Adoption and use of new technology

Adoption of new technology at an organizational level, in this case LEAs, is subject to a variety of factors. Organizational adoption occurs in two stages: initiation and completion (Zaltman, Duncan, and Holbek, 1973). In the initiation stage, the organization becomes aware of the innovation, develops an attitude about the innovation, and evaluates the innovation. In the completion stage, the organization decides to acquire the innovation and use it. The innovation process is a success when the innovation is accepted and integrated into the organization (Rogers, 1995).

In the diffusion of innovations theory, Rogers identified five attributes that impact the rate of adoption: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability (Rogers, 1995). Relative advantage is the degree to which an innovation is perceived to be better than the idea, practice, or object that it supersedes. Compatibility focuses on how consistent the innovation is with the existing values, needs, and past experiences of members of the organization. Complexity centers on the difficulty in using, learning, and understanding the innovation. Trialability is the degree to which the innovation can be experimented with on a partial or step by step basis. Observability measures how the results of the innovation are made available to others.

The TOE framework states that three aspects of a firm’s context influence technology adoption and implementation: technological, organizational, and environmental context (Tornatzky and Fleischer, 1990). Organizational context is defined as the characteristics of the organization including the firm’s size, degree of centralization, degree of formalization, and managerial structure. The technological context includes the internal and external technologies that are relevant to the firm. The environment context includes the firm’s competitors, market structure, macroeconomic context, and the regulatory environment. Later studies validated the view of the TOE framework and found that the technology adoption decision relies on both internal and external environments of the organization (Chau and Tam, 2000; Kim and Galliers, 2004; Kuan and Chau, 2001; Zhu, Kraemer, and Xu, 2002).