THE CORPORATE DIGITAL DIVIDE BETWEEN SMALLER AND LARGER FIRMS

摘要

Investments by large corporations in information and communication technologies (ICTs) is steadily growing, comprising on average 4 percent of corporate revenues, with about two-thirds of the ICT investment directed to operations and only about a third to strategic opportunities (META 2005). While true for larger organizations (these figures were calculated based on data gathered from 1,907 organizations with more than $ 1 billion in revenue), the picture is somewhat different for small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with between 10 and 250 employees, most of which invest a much smaller proportion of their revenue in ICT. For example, Heart et al. (2001) found that hospitality SMEs invest only about 1 percent of revenue in ICT. In their constant struggle to reduce costs, SMEs invest in mandatory ICT operations and their utilization of ICT is often inefficient.