An Organizational Perspective on Robotic Process Automation Adoption and Usage Factors

The adoption of Information Technologies in organizations is a crucial decision for growth, productivity, competitiveness, and even survival in an increasingly competitive market. It highlights the growing importance of automation solutions such as Robotic Process Automation to achieve or maintain competitiveness. Although there is research on Robotic Process Automation, most of it focuses on technology, and what it can provide, rather than on the effective contribution to the better performance of organizations, which depends on adoption and use. This work studies the propensity to the adoption and usage of Robotic Process Automation. As a basis for the conceptual model of this research, the Diffusion of Innovation and Technology Organization Environment theoretical models were used in order to evaluate the propensity for adoption and use of Robotic Process Automation from an organizational perspective. This research uses mixed methods. Initially, in the exploratory phase, interviews were carried out to complement the information collected in the literature with a view to developing a model for assessing the propensity to use Robotic Process Automation, and, subsequently, hypotheses were made based on the existing literature and combined with the exploratory phase results; in addition, data from surveys collected from 141 organizations were utilized to evaluate the suggested model, as well as the underlying hypotheses. The findings suggest that it is in the technological context that the antecedents prove to be significant in the propensity for the adoption and use of Robotic Process Automation, namely Compatibility and Relative Advantage. The implications of these findings are discussed from a practical and research perspective.