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survey instruments that might be used to operationalize our constructs. In Section 4
we discuss the study's implications and contributions. Being research-in-progress, in
section 5, we outline the next steps in our research to describe how we plan to execute
the study's next phase.
2 Theoretical Foundations
We focus on examining the behaviour of
individual users
rather than an organisation
as a whole because, although a particular methodology is developed and implemented
by an organisation, the extent of its use is usually decided by the methodology's
actual users [37,26]. We also focus only on the use of
methodologies
instead of meth-
ods/techniques (e.g., stakeholder analysis, earned value analysis, etc.) and tools (e.g.,
CASE tools, Word/Excel templates, project management software, etc.), because
tools, techniques, and methods can be used in the absence of a formal methodology,
and the use of a methodology represents a radical change [22]. Reasons why new
methodology adoption and use might be so different from and so much more chal-
lenging than the adoption of specific methods and tools lies partly in the tacit organ-
isational and individual problems caused by the new methodology introduction.
For example, the stress associated with the learning of a new methodology, fear, the
impact on self-esteem and identity associated with the organisational restructuring or
re-engineering as well as the emotional costs of role conflict and ambiguity and/or
workplace transformation might be serious inhibitors of methodology acceptance and
usage [51].
DOI has been used over the past five decades to study how innovations diffuse and
become adopted within wider social networks [38]. While early research using DOI
concentrated on the diffusion and acceptance of products, the research community
recently reached consensus on the fact that
ideas
and
practices
such as methodologies
can also be regarded as innovations if they are perceived to be new by the potential
adopter [38]. The foundations of DOI can be traced back to the three mainstream
school of thoughts of Bass [5], Moore [30], and Rogers [38], with the Rogers gaining
more attention and popularity. Bass [5] used mathematical methods to develop a
model of innovations diffusions in 1969 in which he proposed five adopter categories
depicting which type of person adopt innovations, and when: innovators, early adopt-
ers, the early majority, the late majority, and laggards. Moore [30] developed his own
model of technology diffusion using the same adopter categories and the same terms
as Bass [5].
The major difference between the two schools was that Moore's [30] work was
based on the assumption of a discontinuous innovation process and focused only on
organization, with a new technology adoption requirement. However, the best-known
innovation diffusion theory was introduced by Rogers in 1962 in
Diffusion of Innova-
tions
. Rogers classifies diffusion in his innovation adoption framework into five
stages: innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and laggards,
with 2.5%, 13.5%, 34%, 34%, and 16% of the population respectively. According to
Rogers, one of the most influential factors that determine an innovation's adoption
rate is the innovation itself, i.e. its
characteristics
. Furthermore, differences between
the adoption stages, i.e. how quickly an innovation gets adopted, depends on adopter
