Authors: Jens Hultman
The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss a framework to study the embeddednessof technology adoption. This paper embraces the view expressed under the notion ?nobusiness is an island?, here labeled and discussed as the embeddedness argument. The viewemphasizes that firms and firm decisions and technology need to be studied with reference tothe context, e.g., forces and constraints, which they are embedded in. If the phenomenon isstudied in isolation, scholars might be misled. The proposed framework is sorted under thefollowing four facets: relational embeddedness, structural embeddedness, institutionalembeddedness and temporal embeddedness. The idea is that, based on prevalent studies, wecan structure our conceptualization around four different facets of embeddedness. Theframework builds heavily on the Granovetterian delineation of structural and relationalembeddedness, and adds to that an institutional dimension and a temporal dimension. Thesefacets differ quite extensively in terms of analytical foci, level of analysis and disciplinarybackground. Therefore, the paper is concluded with a discussion on applicability andseparability of the facets of the framework and if the concept of embeddedness could noteasily become empty if applied with to much broadness?
Journal: ( – )
Web Address:
Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)