The institutionalization of computing in complex organizations

Complex organizations spend significant resources acquiring new processes and technologies . However, there is no assurance that organizational members will embrace these technologies once they are adopted . Organizational leaders have a strong incentive to ensure that new practices persist, and that technological changes become so routine as to be taken for granted : a process called institutionalization . The research reported here examines the determinants of institutionalization of computing in a class of complex organizations—municipal governments in the United States—using longitudinal data from 130 organizations collected in 1975 and 1985 . The findings indicate that institutionalization is associated with both internal and external factors, but that the strength of internal factors is less prominent than suggested by earlier, cross-sectional studies.