Secretly SaaS-ing: Stealth Adoption of Software-as-a-Service Research-in-Progress

摘要

Despite the wealth of research in innovation adoption, most studies assume innovation adoption to be a top-down process that is conducted with the knowledge of top management and all organizational units held responsible for managing the innovation function. Little is known about innovation adoption that is conducted in antithesis to these assumptions, or stealth adoption - i.e., innovation adoption by organizational unit managers conducted without the knowledge of top management and key internal stakeholders. We identify stealth adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as the phenomenon of interest. We examine the organizational conditions in which stealth adoption would occur. We elaborate on organizational conditions using the structural and relational embeddedness perspectives. The primary outcome of our work is a multilevel conceptual model describing the structural and relational conditions that encourage stealth adoption. We also incorporate formal control mechanisms into this conceptual model.