Understanding the roles of institutional pressures and organizational innovativeness in contextualized transformation toward e-business: Evidence from agricultural firms

E-business is of increasing significance in promoting agricultural economic development and restructuring and upgrading, yet agricultural firms’ transformation toward e-business in China is at a low level. To gain insights to why and how agricultural firms intend to accept or resist the revolutionary innovation of e-business, this study draws on the perspective of institutional theory and organizational innovativeness to develop an integrative model to fathom factors affecting transformation to e-business in agricultural firms in China. By analyzing the impacts of institutional pressures on perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and subsequent e-business transformation intention, the empirical results indicate that mimetic pressure, coercive pressure, and normative pressure have different levels of positive effects on perceived benefits; normative pressure has a significantly negative impact on perceived barriers, while mimetic pressure and coercive pressure have no significant effect on perceived barriers. Perceived benefits and organizational innovativeness have significantly positive impacts on e-business transformation intention, while perceived barriers have no significant effect. Perceived benefits play a partial mediating role between institutional pressures and e-business transformation intention.