E-business in community colleges: The integration of radical innovation adoption

Community colleges are concerned with the effective integration of e-business practices and processes into their institutional framework. The goal of this study was to determine if higher levels of organizational learning, market orientation, business process orientation, and technological opportunism are related to the willingness to utilize e-business capabilities and embrace radical innovation within the community college environment. The theoretical framework for this study was encapsulated within the resource-based view theory with the main idea being that if community colleges hold these four organizational capabilities then they possess certain key and valuable resources which allow them to hold a competitive advantage and provide superior value. The general hypothesis was that higher levels of organizational learning, market orientation, business process orientation, and technological opportunism are related to higher levels of radical innovation adoption within community colleges. This study was quantitative in nature such that a self-administered survey was distributed to presidents in 1,108 accredited community colleges throughout the United States. Multiple regression was used to determine which organizational behavior capabilities yielded higher levels of radical innovation adoption in the community colleges. While 10 independent variables within each of the four organizational constructs were proposed to influence e-business adoption, this study found that only four of the variables---team orientation, memory orientation, technology sensing, and technology response---positively related to radical innovation adoption using two e-business response variables. Community colleges are more likely to use e-business or have an orientation towards radical innovation adoption when organizational learning is evident, specifically a team and memory orientation, and technological opportunism exists whereby technology sensing and technology response capabilities are present. The results of this study help to better understand the organizational capabilities needed to effectively integrate e-business into the community college environment.