How Buyer-Supplier Relationships Can Lead to Suboptimal Adoption Strategies for Disruptive Technologies

Abstract

This article focuses on the antecedents of a quality adoption decision of a disruptive technology. Understanding how to make a quality adoption decision, as measured by continuance attitudes and behaviors towards the product, is of critical importance for a buying manager considering a disruptive technology. Given this challenge, a model for quality adoption decisions is proposed that considers the following precursors: interorganizational trust, mimetic competitor pressures, normative supplier pressures, efficiency motives, IT capabilities and searching efforts. This model was tested using survey results from 174 recent purchasing managers of a cloud computing service, an emerging disruptive technology. Perhaps the most unique finding is that increased normative pressures from supplying firms led to a lower quality adoption decision. Interestingly, these pressures are driven by pre-adoption levels of interorganizational trust and mimetic pressures from competitors. This finding comes in contrast to the previously held belief that strong interorganizational relationships are ideal. Instead, potential adopting managers of a disruptive technology should be driven by efficiency motives and actually aim to increase their searching efforts in order to make an optimal adoption decision. The implication from this finding suggests that relying too heavily on a strong, pre-existing interorganizational relationship can be detrimental for an adopter of a disruptive technology.