Decision Sciences Journal
Volume 31, Number 3
Summer 2000
Swiftness and Intensity of Administrative Innovation Adoption:
An Empirical Study of TQM in Information Systems
T. Ravichandran
Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, NY 12180, e-mail: ravit@rpi.edu
Abstract. Considerable attention has been directed
toward developing a more complete understanding of innovation
adoption by Information Systems (IS) departments. Much of this
research has focused on the adoption of technological innovations,
and limited research has focused on the adoption of administrative
innovations. This paper focuses on an administrative innovation
that is increasingly becoming popular among IS departments, namely
Total Quality Management (TQM) in systems development. A synthesis
of the IS innovation and TQM literatures was conducted to identify
environmental, organizational, and task-related factors that
should relate to both the swiftness and the intensity of TQM
adoption. The relationships between the identified variables
and TQM adoption were examined using data collected from 123
IS departments in Fortune 1000 firms and large government agencies
in the U.S. The results indicate that TQM adoption in systems
development is influenced by the host organization’s quality
orientation and factors internal to the IS department including
IS management support for quality, the presence of a separate
quality assurance function, and the structural complexity of
the IS department. Implications of this study for theory, future
research, and practice are discussed.
Subject Areas: Diffusion of Innovations, Information
Systems Management, Systems Quality, and Total Quality Management. |