IT Governance in Post-Adoption Stages of CRM Diffusion: An Institutional Perspective

Drawing upon the structuration theory of technology assimilation and the literature on IT governance, this study develops a conceptual model to examine the role of IT governance in post-adoption stages of CRM diffusion. We conceptualize decision execution mechanisms of IT governance as including two dimensions—vertical advocacy from top management and horizontal coordination between business and IT managers, which are assumed to facilitate CRM use and value creation. We analyze a dataset of 82 Chinese firms. Our results show that: (1) vertical advocacy and horizontal coordination, significantly contribute to the three stages of CRM diffusion; (2) vertical advocacy has a greater effect on CRM diffusion than horizontal coordination; (3) CRM use creates operational and strategic benefits in customer-oriented business processes, which further improves firm performance.