It Standard Implementation and Business Process Outcomes - an Empirical Analysis of XML in the Publishing Industry

Despite huge incentives and investments in information technology (IT) standards, many firms still fail to fully benefit from their implementations. To explain such failures, we examine why some firms benefit more from IT standard implementation than others. Specifically, we look at the implementation of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) from a technological diffusion perspective, and investigate under what contextual conditions the extent of XML implementation has the greatest effect on business process outcomes. Using empirical data from the publishing industry (N=188), we find that the extent of XML implementation impacts business process outcomes, and both business process radicalness of XML implementation and related XML knowledge play moderating roles. For information systems (IS) practice, this study helps managers direct their attention to the most promising factors and elaborates on their differential effects on business process outcomes. For IS research, it integrates innovation diffusion theory into our current knowledge of IT implementation and provides theoretical explanations for XML implementation successes and failures.