An empirical investigation into factors relating to the adoption of Executive Information Systems: An analysis of EIS for collaboration and decision support

This study focuses on the organizational adoption of Executive Information Systems (EIS). A distinction is made between two related, complementary EIS capabilities – EIS for collaboration support (EISc) and EIS for decision support (EISd). EISc is relatively standardized and replicable, while EISd has to be developed in situ given the specific characteristics of the user and task. The adoption process is conceptualized as an initial transition from a state of nonadoption to adoption (adoption status) and subsequent internal propagation of the technology (adoption level). Data collected from a national survey are used to test hypotheses between identified contextual variables and the adoption status and adoption level of EISc and EISd. Adopters and nonadopters of both EISc and EISd do not differ in their organization size, suggesting that the traditional paradigm of ‘EIS as a technology for large firms’ is no longer true. Environmental uncertainty is found to promote the transition from a state of nonadoption to adoption of both EISc and EISd while continuing to catalyze the internal propagation of EISd. While no differences are observed in IS department size between adopters and nonadopters of EISc, our results suggest that larger IS departments provide the resource base to explore the less standardized of the two capabilities, EISd. IS support is also found to be critical for the subsequent internal propagation of EISd. Furthermore, the adoption level of both EISc and EISd are found to be promoted by top management support. Implications of these results are discussed for the organizational adoption of EIS.