Organizational culture and information systems adoption: a three-perspective approach

Organizational culture continues to be cited as an important factor in the success or failure of information systems (IS) adoption. This is evidenced by the growing trend in the number of studies that address cultural issues in IS literature over the last several decades. Regardless of the contribution of many research studies up to now, various challenges still need to be addressed: firstly, studies continue to view culture as well integrated and shared equally among organizational members; secondly, there is a tendency for studies to downplay the dynamics of culture and how this influences IS adoption over time; and thirdly, there is an increased need to analyze culture using in-depth interpretative and longitudinal methods. This paper proposes that our understanding of IS culture can be enhanced by combining theoretical approaches in which the weakness of one approach can be complemented by the strength of another. More specifically, by combining Martin's (2002) three perspectives on culture — integration, differentiation and fragmentation and grid and group cultural theory (for instance, Douglas, 1970; Thompson et al., 1990), can offer a more penetrating account of how organizational culture influences IS adoption. This argument is demonstrated using an in-depth interpretative (retrospective) case study of a further and higher education college in the UK and its unsuccessful attempt to adopt a virtual learning environment (VLE).