ICT Adoption & Use by SMEs in the UK: A Survey of South East

Abstract

Summary form only given. We present the results of a survey of 400 small recognise ICT's strategic potential: the majority of ICT and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) drawn from four applications implemented are at a strictly operational level, economically significant sectors in the UK's most productive SMEs are also generally distrustful of ICT consultants and fear region, the southeast of England on their adoption and use of being 'trapped' by spiralling costs associated with 'wasteful' information and communications technology (ICT). Our ICT expenditure. The most surprising result was the objectives were to: explore ICT adoption and use patterns by overwhelming ignorance of regional, national and European SMEs; identify factors enabling or inhibiting the successful Union wide policy initiatives to support SMEs. This strikes at adoption and use of ICT; and explore the effectiveness of the very heart of EU and UK policy that have identified SMEs government policy mechanisms at national and regional levels as requiring support mechanisms. Our findings from the UK's Our main result indicates a generally favourable attitude to most productive region therefore have important implications ICT amongst the SMEs surveyed, but also suggests a failure to for policy aimed at ICT adoption and use by SMEs.