ICT Opportunities and Challenges for Development in the Arab Region

Examining the Impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Enterprise Practices: A Preliminary Perspective from Qatar

“…ICT has influenced almost every aspect of an organization's activities from customer prospect to post-sales services (Mohr and Shooshtari, 2003). However, earlier studies have noted that Arab countries are still falling behind developed countries in terms of both use and spending on ICT (Nour, 2006(Nour, , 2008. One study found that while many governments in the Gulf region have embarked on projects to drive growth through IT transformation, many governments still lacked all elements necessary to make these projects a success (El-Shenawy, 2010).…”

E-Commerce and Small Tourism Businesses in Developing Countries: Drivers versus Boundaries of Adoption

“…Table 3 shows to the reviewed boundaries of adoption in SMEs. Beckinsale and Levy, 2004;Bigne et al, 2008;Daniel et al, 2002;Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007;Nour, 2002;Quayle, 2002 External pressures from new types of customers Simpson and Docherty, 2004 Social pressure of customers Vrana and Zafiropoulos, 2006 Market demand Buhalis and Deimezi, 2004 Competitor pressures Competitive pressures Beekhuyzen et al, 2005;Daniel et al, 2002;Poon and Joseph, 2001;WTO, 2001 The fear of being behind and level of competition among the industry firms Bigne et al, 2008;Patricia, 2008;Teo et al, 2009 Responding to competitors Simpson and Docherty, 2004 Threats of competitive forces Jin, 2007 Emergence of new virtual intermediaries Barnett and Standing, 2001 Fear of innovative competitors Buhalis and Deimezi, 2004 Supplier and partner pressures Pressures of business partners Beckinsale and Levy, 2004;Beekhuyzen et al, 2005;Buhalis and Deimezi, 2004;Nour, 2002;Poon and Joseph, 2001;Raymond, 2001;Simpson and Docherty, 2004;Teo et al, 2009Suppliers' development programmes Quayle, 2002 Suppliers upgrading to newer technologies Vrana and Zafiropoulos, 2006 Demands from business partners Rao et al, 2003 Business environment and industry changes Rapidly changing business environment Grandon and Pearson, 2004;Kuan and Chau, 2001;Saffu and Walker, 2008;Simpson and…”

“…Stansfield and Grant, 2003b;Warden and Tunzelana, 2004 Ayeh, 2006;Chen and McQueen, 2008;Heung, 2003;Kula and Tatoglu, 2003;Simmons et al, 2008;Grant, 2003a, 2003b;Stockdale and Standing, 2006;Zheng et al, 2004. Lack of technical knowledge of what and how to adopt a certain technology Kartiwi and MacGregor, 2007;Migiro and Ocholla, 2005;Mirchandani and Motwani, 2001;Scarborough and Zimmerer, 2003;Warden and Tunzelana, 2004;Webster et al, 2006 Available resources Inadequate financial resources Ayeh, 2006;Grandon and Pearson, 2004;Jin, 2007;Migiro and Ocholla, 2005;Skoko et al, 2008;Stansfield and Grant, 2003b;Stockdale and Standing, 2006;Zheng et al, 2004 High costs of technology adoption: technologies and equipment Ayeh, 2006;Beck et al, 2005;Chen and McQueen, 2008;Ghamatrasa, 2006;Migiro and Ocholla, 2005;Mirchandani and Motwani, 2001;Pilat, 2003;Rao et al, 2003;Wahid, 2007;Webster et al, 2006 High cost of developing and managing websites Anckar, 2003;Kula and Tatoglu, 2003;MacGreogor and Vrazalic, 2005;Nour, Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007;Ghamatrasa, 2006;Kamel and Hussei...…”

“…On the other hand, as cited in many past studies, there are many factors found to have negatively influenced technology adoption in SMEs; examples are cost of technology implementation (Kuan and Chau, 2001;MacGreogor and Vrazalic, 2005;Migiro and Ocholla, 2005;Kim, 2006), limited resources of SMEs (Stockdale and Standing, 2006;Skoko et al, 2008), infrastructure and technological readiness (Ayeh, 2006;Azam, 2007;Wahid, 2007), lack of skilled labour (Warden and Tunzelana, 2004;Samoilenko and Osei-Bryson, 2008), cultural issues (Dutta and Coury, 2003;Zheng et al, 2004), the required time for change (Heung, 2003;Wahid, 2007), service/product/customer/ supplier suitability (Tucker, 2008), legal and security issues (Buhalis and Laws, 2001;Nour, 2002;Kula and Tatoglu, 2003), and adopted technology related factors (Kendall et al, 2001;Beckinsale and Levy, 2004;Dyerson and Harindranath, 2007). For this study, these factors will be labelled as "boundaries" which hinders technology adoption in SMEs.…”

Overview of Knowledge Economy in the Arab Region

“…In addition, the Arab states represented by Egypt and Saudi Arabia are lagging behind the world and the advanced countries in terms of total personal computers installed in education, home, business and government" (cf. Nour, 2002Nour, , 2010. …”