Towards an Organisational Readiness Framework for Emerging Technologies: an Investigation of Antecedents for South African Organisations’ Readiness for Server Virtualisation

The lack of unifying frameworks to investigate emerging technologies and changing practices in organisations remains a major challenge to the Information Systems body of knowledge. This study developed and validated a new conceptual readiness framework NOIIE (an acronym for National e-readiness, Organisational preparedness, Industrial relationships, Internal resistance and External influence), for investigating organisational readiness for emerging technologies and applications. Server virtualisation was used as a pilot technology to investigate the antecedents for the readiness of 83 South African organisations for emerging technologies through a quantitative approach and an online survey. The readiness of South African organisations for server virtualisation was impressive, as 73% of organisations surveyed had implemented server virtualisation to one extent or another. The NOIIE framework was validated, as national e-readiness, organisational preparedness and industrial relationships were found to be highly significant and positive contributors to organisational readiness for adopting server virtualisation in South African organisations. The NOIIE framework could be further developed and used to investigate other emerging technologies in organisations in developing countries.