Small Business Use of the Internet: Findings from Australian Case Studies1

Simpson Poon Centre for Information Systems Research School of Information Technology Swinburne University of Technology PO Box 218 Hawthorn, Victoria AUSTRALIA 3122 and Department of Information Systems Monash University Email: spoon@swin.edu.au Tel: +61 3 92145426 Fax: +61 3 98191240 Paula M.C. Swatman Department of Information Systems Monash University PO Box 197 Caulfield East, Victoria AUSTRALIA 3145 Email: paula.swatman@monash.edu.au Tel: +61 3 99032768

Abstract Internet use among small businesses has recently become a popular topic for researchers in the fields of Information Systems and Entrepreneurship. In view of the media hype this topic has received over recent months, it is important for small businesses to learn from the experiences of early adopters of the Internet. In this paper we present the results of case study research involving twenty-three Australian small businesses which were early adopters of the Internet and which are still users. We find that they are predominantly using the Internet as a communications medium and, to a lesser extent, as a document transfer and advertising channel. Management enthusiasm and perceived benefits seem to be the driving force for ongoing Internet use, although we discovered little or no integration between internal applications and Internet interorganisational functions. Our findings also point to the importance of entrepreneurship for successful Internet use. This paper was published in the proceedings of"PAWEC'97, the1st Pacific Asia Workshop on Electronic Commerce, Brisbane, Queensland, April 5th.
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Small Business Use of the Internet : Findings from Australian Case Studies

Introduction The Internet has made it possible for small business to gain access to an information infrastructure larger than that owned by any major corporation. Indeed, the Internet allows small businesses to communicate as widely with individuals or trading partners as any large corporation can. The importance of the Internet to small business is reflected by the increasing number of research efforts focusing on this topic world-wide. These research projects include those undertaken by Abell and Lim (1996), Barker (1994), Fuller and Jenkins (1995), Lymer (1996, 1997), Poon and Swatman (1995, 1996 and 1997) and Sieber (1996a, 1996b). Despite variations in topics and approaches, all these researchers have concluded that the Internet is different from other IT systems in terms of the way it transforms business operations and practices. Earlier researchers interested in the computing activities of small businesses (see, for example, Raymond, 1985; Lees and Lees, 1987; Montazemi, 1988; DeLone, 1988; Cragg and Zinatelli, 1995) have tended to focus on the influence of internal application systems. Such systems are usually specific to the individual organisation and only rarely provide access to interorganisational activities. The Internet, by contrast, while still clearly providing information technology (IT) facilities, has characteristics which are distinctly different from many of the traditional IT systems studied, particularly those concerned with the small business sector being primarily an enabler of inter-organisational activity. The Internet provides an information infrastructure for its users and can be considered an analogue of the telephone network or of the commercial value-added information service providers (VAISs, or VANs as they are often known). Some characteristics of the Internet include:
C

