Week Two - Chris

Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation which you have experienced

For this week's exercise, I will use two related examples of change that have had (and indeed are continuing to have) a significant impact on how my organisation (a university library) provides services to users. The first is the transition from printed journals to e-journals, and the second is the adoption of e-books. While these two trends are obviously closely related, it is interesting to compare the two because they are at different stages. This can be neatly illustrated by applying diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1965) to both cases.

As discussed in class, the diffusion of innovation theory provides a model of how a new innovation propagates. Although originally conceived to describe the diffusion of innovation among individuals, the model has been extensively applied to organisations. Individuals are seen to fall into one of five categories:

1. Innovators

2. Early Adopters

3. Early Majority

4. Late Majority

5. Laggards

These categories are not evenly populated, as the two "majority" categories indicate. When plotted on a graph showing adoption of the innovation over time, the result is a bell curve.

To illustrate the following discussion, here is the familiar diagrammatic representation of Rogers' theory, with annotations indicating where I estimate both e-journal and e-book adoption to be at the moment at HKBU:

E-journals in academic libraries

Access to academic journals, which contain the latest scholarly research, are absolutely critical to the mission of the university library and indeed the university itself. As recently as fifteen years ago, virtually all of a university library's journal subscriptions would be in printed form. Today, HKBU Library has 40,258 active e-journal subscription versus just 2,965 active print subscriptions.

In the language of the diffusion of innovation model, e-journals have reached the point where there remain only a few laggards that have not adopted this innovation. These users prefer to read the hard copies of journals, however it is clear that the majority appreciate the quick and convenient access that e-journals provide. As an added benefit, the Library is able to save a significant amount of physical space that can be put to other uses.

E-books in academic libraries

Given that e-books offer similar benefits to e-journals, it is interesting to note that the rate of adoption has been comparatively much slower. While the number of e-books at HKBU Library is significant (285,159 titles), this figure is dwarfed by the size of the print collection (1,120,776 volumes). In terms of actual use, I would estimate that we are still only in the early adopter stage. Even among these early adopters, very few would have completely replaced their use of print books with e-books.

The diffusion of innovation theory might explain this relative lack of progress by speculating that the group of innovators in this area might not encompass critical individuals such as opinion leaders and change agents. Perhaps once these individuals begin to adopt and promote e-books, the penetration of this technology will increase.

Gaps in the model

There is one important aspect of these particular innovations that the model does not adequately account for. Lundblad (2003, p. 59) notes that little is said in the theory about the diffusion of innovation across organisations, as opposed to within them. This is important with respect to e-resources, because much of the impetus for adoption comes from outside the organisation, particularly from other university libraries and e-resource vendors.

This is perhaps a key gap that diminishes the explanatory power of the model as applied to the specific case of e-books. In my opinion, the primary reason for the lack of adoption is that e-book technology is not quite there yet in terms of convenience and ease of use, although it is improving. The diffusion of innovation model seems to simplistically assume that the innovation itself is adopted and spread in its final form. In reality, it will be progressively evolving, which will necessarily influence the rate of adoption. Innovators and early adopters may be more willing to put up with clunky new technologies, while the majority will expect a user-friendly experience.

Reference:

Lundblad, J. P. (2003). A review and critique of Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory as it applies to organizations. Organization Development Journal, 21(4), 50-64.

Here's the link to the fulltext in ProQuest - you'll need to login with your HKU Portal account if you're off-campus:

http://search.proquest.com.eproxy1.lib.hku.hk/docview/197971687?accountid=14548