“Blanket” approaches to promoting ICT in small firms: some lessons from the DTI ladder adoption model in the UK

Abstract

The current push for small firms to be “wired up to the digital marketplace” is evidenced by the number of initiatives targeting small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to promote this activity. Like other governments worldwide, UK Online’s SME targets (together with the supporting DTI adoption ladder) exemplify the “conventional wisdom” view of a homogeneous small business sector, within which firms take an ordered, sequential progression on the route to Internet technology adoption. This approach is questioned by grounding the official rhetoric in the reality of organisational and operational complexity of this important sector of the UK economy. These initiatives are compared and contrasted with similar models of small firm development, most of which neglected to address the diverse nature of small firm needs. The authors recommend a more discriminant approach, focused upon factors such as firm size, age, managerial structure and information and communications technology adoption stages.

Towards a Model of Technology Adoption: A Conceptual Model Proposition

“…The way Government initiative targets are set and defined point towards a 'generalist' view of SMEs (Martin & Matlay, 2001). In work done by MacGregor and Vrazalic (2005) eBusiness was recognised as a major source of competitive advantage and they state that this now means that Governments worldwide have recognised this and are creating funding schemes and initiatives to facilitate e-Commerce adoption in small businesses.…”

“…The Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) a United Kingdom (UK) central government department who recently changed its' name to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) published the governments 'adoption ladder' for their UK online initiative. The model underpins much of the understanding around the area of ICT adoption in SMEs (Sergeant 2000 cited in Martin and Matlay, 2001). Unfortunately, the only flexibility built into the model is to imply that not all businesses will start at stage one.…”

“…Neither is there a place for the entrepreneurial or innovative skills of owner-managers in this model. Martin & Matlay (2001) claim there is a lack of 'empirically rigorous data and focused research' on the topic of ICT adoption by small companies. Stating that the DTI literature claims that the adoption of new technologies is essential to survival and growth is based upon sweeping generalisations.…”

“…Most of this support is misguided and at the wrong level for these companies (Graham, 2007, Martin andMatlay, 2001), who not only need specific initiatives aimed at the technology related to the market they are in, but more basic support to help with implementation and adoption of IT. Currently they rely on instinct and/or customer-pressure which forces a situation which they then find costly and resource-intensive.…”

Systems of Innovation, Multidisciplinarity, and Methodological Pluralism: A Realist Approach to Guide the Future of Information Systems Research and Practice

“…We focus on one highly relevant determinant of the system of innovation for the diffusion of IS in SMEs, namely government programs (e.g., Berkeley et al 1996;Cuadrado and Garcia 2004;Gengatharen et al 2005;Lebre 1995;Simpson and Docherty 2004). Importantly, there is a general concern regarding the quality of the government support to SME innovation (Johnson 2005;Martin and Matlay 2001;Mole 2002;Nugent and Yhee 2002). The topic is even more relevant if we consider that our empirical work demonstrated that there is a negative and enduring context affecting programs.…”