Title: Examining the impact of organisational and owner's characteristics on the extent of e-commerce adoption in SMEs

Authors: Ta-Tao Chuang, Kazuo Nakatani, Jason C.H. Chen, I-Lin Huang

Addresses: School of Business Administration, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258, USA. ' Lutgert College of Business Administration, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL 33965-6565, USA. ' School of Business Administration, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA 99258, USA. ' School of Business, Langston University, Langston, OK 73050, USA

Abstract: As electronic commerce (EC) (e-commerce) booms, research on factors influencing the adoption of e-commerce has caught researchers| attention. The results of this research stream have facilitated our understanding of e-commerce adoption. However, the research results have been mixed. Furthermore, previous studies placed more focus on organisational factors than on owners| demographic factors. This research was initiated to resolve those conflicting findings and focused on the impact of owners| characteristics in ecommerce adoption. Data collected from 600 Small- and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs) were analysed with one-way ANOVA and hierarchical regression to investigate the impacts of three organisational characteristics and four owner characteristics. The results revealed that those variables explained a small amount of variance in the extent of e-commerce adoption. The main findings include: (1) managerial experience has impact on the extent of e-commerce adoption and (2) the extent of e-commerce adoption varies across business types. This paper discusses these findings in the context of previous research and implications.

Keywords: electronic commerce; e-commerce adoption; demographic characteristics; organisational characteristics; managerial experiences; business types; SMEs; small and medium-sized enterprises; owner characteristics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2007.014770

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2007 Vol.1 No.1, pp.61 - 80

Published online: 08 Aug 2007 *

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