Measuring technology incorporation/infusion

For a technological innovation to be truly valuable, it must be incorporated within the adopting organization's operational or managerial work systems. Prior studies have examined an aspect of incorporation referred to as routinization (e.g., the adjustment of an organization's governance systems to account for the innovation). In this article, Robert W. Zmud and L. Eugene Apple introduce a second component of incorporation, that of infusion (e.g., the extent to which the full potential of the innovation has been embedded within an organization's operational or managerial work systems). They report findings of a combined quantitative and qualitative study aimed at measuring both the routinization and infusion of electronic scanners in supermarket chains and suggest that infusion can be measured and is distinct from routinization.