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Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for major sources of employment, technological advancements, and competitive advantages for both developed and developing countries. Therefore, there is an increasing reckoning of entrepreneurship, which is the bedrock of SMEs as an important driver of economic growth, productivity, innovation, and employment, and it is widely accepted as a key aspect of economic dynamism. Transforming ideas into economic opportunities is the decisive issue of entrepreneurship (Baporikar, 2020b; 2018a; 2018b). Further, the information technology revolution has had a tremendous impact on the socio-economic development of not only individuals and organizations but also countries (Asongu and Le Roux, 2017). Owing to the intensified competitive pressure and necessity for entering to global market undergone by SMEs, these businesses are incrementally employing Information Technology (IT) to take advantage of its substantial benefits. The globalization of the economy is forcing many enterprises to change to survive. To compete in these global markets, many manufacturing SMEs need to develop new business strategies and employ new technologies. However, compared with large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have fewer ðnancial resources, lower technical expertise, and poor management skills (Blili & Raymond, 1993), and are therefore likely to be less prepared and less able to change. Adoption of ICT can help SMEs cut costs by improving their internal processes, improving their product through faster communication with their customers. In retrospect, even with such information as indicated above, and the importance of ICT as an enabler to other sectors and to economic development having long been recognized, SMEs seem slow in its adoption and use as compared to other sectors (Baporikar, 2020b).
Regardless of the significant contribution, IT has made to the business, many studies found a large number of unsuccessful IT implementations in SMEs (Acar et al., 2005; Mole et al., 2004) and that the adoption rate also slow (Shin, 2006; Southern & Tilley, 2000). Three main reasons are contributing to the slow implementation of IT adoption:
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Management is unclear about how and why their firms adopt IT (Levy et al., 2001; Southern and Tilley, 2000).
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There is a misconception toward the IT adoption process mainly because managers do not understand the relationship between IT and businesses themselves (Bull,2003; Carson and Gilmore,2000) or they are uncertain about opportunities that IT can offer (Southern and Tilley, 2000).
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Businesses do not have the capabilities to expand their IT resource (Acar et al., 2005; Classen, 2005) because of lack of business and IT strategy, limited access to capital resources, emphasis on automating, the influence of major customers and limited IS skills (Ballantine et al., 1998; Bhagwat and Sharma, 2007; Bruque and Moyano, 2007).