from Part II - Innovation Post-Adoption Process
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2026
Discontinuance of innovation is the first decision in the innovation post-adoption process. This chapter scrutinizes subsequent decisions that may follow discontinuance decision. The conventional view is that the discontinued innovation is replaced with another innovation new to the organization. Chapter 6 delineates that replacement is not the sole substitute of a discontinued innovation; rather, it is a choice against alternative substitutes that is made contingent on environmental and organizational circumstances. Additional post-adoption decisions including retraction, reinvention, re-innovation, and readoption are defined and exemplified. In the tradition of the diffusion of innovation, the post-adoption decisions have been studied mostly at the level of individual adopters. Chapter 6 focuses on organizational adopters and confers why and how organizations may choose between alternative substitutes of discontinued innovations. Two empirical studies are illustrated. Similar to the study of innovation discontinuance exemplified in Chapter 5, these studies rely on the dual explanations of rational and institutional perspectives for examining the drivers of replacement, retraction, and readoption of innovation. In combination, the studies exemplified in Chapters 5 and 6 provide a template for investigating the post-adoption process of innovation at the organization level. A process model to guide further studies is proposed.
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