Diffusion of Innovations
and Related Theories

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Tangential Theories & Constructs

Success Factors Theory

Ely (1990) notes that adoption yields nothing of value to the organization, but reaping advantages of an innovation is an entirely different act - probably performed by an entirely different group of people. Gersick (1991) treated the other side of the coin, suggesting that significant changes can be highly disruptive. As an alternative to theories which focus on perceptions, Ely (1990, 1999) cites a number of important success factors in implementation. These are described below in terms of a technology innovation in the Solomon Islands (Chand et al., 2005) where rural subsistence farmers have been successfully equipped with email.

1. Dissatisfaction with the status quo. The people served by the project were isolated from friends and relatives, and travel by available means (usually hand-paddled canoes) was time-consuming and fatiguing.
2. Existence of knowledge and skills. From each village to be served, a volunteer operator was selected and trained at a central site.
3. Availability of resources. A tapestry of government grants provided equipment for each site and infrastructure. The system uses shortwave radios to communicate, and the remote sites use photovoltaic energy sources to make them autonomous.
4. Availability of time. Surprisingly, this has proved a constraint. Kaitu'u (personal communication via email, February 17, 2006), a station operator, expressed consternation with expectations that he spend much time he needs to be cultivating crops, transmitting and receiving email for a the local equivalent of $27 US per month - far from enough to make up for the cost to his farming activity. A cognate problem is cultural concepts of time: At some stations the local operator has not kept the schedule as posted, leading to frustration among users (Chand et al., 2005, p. 49) .
5. Rewards or incentives exist. Simply being able to communicate with a several-hour turnaround instead of days or weeks of travel, is sufficient incentive for users. For the operator, the fees paid by users form an incentive (although it is not enough to really be worth his while as stated above).
6. Participation. Once a few people tried the system and discovered it worked, more came on board until it because a routine part of life in the community. The facilitative efforts of operators helped, since communication did not require active participation of email receivers.
7. Commitment. Reliable access to the system is important. The operator considers his service to be an important community asset. The computer used has "died" once, and was out of commission for some weeks as a result. The community having no alternatives, simply had to be patient.
8. Leadership. The central site at the capital is well-organized and its leaders have managed to transcend political upheaval in the country.

Habit Construct

Limayem and Hirt (2003) and Limayem, Hirt, and Chin (2001) studied the effects of habit on IT usage, concluding that habit moderates the link between intention to use and actual usage. A person who has actually used a specific behavior is more likely to carry forth their reasoned decision to use it in the future. Verplanken, Aarts, and Van Knippenberg (1996) found that habit had a strong influence on behavior for routine activities. Oulette and Wood (1998) went a step further, asserting that application of rational thinking to behavior is less likely in routine situations - meaning that if you wish someone to think, you should set up circumstances that they will perceive as unusual. They divide such circumstances into rarely-performed behaviors, and choices made in the face of uncertainty. Ajzen (2002) cautioned, however, that habit is difficult to measure because one may actually be measuring previous decisions.

Adaptive Structuration Theory

A major challenge for diffusion study is the complexity of life. There is a dynamic relationship between various actors involved in diffusion. DeSanctis and Poole (1994) describe this view as Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST). Creators of technology may adapt it as they discover needs for an improved fit between the technology and targeted users. The users may adapt the technology (Morrison, Roberts, & Hippel, 2000) or use it in unanticipated ways (e. g. a monkey climbing a stick before it falls over to reach a banana hung from the ceiling, rather than using the stick to knock the banana down). Or, new technology can impact culture directly. As stated by DeSanctis and Poole (1994):

Change occurs as members of organizational groups bring the structural potential of these new technologies into interaction, appropriating available structures during the course of idea generation, conflict management, and other group decision activities.

This researcher experienced AST when performing the simple task of moving an email server. Careful planning reduced the downtime to less than ten minutes. The process was interrupted and slightly lengthened by a demand (issued while the server was being rolled down the hall) that the system be switched back on instantly so that payroll could be run. The person who was responsible for signing off on minor exceptions to payroll policy had within two years switched from avoiding all direct computer use, to near-total dependence on email for an essential step in the organization's processes. The idea of using paper to establish a trail for those decisions had not only become secondary, it had vanished. This stage is termed "routinization" by Rogers (2003, p. 428) .

Compatibility and Connectedness Constructs

New technologies, if radical, can suffer initially from a lack of connectedness with existing technologies. Rogers (2003, p. 15) uses the construct Compatibility to describe this dimension. Hiltz and Turoff (1981), for instance, studied email in an early incarnation. Their research determined that users wanted "group conferences, notebooks for text composition, and self-defined commands." The universal connectivity considered foundational 25 years later was a distant dream.

A related issue is competing technologies that have similar value. Kraut et al. (1998) describe such a situation, with two video-telephone systems which were introduced into a company simultaneously. In time one of them prevailed and the other withered - for no particular reason other than chance. This was a simple case in which the two systems were incompatible. If they had been partially compatible (able to communicate cross-system, but with somewhat reduced capability), one may safely assume that the results would have been murky from a research standpoint.

Thus the issue of compatibility confounds researchers. This phenomenon may illuminate the analysis of Igbaria, Parasuraman, and Baroundi (1996), who were unable to identify any construct that explained a major portion of usage variation.