Dismantling the Environmental Context - the Role of Environmental Characteristics in the Organizational Adoption of Open Standard-Based Inter-Organizational Information Systems

Open standard-based inter-organizational information systems play a critical role in today’s organizations and their relationships with business partners. However, theoretical understanding of organizational adoption of such systems in existing research is limited. Prior studies highlight the role of the external business environment in influencing organizational adoption of such systems, but lack focus on the various environmental context characteristics influencing organizational adoption decisions. This study conducts a structured analysis of scientific literature on factors of the organizational, technological, and environmental contexts that are able to influence the organizational adoption of open standard-based inter-organizational information systems. Using the results of the literature analysis, this study focuses on the critical role of the business environment in influencing organizational adoption of such systems and derives a typology of environmental context characteristics exhibiting inherently differing types of business environment related influence on organizational adoption decisions. The derived typology leads to a better theoretical understanding of organizational adoption of such systems and provides practitioners with a structured view on the external forces operating in the business environment of their organization. Finally, the study discusses important implications for future research in this context as well as for decision makers considering the adoption of particular systems.