The structure of the firm and the adoption of process innovations

A major body of organizational and management theory indicates that the likelihood of a firm´s adopting innovations will vary directly with the firm´s complexity and inversely with its centralization and formalization. These hypotheses are tested with data from a nationwide survey on the adoption of process innovations. The results support each hypothesis. The results also indicate that, of the three structural variables, complexity plays the central role in effecting adoption behavior.