Depth and Breadth in innovation Implementation: The Case of School-Based Management

Abstract Once an innovation is created and developed (either within or outside of an organization), how should it be introduced and implemented by an adopting organization? in particular, if management has made the strategic choice to adopt an administrative innovation throughout its organization, should management begin by concentrating its implementation efforts in depth in one or two specific organizational subunits, or in breadth across all organizational subunits? The first approach, which we will call a depth adoption strategy, assumes that after an innovation has been successfully adopted and debugged by a demonstration unit, it can be transferred and diffused to other organizational units. The second approach, called a breadth adoption strategy, assumes that a more effective way to change an organization is to introduce and implement an innovation across the board, often through successive hierarchical levels across all organizational units.