Technology adoption decisions in construction organizations

Innovation and productivity improvement are essential for progress in today's U.S. construction industry. However, construction is slow in developing and adopting new technologies. Researchers need to provide managers with effective strategies to accelerate adoption of new technologies, and assist them in developing effective decision-making processes for evaluation of new technologies. The evaluation and decision-making process regarding adoption of a new technology is at the heart of the innovation process. The purpose of this research is to increase understanding of the decision-making process regarding adoption of new technologies in construction organizations. Thus, the study focused on the following three objectives: (1) Identify the decision-making process managers use. (2) Identify factors affecting the decision-making process. (3) Investigate organizational and contextual determinants of innovation. The research methodology included eight case studies of adoption of new information technology by construction firms. The first objective involved testing three decision-making models: the rational, the behavioral, and the political models. The research compared the actual decision-making process against the models implications and identified what decision-making process(es) managers use to adopt or reject new process technologies. The research concludes that the decision-making process has strong elements of the rational and the behavioral models. The results also show that some stages of the process (technology selection, cost justification, and technology implementation) support the rational model, while other stages support the behavioral model. The second objective involved examining factors affecting the decision-making process. The results indicate that the decision importance and the decision-maker's attitude towards technology affect the managerial approach to technology selection and cost justification. Results related to the third objective identified four external forces that drive construction firms to innovate and the organizational characteristics that determine the sensitivity to these forces. The four forces are: competitive advantage, technological opportunity, process problems, and external requirements. The results from this research include recommendations in three areas: strategies to improve decision-making regarding technology adoption, strategies to increase the rate of innovation in construction firms, and strategies to increase the rate of adoption for new technology in the construction industry.