Aligning adoption messages with audiences' priorities: A mixed-methods study of the diffusion of enterprise architecture among the US state governments
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Prior studies on the diffusion of complex Information Systems (IS) innovations have leaned on the rhetoric of persuasion perspective to formulate rhetorical strategies that can persuade adopters to engage in adoption behaviors. Yet, most of them ignore the shifting priorities and changing identity of the audience. To address this gap, we extend the perspective by examining how innovators need to evolve the adoption message of an innovation by aligning it with the audience's diverse and shifting priorities (and related identities). We trace rhetorical changes that the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) introduced to promote the diffusion of enterprise architecture (EA) between 2000 and 2012 among the 50 US states. We conduct a mixed methods analysis: first we qualitatively discern changes in the content of the rhetoric (message change); then we use a latent semantic analysis to measure the frame resonance between NASCIO's shifting rhetoric and the audience's changing priorities (alignment with audience priorities). Our findings highlight the importance of: 1) frame ambiguity that renders a complex IS innovation appealing to varied audiences over its diffusion trajectory; and 2) listening to the community members' priorities and aligning the adoption message with their dominant beliefs. Our analysis posits the rhetoric of identification as a complementary lens to account for the co-evolution of shared priorities and identity alignments between innovators and their audiences.
期刊介绍:
Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.