Explaining Web Technology Diffusion: an Institutional Theory Perspective

This article uses institutional theory as a basis to understand organizational processes that influence the extent to which web technologies that support the organization-customer relationship are adopted and subsequently diffused within an organization. The effect of coercive, mimetic, and normative processes that lead an organization to initially implement web technologies, referred to as adoption, differ from how those processes influence an organization to integrate evolving web technologies with business activities, referred to as diffusion. Adoption is presented as homogeneous across organizations and organizational populations, whereas diffusion is homogeneous within organizational populations. A theoretical model and related propositions are provided to guide future research.