Interrelationships of Organization Size, Information and Communication Technology Adoption

Mladen CUDANOV
Ondrej JAŠKO
Gheorghe SAVOIU

Keywords

Organization size, ICT adoption, Composite index of ICT adoption, organizational+factors

Abstract

This paper aims to describe interrelationships between size of the organization and adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT). We hypothesize that size of the organization is interrelated with ICT usage. By analyzing the data from 68 organizations we have classified to micro, small, medium-sized and large enterprises and calculated composite index of ICT adoption in each organization. Afterwards we have analyzed correlations between composite index of ICT adoption and size of the organization. Our results show that large enterprises which have potential to utilize ICT have highest values of composite index of ICT adoption, indicating high ICT usage. Theory considered in the discussion implies that ICT diminishes size of the organization, which complies with our findings because medium enterprises keep high values of composite index of ICT adoption. Small organizations, at least in transitional countries, in average do not show high level of ICT use, but especially in smallest, micro organizations extreme examples both of high and low ICT use indicated by high standard deviation values can be found. That could be explained by greater flexibility and orientation of small enterprises to new technologies, but also lack of resources or interest and implies that in small and micro companies ICT appliance is more dependent on other organizational factors than on size. Our conclusion is that ICT has the potential to diminish size of the company, but that still in average large and medium companies are leaders of ICT use in spite of extreme examples of good practice in small companies.