Barriers and Value Co-Destruction in a B2B Project Management Context: Agile Software Development Adoption and Rejection in Japanese Organizations

Abstract

A new service concept meets some resistance from those who face it prior to adoption. If the resistance cannot be overcome, the new service will not be diffused. There have been many studies of business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts on adoption and rejection of product and service innovation. The question remains, what barriers should be overcome in the diffusion process of new services in the business-to-business (B2B) contexts? For example, if you implement a new service concept to your organization to create new value with your customers, what barriers does your organization need to overcome? Few studies to date have revealed the issue. To identify barriers for adoption, this study focuses on the diffusion process of the Agile software development method in Japanese organizations, which is still in progress, and attempts to approach the adoption barriers for service innovation in the B2B context to understand the barriers and leverage point for overcoming them. The Agile software development method is an innovation of software development. But there is a possibility that its diffusion will be stopped due to the resistance of project managers involved in a software development. This may lead service systems to value co-destruction as well.