Analysing the diffusion and adoption of mobile IT across social worlds

Abstract
Diffusion and adoption of IT innovations (such as mobile IT) in health care organizations is a dynamic process of change involving multiple stakeholders with competing interests, varying commitments and values. Yet, extant literature on mobile IT diffusion and adoption has predominantly focused on organizations and individuals as the unit of analysis with little emphasis on the environment in which health care organizations are embedded. We propose the social worlds approach as a promising theoretical lens to deal with this limitation and reports from a case study of a mobile IT innovation in elderly home care in Denmark including both the socio-political level and organization level within the analysis. By using notions of social worlds, trajectories and boundary objects, we show how mobile IT innovation in Danish home care facilitated negotiation and collaboration across different social worlds at one time and become source of tension and conflicts at other times. The trajectory of mobile IT adoption was shaped by influential stakeholders in the Danish home care sector, it involved boundary objects across multiple social worlds to legitimize adoption, but the use arrangement afforded by the new technology interfered with important aspects of home care practices creating resistance among the health care personal.