Impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on Business Performance

The performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is of fundamental significance in emerging economies because of their contribution to economic development and growth. Amongst many factors that contribute to SME performance, different information and communication technology (ICT) resources are worth mentioning in this age of the 4th industrial revolution. However, debate persists in the literature on the real contribution of ICT to business performance. Of the two diametrically different schools of thought in the debate, one believes that ICT is still capable of contributing to business performance. On the other hand, the opposite school of thought believes that ICT is no longer effective at creating differentiation between firms in terms of business performance; it has already become a basic utility available to all firms. Hence, ICT tools have been categorised into general purpose technologies (GPTs) and enabling technologies (ETs) in this thesis to better understand this debate and, in turn, the separate contribution of these two types of ICT tools to business performance. In other words, this thesis intends to explain the role of GPT and ET-related ICT resources in business performance, especially in SMEs in an emerging economy, Bangladesh, where the empirical part of this research is examined. The ETs include less widely used, specialist tools. On the other hand, GPTs include widely used, simpler technologies. There are several interesting findings in this thesis that add new dimensions to existing knowledge. Firstly, that ETs add more value to SME performance compared to GPTs. Secondly, the results support that SMEs’ ICT collaboration capabilities as a mediator influence the business value of ICT (BVICT) more than the direct effect in the case of ETs. Thirdly, different networking dimensions by SME owner-managers as a mediator have more influence on BVICT (in the case of GPTs) compared to the direct effect.