New Information Technologies and Organizational Adoption: A Regulatory Focus Theory Perspective for Cross-cultural Comparisons

New information technologies (IT) pose many opportunities and threats for organizations. Decision makers are confronted with choices, whether they should actively pursue adoption of the new IT in their organizations or not. We provide an introduction to the regulatory focus theory that is relatively new in the information systems (IS) domain, and discuss how decision makers’ varying perceptions and adoption responses to new IT can be examined on the basis of this theory. Further, we suggest how the cultural context and cultural values may influence decision makers’ responses to IT by utilizing some of the concepts from the regulatory focus theory, which provides a rich context for research to expand our knowledge of cultural contexts and/or values in the IS context.