ORGANIZATIONAL ADOPTION OF DIGITAL INNOVATION: THE CASE OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

With the increasing digitalization of the economy, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to embrace digital innovation. The emergence of blockchain technology exemplifies the disruptive impact of digital innovation and, simultaneously, poses challenges for organizations. Hence, organizations are in transition with regard to fostering its organizational adoption. This kind of adoption is reflected in far-reaching measures in terms of technology, organization, and people. The measures are governed by project management that aligns internal measures with the outside environment. Based on this framework, our research builds on an empirical study to explore the organizational adoption of blockchain technology. We conducted in-depth interviews in 11 cases with experts leading the adoption of blockchain. The objective of our study is to better understand organizational adoption and to explore the factors influencing adoption. Our results uncover a multitude of factors and inherent tensions. The paper’s contributions are twofold. First, our findings can be used as guidelines for organizations planning to adopt digital innovations such as blockchain and to effectively cope with the related phenomena. Second, the factors advance the literature on blockchain by conceptualizing its organizational adoption and aligning the factors to the organizational adoption framework