The impact of organizational context on innovation adoption in commercial banks

This study examines the linkages between nonstructured factors in an organization's context and dimensions of innovation adoption in organizations. Elements of an organization's context included in this study are size, geographic scope, and product scope; dimensions of innovation are magnitude and speed of adoption and product and process types of innovation. The relationships among these variables are examined by a sampling of empirical data culled from 101 commercial banks in four states: New York; New Jersey; Connecticut; and Massachusetts. We found that: (1) organization size and geographic scope have a stronger association with magnitude than the speed of adoption, while product scope is more strongly linked to the speed of adoption; (2) geographic and product scope influence the propensity to adopt product and process innovations differently; and (3) the pattern of innovation adoption differs among various types of banks.