Implementing Telemedicine Technology through External Learning Processes: A View from Patients.

Prior research has revealed that it is fundamentally important for organizations to be able to exploit and explore sources of knowledge outside the company by means of external relationships. However, in a healthcare setting, there has been very limited research aimed at developing an adequate framework to analyse the role played by explorative and exploitative practices with patients. This study fills this gap and proposes a framework - focusing the concept of ambidexterity context. An ambidexterity context is defined as the context where both exploration and exploitation take place simultaneously. The relevance of an ambidexterity context to explore and exploit external relationships, along with how it affects the utilization of telemedicine technology is studied through an empirical investigation involving data provided by 252 healthcare end users'. Results support that explorative and exploitative processes mediate the relationship between an ambidexterity context and the utilization of telemedicine technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]