Information and Communication Technology in Small and Medium-sized High-tech companies: A Management Perspective

Abstract

The adoption and usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a strongly discussed issue. In particular the interorganizational adoption is recognized as an important issue. While big companies have most of their processes with partners integrated by now, there is still a lot of work to do within the small and medium-sized companies. One of the hypothesis in this context is that high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (HT-SME) are leading in comparison to average SME concerning their intraorganizational and interorganizational adoption of ICT. The goals of the study are a description of the state-of-the-art of the (interorganizational) adoption of ICT in high-tech SME. A further goal is the dicsussion of elements of a management framework which allows handling ICT in HT-SME in a more efficient and effective way. The methodology used for analyzing the interorganizational adoption of ICT in the high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises as well as for developing the above stated framework is case study based. Interesting intermediate data became visible. It seems that even the small and medium-sized high-tech companies do not use highly sophisticated information and communication technology for interorganizational cooperations. Further interesting results are that hardly any of the companies interviewed develop their employees for using ICT in intra- and interorganizational settings. Another interesting result is that HT-SME hardly evaluate the spending in intraand interorganizational ICT.