High-fidelity Adoption of a New and Ambiguous Practice

Abstract

Adoption of a practice has been an important area of study in organizational research. While most prior research focused on practice adoption and diffusion within the same environment, I argue that cross-national adoption of a practice has been underexplored. An inevitable corollary is that little is known of why variation in adoption of such practice occurs. This paper drew on the institutional theory perspective to examine variation in the adoption of a new and ambiguous practice in a new receiving context. Through an inductive-qualitative study of a social entity in Thailand that has imported and promoted the adoption of an American practice, this study examined what caused variations in organizational adoptions, which, following organizational scholars, is conceptualized in this study as level of fidelity, in order to ultimately develop a model that presents what accounts for high-fidelity adoption. For high-fidelity adoption of a new and ambiguous practice to occur, this inductive study shows that it requires co-existence of four components, including knowledge transfer through the approach of communal involvement, reassurance of legitimate actors, leaders’ involvement and attention, and outcome realization. This study makes theoretical contributions by developing a process leading to high-fidelity adoption of a new and ambiguous practice, shedding light on the role of agency, and discussing practical implications and avenue for future research.