Organizational Learning Ability in the Context of Advanced IT Adoption

Information technology (IT) can help organizations achieve competitive advantages. Yet many organizations are slow to adopt IT. To explain this phenomenon a line of research has arisen, identifying the relationship between the perceived attributes of an IT and its adoption by organizations (Rogers, 1995). In particular, these perceived attributes have been found to influence the adoption rate directly. However, these perceived attributes alone are not sufficient to predict the adoption rate of IT in organizations. Attewell (1992) has pointed out that organizational learning ability is another important but often neglected factor predicting adoption. However, this hypothesis needs to be tested with empirical data. Unfortunately, there is no reliable and validated instrument available in the literature for measuring organizational learning (OL) ability in the context of IT adoption. The task of constructing such an instrument is made more difficult due to the fact that OL is a complex and abstract phenomenon most likely embodying multiple dimensions. Without first establishing the underlying dimensions of this phenomenon, it would be difficult to come up with a valid instrument to measure OL ability. Drawing from the OL literature, much of it is qualitative, and based on a process view of OL, this paper analyses the OL concept and proposes a few plausible underlying dimensions for OL ability. These dimensions are: awareness, accessibility, compatibility, codifiability and adaptability. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the OL concept and provides some clues to the construction of an instrument for measuring OL ability