Abstract

In this paper, we contend that due to the particularities and widespread use of new ICT, traditional ways of explaining IT adoption in companies-rational decision making, technology diffusion models, and the psychology of the decision maker-are insufficient to explain some observed cases of ICT diffusion. We prove that there is a new role played by the user community in the technology adoption process, brought about by factors like the existence of a strong development community in the case of OSS, or widespread access to Internet technology. A mixed two-phase method was used for this study. In the first phase, through a qualitative analysis of some significant cases we depicted under which conditions a significant adoption of a particular technology (OSS) might unfold, showing that in some circumstances user groups could play a significant role. In the second phase an exploratory quantitative analysis was carried out to verify the new dimensions of the technology adoption process. The results showed a high influence of social factors like peer group adoption and user’s pressure. Due to reasons of geographical proximity the research was carried out in Spanish companies, but we believe that, like with similar adoption studies, the results are of general nature as there are no culturally specific dimensions that we could identify. Conclusions and further research are outlined.

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