Unified Modeling Language (UML) IT adoption — A holistic model of organizational capabilities perspective Vicky Ching Gu a, 1 , Qing Cao a, ⁎, Wenjing Duan b, 2 a Area of Information Systems and Quantitative Sciences, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409‐2101, United States b Department of Information System & Technology Management, School of Business, Funger Hall, Suite 515, The George Washington University, 2201 G Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 2 June 2010 Received in revised form 28 February 2012 Accepted 20 May 2012 Available online xxxx Keywords: IT diffusion IT adoption Business process reengineering UML Organizational capabilities This study develops an integrated research model to examine various factors affecting the IT adoption in the context of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML is one type of business process modeling techniques, which in turn is a key aspect of the business process reengineering. The proposed research model is based on IT adoption framework and organizational culture theory. The model identifies fourteen variables, covering seven broad categories (IT characteristics, organization technology, environment, organization structure, or- ganization process, organization culture, and project culture) that could potentially impact UML adoption in organizations. This comprehensive conceptual model is further validated by survey data collected from 251 North American organizations across five different industries. Our results support the proposed conceptual- ization and shed new light on the key factors associated with firms' adoption of UML technologies. Theoret- ical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The significance of understanding Information Technology (IT) adoption is well documented [1]. Considerable scholarly research has focused on investigating the impact of one or several of these factors (e.g., IT characteristics, organization technology, environment, organization structure, organization process, and organization culture) in different environmental settings [32,57,58,76]. Extant research has recognized the importance of technological, organizational, and environmental factors (TOE framework) in influencing IT adoption [8,14,80,83]. In spite of prior research that has found strong empirical support for the TOE framework, much fruitful theoretical work remains to be conducted. For instance, previous studies have proposed that IT adoption is affected by organization structure [14,17,60], organization process [12,14,56,76] and organization culture as well as project culture [52,60,80,84]. In spite of extensive prior studies, there is a lack of comprehensive and integrative understanding, from the organizational culture perspective, on the IT adoption process, which is crucial for both prac- titioners and researchers in terms of generating deeper understand- ing of IT adoption. To fill this void, we extend the TOE framework in our research to incorporate organizational culture theory such as organization structure, organization process, organization culture, and project culture. Thus, practitioners may benefit from the holistic analysis of the determinants of IT adoption, and managers interested in introducing new technologies may be able to understand and act more effectively in terms of how to better facilitate IT adoption. The objective of this paper is therefore to identify a holistic IT adop- tion model to investigate three research questions on how various orga- nizational factors will impact the IT adoption process. The purpose of this study is threefold. First, it seeks to investigate whether the techno- logical, organizational, and environmental antecedents tailored for a specific context affect IT adoption. Second, it aims to explore whether various organizational idiosyncratic factors (organization structure, organization process and organization culture) determine their IT adop- tion. Third, it attempts to show the superiority of the holistic IT adoption model as compared to a traditional TOE framework. These research questions are examined in the context of Unified Modeling Language (UML) adoption using survey data collected in the United States across five industries. UML is a visual and graphical modeling language and has been increasingly used in the past decade in software engineering and e-commerce [1], enterprise modeling, business engineering, process analysis and system configuration [81]. The adoption of UML in organizational computing represents a major change in information systems development and implementa- tion [27,72]. Despite the perceived benefits and its promotion by many industry leaders and the Object Management Group (OMG), the adoption of UML has progressed slowly [71]. High level of com- plexity of UML makes learning and adopting UML problematic, espe- cially when IT people were lacking of the prerequisite skills [24]. In Decision Support Systems xxx (2012) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 1 806 742 3919; fax: +1 806 742 3193. E-mail addresses: vickyching.gu@ttu.edu (V.C. Gu), qing.cao@ttu.edu (Q. Cao), wduan@gwu.edu (W. Duan). 1 Tel.: +1 806 742 3547. 2 Tel.: +1 202 994 3217; fax: +1 202 994 5830. DECSUP-12082; No of Pages 13 0167-9236/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2012.05.034 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Decision Support Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dss Please cite this article as: V.C. Gu, et al., Unified Modeling Language (UML) IT adoption — A holistic model of organizational capabilities per- spective, Decis. Support Syst. (2012), doi:10.1016/j.dss.2012.05.034