Micro-Firms Need to be Addressed Differently – an Empirical Investigation of IOS Adoption Among SMEs

Inter-organizational information systems (IOS) play a critical role in today’s organizations and their relationships with business partners. While large organizations began utilizing such systems since their dawn in the 1970’s, SMEs have largely been reluctant to adopt and use these technologies. Given their relative commonness among enterprises, SMEs and micro-firms are particularly well suited to provide the critical mass of adopters needed to exploit network externalities exhibited by IOS. However, studies on adoption of IOS featuring micro-firms have remained scarce. Hence, a special focus on adoption decisions in micro-firms can be of great value to advance the understanding of IOS adoption. A survey is conducted on the influence of inhibitors on adoption of IOS for electronic invoice exchange among German SMEs and micro-firms. Several inhibitors are identified from extant literature restraining SMEs from adopting. In particular, results show that reasons restraining micro-firms are significantly different from reasons restraining larger SMEs

Regional innovation systems as complex adaptive systems: The case of lagging European regions

This article proposes an agent-based model to support the development of self-sustaining regional innovation systems (RIS). The model is the base of a computational laboratory, CARIS (Complex Adaptive Regional Innovation System), which aims at evaluating the self-sustainability of RIS and at investigating what are the resources, competencies and mechanisms able to trigger powerful innovation and economic growth processes. Such a topic is particularly interesting for the so-called lagging regions, which, notwithstanding noticeable policy interventions, have been unable to significantly improve their innovation performances. Results of this study show that the exploration capacity, the propensity to cooperation, and the endowed competencies of actors belonging to a region could be considered as key aspects in affecting the regional innovation performance. This means that policy-makers should (i) incentivize investments in research and development activities both at the public and private levels; (ii) support public-private partnerships; (iii) enhance national and regional university systems; and (iv) increase the number of researchers employed both in the public and private sectors. In the next future, the CARIS laboratory could be adopted as policy support instrument to evaluate how much effective are current innovation policies and what are the most effective ones to reassess the current patterns

Adopting emerging integration technologies in organisations

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.A review of the innovation and diffusion literature indicates a considerable amount of research, where attention is given to a range of features which may support integration technologies adoption. However, some literature suggests that the findings derived from the study of large enterprises cannot be generalised and applied in SMEs due to the distinct characteristics of SMEs. Although the adoption of integration technologies is recognised as being different between large and small companies, the literature on its adoption by SMEs remains limited. Nevertheless, in existing work, there is a lack of studies emphasising the reasons why SMEs and large companies take the decision to adopt integration technologies, focusing specifically on the different factors. This thesis therefore identifies the significant differences in the way that SMEs and large companies approach integration technologies, based on the existing literature, theoretical diffusion theories, and resource-based theory. In doing so, the parameters that can be used to explain the adoption of integration technologies in SMEs and large firms are identified, as nature of organisations, company size, integration needs, adoption factors for SMEs and large organisations, and time. Additionally, adoption factors are found and classified into three categories: adoption factors explicit to SMEs, adoption factors explicit to large organisations, and common factors. Based on this, a conceptual model is introduced to explain the different factors that influence adoption between SMEs and large organisations. The empirical contexts of the research are one project on integration technologies adoption, and four case studies on a large firm and three SMEs, which are analysed using an interpretive and qualitative research approach. The evidence suggests that the empirical data complement the identified dimensions nature of organisations, integration needs, company size and time. The empirical data also confirm that the current integration technologies adoption factors reported in the literature can be classified into common factors, factors explicit to SMEs, and factors explicit to large firms, to support a more comprehensive view of this area. An additional factor perceived future prospect has been considered as an influence on adoption in large organisations. The findings of this research can be useful to guide analysts and researchers in determining critical aspects of the complex issues involved for integration technologies adoption, and lead to suggestions for further valid research

The Impact of Multilevel Contextual Factors on IS Adoption at the Inter-organizational Level

Inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) offer many potential benefits to organizations, and IOIS adoption has increased in the last few decades. However, IOIS adoption varies significantly across different contexts, and little research has investigated how contextual factors affect IOIS-adoption variances at the inter-organizational (IO) level in depth—particularly from a multilevel perspective. This paper proposes a novel multilevel framework to analyze what combinations of contextual factors at the national, industry, inter-organizational, and organizational levels influence IOIS-adoption variances at the inter-organizational level. We present an in-depth, exploratory case study of the Indonesian grocery industry that identified three inter-organizational configurations between manufacturers, distributors, and retailers with IOIS-adoption variances. We found that the combinations of multilevel contextual factors varied for each configuration and, thus, explain the IOIS-adoption variances we observed at the IO level in a nuanced and holistic way. We argue that our multilevel framework may help scholars avoid contextual fallacy by encouraging them to examine the influence of higher-level factors on IOIS-adoption variances at the IO level and to avoid the atomistic fallacy that results when they make the wrong assumption that IOIS adoption at the organizational level implies adoption at a higher level

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

E-commerce technology adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study

This is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: S. Kurnia, et al., “E-commerce technology adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 68(9): 1906-1918, September 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neo.2016.09.002 This manuscript version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Electronic commerce (EC) has substantial potential to foster the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developed and developing countries alike. However, EC adoption by SMEs in developing countries has faced many challenges that have not been adequately addressed due to the complex nature of EC adoption in such countries. The aim of this study is to systematically examine the influence of organizational, industry, and national readiness and environmental pressure on the adoption of diverse EC technologies by SMEs in developing countries. A quantitative survey was conducted with retail SMEs within the Malaysian grocery sector to validate the proposed multi-level model. Findings indicate significant influence of environmental pressure on the adoption of various EC technologies. Organizational and national readiness have different influences across diverse EC technologies, while the influence of industry readiness is shown to be insignificant. This study extends the current understanding of the influence of micro-, meso- and macro-level factors and has important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Why Are Electronic Invoice Processes Risky? - Empirical Analysis and Discussion of Risk Factors

Electronic invoice processes are characterized by various software solutions, legal uncertainty, heter-ogeneous demands, lack of know how, and information system infrastructure incompatibilities. Due to this complexity and the uncertainty that companies face, a holistic map of risk factors of e-invoice processes is required. Companies must be conscious not only about potential opportunities but also about potential risks before they change their business processes and their information systems’ archi-tecture. Potential risk factors are identified theoretically and empirically evaluated with a quantitative expert survey that investigates risk probabilities and potential losses associated with these factors. The empirical analysis reveals that the investigated factors are valid and reliable. After conducting an ex-plorative factor analysis, 37 statistically significant risk factors are grouped into ten risk dimensions: process organization, standard, environment, project management, strategy, acceptance, system, pro-cess execution, security, and change management

An Integrated Model of the Factors Influencing the Adoption and Extent of Use of E-Payment Systems by SMEs in Nigeria

This paper investigates the factors influencing the adoption and extent of use of e-payment systems by SMEs in Nigeria. The paper develops an integrated model following a comprehensive review of literature in IS/IT adoption and diffusion in organisations. The paper used primary data culled from a survey conducted in Lagos state of Nigeria in 2012 for a PhD thesis. 239 SMEs were involved. Results of the  logistic regression analysis show that three technology attributes (perceived benefits, perceived trust and perceived security), one organisation factor (firm IT infrastructure), one environmental factor (favourable government support policy), and two individual characteristics factors (IT knowledge and educational level) facilitated EPS adoption by SMEs in Nigeria. Furthermore, perceived complexity and age inhibited e-payment systems adoption by SMEs in Nigeria. With regard to the extent of use, perceived benefits, age, and perceived trust facilitated volume of use while perceived complexity and age influenced the breadth of use. Keywords: E-payment adoption, e-payment in Nigeria, IT/IS adoption by SME