

•We examine factors that influence how ready organizational users are to adopt SaaS.•SaaS adoption depends on technological, organizational and environmental readiness.•Survey study in China support the importance of each aspect of SaaS Readiness.•Different aspects of SaaS Readiness vary in priorities at decision and use stages.

As an innovation that revolutionizes application delivery based on cloud-computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS) has seen a tremendous growth during the last few years. However, its diffusion is not evenly distributed: some organizational users are open to SaaS but others are still hesitant despite the huge cost saving it may bring. The behavioral impacts of SaaS are far-reaching and the new socio-technical phenomenon deserves a close look. Based on the literature review, this study proposes a tripod model of SaaS Readiness that suggests that organizational users need to get prepared from technological, organizational and environmental aspects for the adoption of SaaS. The empirical results support that all three aspects are important for SaaS adoption yet their influences vary across psychological and overt outcome variables.