TY - JOUR A1 - Ladu, Luana A1 - Koch, Claudia A1 - Asna Ashari, Parsa A1 - Blind, K. A1 - Castka, P. T1 - Technology adoption and digital maturity in the conformity assessment industry: Empirical evidence from an international study JF - Global status and trends in Digital Transformation and Conformity Assessment N2 - Technological innovation and digitalization are transforming industries and organizations worldwide. Digital Maturity Models often serve as a reference point to monitor the digitalization progression through prescribed stages. Yet, little is still understood about (i) how a digital maturity model should be designed and deployed in a specific industry setting and (ii) the association between digital maturity and technology adoption. Building on extant literature and extensive interviews with industry experts, we first develop a digital maturity model in the context of the conformity assessment industry (a globally regulated industry responsible for assessing compliance of organizations with standards and regulations). Second, we implement the model and conduct a survey across 1447 organizations in 15 countries. Our findings reveal that the digital transformation journey of the industry progresses along five stages of maturity (with most organizations in the early/ intermediate stages of digital maturity) with distinctive patterns of technical and managerial practices across all stages. Adoption of technologies is (unsurprisingly) associated with higher digital maturity levels - albeit that association does not hold for complex technologies (such as Blockchain) and is impacted by country specifics (measured by the Digital Skills Gap Index). Our study provides insights into digital maturity and the adoption of technologies in an institutional environment that is highly regulated and conservative, in which high integrity of service provision is primary, and digitalization is a secondary focus of organizations. KW - Digital Maturity KW - Standardisation KW - Digital Maturity Scores KW - Technology Adoption KW - Digital Technologies PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-601930 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2024.102564 VL - 77 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-60193 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -