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A Normative Model for Assessing SME IT Effectiveness.pdf (710.97 kB)

A normative model for assessing SME IT

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-02-02, 11:57 authored by Michael Curry, Byron Marshall, Peter KawalekPeter Kawalek
Information technology (IT) is a key enabler of modern small businesses, yet fostering reliably effective IT systems remains a significant challenge. This paper presents a light weight IT effectiveness model for small businesses to assess their IT and formulate strategies for improvement. Employing an action research approach we investigate a mixed method analysis of 120 survey responses from small family businesses and user participation in 10 semi-structured interviews. We then conduct critical reflection to identify refinements which are validated using 72 survey responses from university students. The results present compelling evidence that employees’ normative patterns (norms) are a significant driver of IT effectiveness in a second order PLS predictive model able to explain 26% of observed variance. A norms-based approach to IT effectiveness helps fill a significant research and managerial gap for organizations unable or unwilling to adopt IT best practice frameworks used by large organizations. Our findings imply that comparing norms to IT best practices may offer a less technical approach to assessing IT operations, which may be well suited to small businesses. Although further investigation cycles are needed to systematically test this model, we encourage small business managers to: 1) anticipate IT risks and mitigate them; 2) identify measures of IT performance, and monitor them, and 3) review/synchronize business and IT goals.

Funding

This work was supported by the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, Vancouver Campus and the College of Business at Oregon State University.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

Communications of the International Information Management Association

Volume

15

Issue

1

Pages

3 - 3 (10)

Citation

CURRY, M., MARSHALL, B. and KAWALEK, P., 2017. A normative model for assessing SME IT. Communications of the International Information Management Association, 15(1):3.

Publisher

© IIMA

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-08-16

Publication date

2017-02-21

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by CSUSB ScholarWorkS under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC B-NC-ND). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

ISSN

1941-6687

Language

  • en