Key factors influencing enterprise to improve it application level: Stage difference research — An empirical research on 165 enterprises through field study

Though there were a large number of researches on critical success factors of enterprise information technology (IT) applications, but lack of researches on the difference during the different stages of IT assimilation. Because of this, this article discusses the influence difference of five managerial key factors inside organization to the enterprises IT application level during the stages of adoption and routinization, such as top management support, staff participation, business-IT alignment, capability on the regulation and process management, as well as organization culture. The results show that top management support and organization culture show a stronger influence on the adoption stage, staff participation and the capability on regulation and process management show a stronger influence on routinization stage than on adoption stage, and the business-IT alignment has no significant difference. The research findings promote the research on IT assimilation and are helpful to understand the influence of managerial factors on different stages as well as taking improvements.