Impact of SME Manager's Behavior on the Adoption of Technology

Abstract

It has been acknowledged that firms must resort to technology in order to acquire the flexibility needed to meet the challenges posed by the globalization of the economy. The successful adoption of new technology has thus become a matter of survival for companies. Several studies have already highlighted the importance of the manager's behavior in the process of adopting technology. The Stevenson model suggests that this behavior may be situated anywhere on a continuum ranging from the characteristics of the administrator, at one extreme, to those of the entrepreneur, at the other. Using this model, we conducted a study of senior managers to analyze their behavior in the decision to adopt a new technology. A questionnaire was mailed to 450 of them and in-depth interviews were conducted among 54 others. Our findings show that in the process of adopting a new technology, half the managers adopted a behavior closer to that of an administrator. The other half acted more like entrepreneurs. This seems to have a major impact on the success of the adoption since we found that managers with an entrepreneurial style were not as successful as those who adopt an administrative style.