Electronic health records adoption: Do institutional pressures and organizational culture matter

Electronic health records have recently received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners. Nonetheless, research exploring the antecedents of adoption is limited. In this study, drawing on the institutional theory and theory of planned behavior, we propose a model to empirically investigate the salience of institutional pressures (i.e., coercive, normative and mimetic) to attitude towards electronic health records and adoption intention, and how such effects are moderated by organizational culture. The study used data drawn from a field survey conducted with 322 health practitioners to empirically test the proposed research model. The results revealed the significant effects of institutional pressures on attitude towards electronic health records. Moreover, attitude was also indicated to have a significant positive relationship with practitioner's intention to adopt electronic health records. In addition, it was revealed that, organizational culture significantly moderates the relationship between practitioners' attitude towards electronic health records and adoption intention. The implications of the study findings are discoursed on, and suggestions for future research and policy are succinctly spelt out.