Determinants of adoption for open-source office applications: A plural investigation

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the determinants influencing organizational adoption of vendor-supported open-source software applications or open-source office applications (OSOAs). We employed a plural investigation with QUAL/QUAN sequence. Empirical analysis of the data obtained from 257 IT managers identified various technological, organizational, and environmental determinants that influence the OSOA adoption either positively or negatively. These findings offer valuable insights for IT managers and OSOA vendors which can guide them in formulating appropriate strategies for OSOA adoption.

KEYWORDS:

• Open-source software
• open-source office applications
• adoption
• technology–organization–environment framework

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sumedha Chauhan

Sumedha Chauhan is assistant professor at Indian Institute of Management, Rohtak, India. She has pursued her doctorate in the area of IS from Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, India. Her research interests include open-source software, ERP, cloud computing, and e-learning. She has published various research papers in reputed international journals and has also presented research papers in multiple international conferences.

Mahadeo Jaiswal

Mahadeo Jaiswal, PhD, is currently the director of Indian Institute of Management, Sambalpur, India. He has been a Sr. Fulbright fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, USA during 2004–05. He has also been visiting professor at University of California and IIM Ahmedabad. His area of research and consulting includes business value and strategic capabilities of enterprise systems, IT-enabled innovation strategy, ERP on demand through cloud computing, contracting of smart energy, ERP-enabled BPR, and e-government project. He has published over 50 research papers and case studies in various international journals and conference proceedings.

Sumita Rai

Sumita Rai is PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and currently professor at Management Development Institute, India, in the area of organizational behavior. Her current areas of research include organizational justice, leadership, values, employee motivation, and mental health. She has co-authored a book titled “Millennials and workplace: Challenges for Architecting the Organization of Tomorrow,” which was published by Response Book a division of Sage Publications.

Luvai Motiwalla

Luvai Motiwalla is professor of Management Information System at University of Massachusetts Lowell and Chair of the Operations and Information Systems (OIS) Department, since 2008. Dr. Motiwalla earned his PhD in MIS, in 1989, from the University of Arizona. His current research focuses on IT usage and adoption in the mobile system context, organizational system assimilation in enterprise systems, information privacy, and data analytics. He has published two books, several articles in MIS journals and presented at numerous national and international conferences and received grants from NIH, NSF, U.S. Department of Education and funding from private foundations and firms.

Leo Pipino

Leo Pipino is emeritus professor of MIS at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His current research interests include issues in data and information quality, the effects of information quality on medical misdiagnosis and medical errors, and general application areas of analytics and data mining. He has published in journals such as Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Sloan Management Review, Expert System with Applications, and Decision Support Systems. He is coauthor of the book Journey to Data Quality