Beyond Adoption: On Persisting and Quitting in Medicine

• In Event: Organizations, Science, and Expertise

Abstract

How do physicians come to persist or quit using cutting-edge medical technologies? Using 20 years of unique data on physicians’ use of surgical robotics, we study how physicians’ post-adoption decisions unfold across career stages and organizational settings. We find early adopters are ultimately early-abandoners; early adoption appears less as a long-term investment than an exploratory move – one encouraged by access to capital, exposure opportunities, and a platform for profession-wide influence. We also find mid-career adopters are most likely to persist. These findings suggest commitments to technology are path-dependent, shaped by social location in a status order, and embedded in ongoing processes of professional socialization across the life course. Because physicians’ decisions with new medical technologies both index and shape their social location in an occupation, varying by distance from medical school, they suggest the value of studying physicians’ practices well after formal training. And by treating quitting as patterned rather than particularistic, this study also suggests directions for understanding this social event elsewhere, in cases of professionals abandoning organizations, couples dissolving marriages, scientists changing research fields, and organizations dropping once-promising innovations.

Authors

• Zheng Fu, University of Arizona

• Daniel A. Menchik, University of Arizona