The Influence Prism in SMEs: The Power of CEOs' Perceptions on Technology Policy and Its Organizational Impacts

Abstract

The research proposes a model, which relates the following variables: (a) the CEO's perceptions of the environment, (b) the strategic business orientation, scanning, and structural characteristics, (c) technology policy, (d) realized innovative efforts of the firm, and (e) measures of firm performance. The empirical data from small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) that share a common economic and industrial environment show that CEOs' perceptions of external environment---and not objective measures---are key significant issues with respect to technology policy formulation and enactment in SMEs and its subsequent organizational impacts. In particular, perceived environmental hostility and dynamism are shown to have specific and differing moderating roles on the form and strength of the relationships between technology policy and its determinants and between technology policy and realized innovative efforts. Furthermore, a more aggressive technology policy leads to greater realized innovative efforts, which in turn are positively related to export performance and, to a lesser extent, to financial performance.strategic management of technology, small firms, strategy enactment, perceptions of the external environment

Focus of B-to-B e-commerce initiatives and related benefits in manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises

“…The list provided access to data such as a company's location and the name and e-mail address of its CEO. The chief executive officer was selected as the single informant as he or she acts as the ''principal architect of corporate strategy'' (Harrison 1992), including technological choices and investments (Lefebvre et al 1997). CEOs of the selected firms were reached by e-mail and asked to participate in an on-line survey.…”

Technological trajectories as moderators of firm-level determinants of innovation

“…Mohr (1969) has also referred to a moderating effect of the size of the firm on the relative importance of its determinants of innovation. For example, top management characteristics and attitudes were found to be more important innovation determinants for small firms, due to the more active involvement of top managers in the innovation process (Carrier, 1994, Lefebvre et al, 1997.…”

IT Governance in SMEs: Trust or Control?

“…There is a slower adoption of IT in SMEs than in large enterprises (Lia et al 2004, Premkumar 2003. Existing mechanisms of IT governance build on a strong belief that IT creates values for the business; but these do not hold true for SMEs where decision making is mostly centred round one person (Levy et al 2003, Southern et al 2000, Lefebvre et al 1997. SMEs also cannot learn and benefit from past experiences because there are not enough IS projects conducted.…”

“…In this research, we focus on two major findings: the role of the CEO as the principal decision maker in SMEs (Southern et al 2000;Lefebvre et al 1997) and the dependency of SMEs on external IT expertise (Thong 2001, Thong et al 1997). Thong has shown that both findings are related: "The results show that the most effective IS implementation environment is one in which both top management support and external IS experts work as a team".…”