PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the influence of individual, organizational, and social contexts on internet adoption by Saudi public relations professionals.Design/methodology/approachUsing the diffusion of innovations model, this study investigates the responses of 354 Saudi public relations professionals to a survey about internet adoption in public relations‐related tasks.FindingsThe paper finds that only 46 per cent of Saudi public relations professionals adopted the internet for public relations. Organizational context variables were the influential predictors of internet adoption.Research limitations/implicationsIn the light of the intense bureaucracy in Arab organizations, scholars should be cognizant of the roles played by Arab organizational structures in the adoption of innovations.Practical implicationsWhile the adoption of innovations in Western organizations is more likely to be influenced by commercial needs, organizational structures play more defining roles in Arab organizations' adoption of innovations.Originality/valueThe study is one of the few to investigate the influence of organizational contexts on the adoption of innovations in Arab societies.
Managers from Western cultures tend to assume that efficiency and profitability will drive the adoption of new technologies by multinational conglomerates. The present study shows that for non-Western organizations, the sector that the organization operates in (public or private) and its decision-making style are also relevant factors. The research employs the diffusion of innovation model to explore Internet adoption by public relations professionals in Saudi Arabian organizations. A survey of 354 public relations professionals revealed that 93% of the professionals in the private sector had adopted the Internet, compared to 83% of their counterparts in the public sector. Professionals in the private sector ascribed relative advantage as critical for adoption. Regression analyses revealed that authoritarian decision making and organizational encouragement were predictors of adoption.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.