ACCEPTANCE OF PRACTICES: CASE BIOACTIVE INNOVATIONS IN HEALTH CARE MARKET

Earlier studies on innovations have evidenced that the innovation characteristics, and the way they are perceived, play a significant role in the adoption process. However, many of these studies treat characteristics as fixed and stable, and therefore, they are not able to shed light into the ways in which the importance of characteristics may vary in line with the arrays of activities and actors involved in the usage process. In this study, we set out to empirically explore the characteristics of a bioactive innovation directed to health care market by way of taking a practice-based framework. This framework allows us to suggest that the acceptance of an innovation is closely connected to the acceptance of existing and emerging practices. For the task, we have empirically explored, through a qualitative methodology, existing practices of the point of care testing (POCT) in the public health care market so as to understand how the innovative bioactive alternative situate to them. The practice lens developed in the study contributes to the existing innovation management literature by way of drawing detailed attention to the context-specific nature of the acceptance of innovations. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]