Future of e-business for SMEs in Saudi Arabia

摘要

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in economies across the globe. Many believe that SMEs were able to compete effectively with larger companies in the early stages of development of e-business. A lot study has been done in examining the adoption and assimilation of e-business in SMEs. However, little known about the socio-economic benefits that e-business provides to the future of SMEs. The benefits of e-business are however becoming harder to achieve due to the barriers in the way of adoption of e-business to SMEs, especially in the developing countries. On one hand, government's lack of farsighted approach to legislate a roadmap to e-business adoption could be blamed for slow progress. On the other hand incompetence and ignorance of management about the importance of technology which enables e-business, is to be blamed for poor results in e-business adoption. This paper identifies the barriers and benefits of adopting e-business and the future it holds for the SMEs, in the Saudi Arabia. We have conducted a survey of more than one hundred SMEs in Saudi Arabia to draw our conclusions.