Adoption and Diffusion of Management Innovation: an Interactive Framing Perspective

This paper reports on a year-long field study investigating the adoption and diffusion of management innovation within a large UK-based hospital. Specifically, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the implementation of electronic medicine charts technology (EMEDs) and the associated changes in practices it induced among physician, nurse, and pharmacist groups. Using the concept of interactive framing as an analytical lens, we analyzed the interactions between implementers and users that spanned these different groups to develop an understanding of how actors cognitively made sense of the new innovation leading to its adoption and diffusion. Our findings allowed us to advance a socio-cognitive model of innovation adoption and diffusion that accounts for the cognitions, actions, and interactions of actors as they make sense of management innovation. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and practice.