How health care delivery organizations can exploit eHealth innovations: : An integrated absorptive capacity and IT governance explanation

Because health care delivery organizations (HDOs) increasingly rely on information technology (IT) in their delivery of health care services, recognition of how to exploit innovative electronic health (eHealth) technologies is crucial. We integrated absorptive capacity and governance perspectives to theorize that an HDO’s eHealth absorptive capacity is a dynamic IT capability to exploit eHealth innovations through the appropriate use of IT governance mechanisms. Drawing on absorptive capacity theory, we conceptualized an HDO’s eHealth potential absorptive capacity as consisting of eHealth entrepreneurial alertness and assimilation. We draw on the theoretical perspectives of IT governance to identify two modes of eHealth governance—relational and contractual—and theorize how each of them affected the relationship between eHealth potential absorptive capacity and eHealth exploitation. Valid empirical data were gathered from 182 senior executive representatives in 111 HDOs; we discovered that (1) eHealth potential absorptive capacity can be formatively conceptualized as a second-order construct consisting of eHealth entrepreneurial alertness and eHealth assimilation, (2) eHealth potential absorptive capacity affects eHealth exploitation, and (3) relational governance significantly moderates the influence of eHealth potential absorptive capacity on eHealth exploitation. We discussed the implications of our work for how HDOs can govern eHealth initiatives to expand absorptive capacity for eHealth innovations and effectively exploit them.