Why technology adoption succeeds or fails: an exploration from the perspective of intra-organizational legitimacy

Abstract This paper constructs an intra-organizational legitimacy analysis framework to reveal the conditional mechanisms of technology adoption at the organization level. A retrospective look on a 9-year application process of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) in a Chinese state-owned enterprise shows how the application effects of an adopted technology fluctuate with changes to intra-organizational legitimacy, which itself is composed of performance legitimacy, task legitimacy, and value legitimacy. This research indicates that gaining sufficient legitimacy is one necessity for the success of technology adoption in organizations. Basically, performance legitimacy determines how far technologies can be transferred into the corporate sector. When a new technology adoption starts with performance uncertainty, task legitimacy ensures organizational resource investments that serve to initiate and accelerate technology adoption. Value legitimacy, on the other hand, ensures informal resource input, which preserves the technology during crises for future possible reuse and advances the application when used.