SMEs and internet adoption strategy: who do SMEs listen to?

Governments have developed policies and strategies which are designed to assist SMEs to become eenabled. It is not clear what impact these strategies have on SMEs. There is some evidence that customers drive adoption due to the need to integrate information in the supply chain. There is also some evidence that owners of SMEs drive forward adoption, primarily because of the perceived benefits. The paper uses network actor theory to investigate these issues. Five influence networks are identified. These are the expert network, primarily IT firms; the industry led network, SMEs working in collaboration with industry organisations; the customer led network, driven by customer requirements. The drivers of these networks are primarily strategic. The final two networks are the ICT support network and novice networks which are driven by the SME owner. The key difference is less developed internal IT. The main outcome from the analysis is that government policies and strategies have no influen...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ECIS
• Authors: Martin Beckinsale, Margi Levy
• Keywords: Customer, Customers Drive Adoption, ECIS 2004, Information Technology, SMEs