Document Type

Article

Abstract

Among emerging Service-oriented technologies, Web Services as representative of such innovation has gained increasing attention and received extensive studies from both academia and industry. In this study, we look at Web Services innovation from a more theoretical viewpoint. Based on hypothetical presumptions, we propose a dual-core model that treats such innovation at a strategic level according to its peculiar characteristics. We question the validity of using two prevailing innovation theories, Tornatzky and Fleischer’s contextual framework, and Swanson’s innovation typology respectively. We argue that simply apply either of above theories would miss important attributes of Web Services; if use both, it would be too complex and lose the foci. We therefore compose a synthetic viewpoint, on the basis of Web Services primary characteristics in order to obtain a thorough understanding of this innovation and give recommendation to general adopters. We also suggest that adoption of IS innovation is conjectured to be patterned in terms of the scope of e-business enablement across organizations, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The argument is exemplified through the diffusion of Web Service innovation in order to make our analysis focused on a representative case of IS innovation among organizations as well as keep generalization for articulating further research into issues which share common attributes of Web Services.

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