Financial Inter-Organizational System Diffusion in Taiwan's Fund Management Industry: A Social Shaping of Technology Perspective

Straight-through-processing (STP) is an emerging IT-based innovation for financial services that redefines the way organizations can exchange business-critical information without manual intervention during the transaction lifecycle. While some progress has been made in understanding STP phenomena, few empirical studies have examined how STP innovation is adopted and diffused across organizations. This study utilizes the concept of social shaping of technology (SST) in conjunction with Pettigrew’s contextualist approach to investigate the early adoption and diffusion of STP innovation among market participants in Taiwan’s fund management industry. The results provide insights into how different socio-economic contexts influence the assumptions and expectations of stakeholder groups regarding the constraints and affordances of STP innovation. We believe that the adoption of STP becomes an integral part of the larger social systems in which it is embedded. Collectively, the theoretical and practical implications of this study add to the processual understanding of STP innovation from its initial adoption to its subsequent diffusion by identifying the contextual issues that challenge such transitions.