Modeling microenterprise IT adoption: Clinical therapy approach

• Published in: Innovation and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: From Regional Development to World Economies - Proceedings of the 18th International Business Information Management Association Conference
• Main Author: Hairuddin H.; Md Noor N.L.; Kassim E.S.
• Format: Conference paper
• Language: English
• Published: International Business Information Management Association, IBIMA 2012
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84896078169&partnerID=40&md5=3637a30e3821e817e15cb80df8c4fd03

In Malaysia, about 70% of the national industry is derived from SMEs, which the batik microenterprise is one of the vital groups. Although it is highly acknowledged that IT can play a pivotal role in reducing business complexity and promoting business growth, majority of the batik microenterprises in Malaysia remains as non-adopters of IT. Previous studies recognized the slow rate of IT adoption amongst SMEs in Malaysia. Two factors of non-adoption of IT that were identified in the literature are the lack of IT knowledge and expertise and the characteristics of IT applications itself. The continuous work on IT therapy which started as an action research in microenterprise IT adoption shed some light on how to progress towards the development of a method that encourage IT adoption amongst microenterprise. However, the existing work merely treats IT therapy as a set of intervention in action research but did not formalize and develop the method. This study was attempted to model the IT therapy using the clinical approach to give it a formal definition. A case study was conducted on clinical therapy practice using personal interviews, observation and document reviews. As a result, the components of SOAPIE method were identified and mapped into the new IT therapy conceptual model. The scenario of batik microenterprise was used to give a contextual approach that helps visualize the IT therapy. The formalization and refinement of the IT therapy will be useful for devising intervention programs to assist microenterprise to adopt IT in their business operation.