Network technology adoption by US Biotechnology firms: a contextual approach of social media applications

Abstract

The biotechnology industry is a knowledge-intensive industry that uses sophisticated production processes in which secrecy plays a key role. This paper investigates the contextual organisational characteristics such as firm size, firm age, and strategies of companies in the biotechnology sector that have adopted social media applications. A hypothetico-deductive method is used in this empirical study. The hypotheses were tested in 639 US Biotechnology firms, using the BioScan Database and an analysis of the firms' websites. Results suggest that social media tools analysed as an aggregate construct can produce misleading results. Except for marketing strategies, contextual characteristics differently affect the number and type of social media used.