firstly, the Internet is not owned by a single company, nor even by a single business conglomerate. It is not, therefore, an information system in the traditional sense of the term it does not have specific components to support the business functions of a single organisation (a definition which applies even to distributed information systems); secondly, factors such as user satisfaction which are commonly used to gauge the success of internal systems cannot readily be applied to the Internet it is difficult to identify and measure causality on the Internet, because the structure and dispersion of the Internet makes normal metrics of causality effectively meaningless (as an example, response time depends on a particular link s capacity and may vary over the day); thirdly, in contrast to the requirements for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) across a Valued-added Network, a company can use the Internet even before it has identified its ultimate trading partners. Business partnerships can be established by means of informal business communications based on electronic mail (email). Very few, if any, small businesses would join a VAN to undertake EDI transactions if none of their business partners were using such a service but this happens frequently on the Internet. Consequently, the kind of power relationships between large and small companies which force small businesses to use proprietary EDI environments (see, Webster 1994) do not exist in the Internet environment at least not yet! In fact, a large number of small businesses have connected to the Internet before their larger business partners (often multi-national corporations) have even contemplated doing so.
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In this paper, we provide an analysis of a series of 23 case studies of small Australian businesses which are active Internet users. The discussion based on our case study research findings addresses the pre-conditions for Internet success and strategic effects resulting from its use. We begin by describing the backgrounds of the participants in this study, and then describe the method used for the study. Next we analyse and discuss some of the issues considered, including: the most important role played by today s Internet among small business; the drivers for Internet solutions within a small firm; and the benefits perceived by those firms. We also rationalise the process of integrating the Internet with internal systems building a model to reflect the steps involved. Finally, we suggest that it is entrepreneurship which creates the sustainable advantage for small businesses using the Internet to compete with rivals. Background Of The Participants Twenty-three small business around Australia participated in this study. These participants were selected from a pool of small businesses which had been involved in an earlier survey research project designed to establish the profile of Australian small businesses using the Internet (Poon and Swatman, 1996). Table 1 (see Appendix A) provides a summary of the twenty-three firms, including: their business sectors; the services and products they provided; staffing; turnover (in AUS$); number of years they have been using the Internet; and the key reasons expressed for their ongoing Internet use. The sample was deliberately chosen from a variety of business sectors, so that we could investigate the existence of sector-independent issues. This is important in the provision of directions for further research and to enable the formulation of future research questions. Additional criteria applied when selecting this group of small businesses included a requirement that: C each firm should conform to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Castles, 1993) description of a small business, which is commonly used to characterise small business in Australia; C each firm should be positive towards Internet use as a result of their experiences; C the group should contain firms from a variety of geographic locations. In fact, quite a few firms within this group belong to the micro-sizedbusiness category, rather than being conventional small businesses (this group is characterised by having about five persons within the firm). Since this group of firms had also been using the Internet for more than a year, we believed that their experience of Internet use would provide a comparatively mature insight into the ways in which the Internet has/has not been an encouraging experience. Research Method Although our earlier survey provided a useful profile of Australian small businesses using the Internet, it did not investigate in-depth examples of how and why they used it. The survey study was designed to collect quantitative data and made no provision for interaction with the
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participants, with the result that any important issue not covered directly by the questionnaire would be missed. While such an approach is ideal for capturing larger samples attitudes and activities, we now felt that a deeper insight into the dynamics of Internet use would help us to understand current and future activities within the micro-to-small enterprisebusiness sector (in addition to providing a measure of triangulation with the earlier study). To understand the implications of small business Internet use, some more focused methodology was clearly needed. The majority of researchers undertaking analyses of inter-organisational systems (see, for example, Barrett and Konsynski, 1982; Cash and Konsynski, 1985; Cash, 1985; Malone et al., 1987; Runge and Earl, 1988; Venkatraman and Zaheer, 1990; Reich and Benbasat, 1990; Venkatraman and Kambil, 1991; Swatman, 1993) have made use of single or multiple case studies, using interviews to gather data. Benbasat, Goldstein and Mead (1987), who summarise the views of several researchers in the field of Information Systems, provide additional support for the use of the case study approach to investigate "certain types of problems: those in which research and theory are at their early, formative stages; and sticky, practice-based problems where the experiences of the actors are important and the context of action is critical" (Benbasat, Goldstein and Mead, 1987:369). Yin (1994), in discussing the relative merits of single and multiple-case approaches, suggests that multiple-case designs should be treated in the same way as multiple experiments to produce a replication logic, rather than the sampling logic obtained from survey data. Benbasat, Goldstein and Mead provide a clear rationale for the use of this approach: "multiple-case designs are desirable when the intent of the research is description, theory building, or theory testing ... Multiple-case designs allow for cross-case analysis and the extension of theory. Of course, multiple cases yield more general research results" (Benbasat et al, 1987:373). We designed our multiple case studies as a series of interviews and site visits. Where site visits were not feasible, due to distance or time factors, telephone interviews were carried out instead. Each interview lasted for about an hour and the discussions were recorded as a series of field notes and subsequently transcribed into more detailed accounts, which were then verified with the case study participants for accuracy. The interviews were carried out by using a set of open-ended questions as guide to avoid drifting from research foci. Essentially, in each interview: C we initially gathered information on the background of each company, its director, and the role played by the director/management in adopting Internet use; C we then asked participants to provide examples showing how their firms have gained benefits from Internet use; C we then attempted to identify an evidence of integration between existing internal application systems and the Internet; C finally, we examined each organisation s ways of using the Internet to support traditional business activities. Thesecase study reports were closely examined to identify patterns of organisational impact due to the Internet. The case study research method, when applied to larger organisations on issues which affect multiple parties, often requires the investigator to interact with multiple interviewees over a period of time. Because of the organisational characteristics of our participants (namely micro-to-small
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businesses) and our intention (which was to identify common denominators), we felt it more appropriate to take a broad-and-shallow rather than a deep-and-narrow approach to the interviewing process. As with all research methodologies, the results obtained from case studies are imperfect. In our study, there were a number of such lacunae for example, the lack of quantitative evidence provided by the participants (such as the additional revenue generated by using the Internet), or our assumption that the interviewees were honest in their responses. However, we believe that we have minimised these effects (and maximised the validity of our results) by: C triangulating the findings from another (survey-based) study conducted with this group with the present results to form an holistic set of overall results; and C incorporating common trends in Internet use (such as traffic statistics) to provide a broader perspective on the topic area. Results and Analysis This section provides a summarised discussion of the result highlights. Although many small business researchers have investigated factors which contribute to successful IT use by SMEs (see, for example Raymond, 1985; Yap et al., 1992), many of the factors they identified are not relevant to Internet-related small business use. The data analysis process involves identifying patterns in the participantsanswers to our openended questions. After consolidating the main points made by participants, we attempted to classify them into a smaller number of categories (patterns) outlined in the following sub-sections. We also incorporated the information and results from a survey study conducted prior to the case studies, which enabled us to assess the validity of the dominant patterns recurring in the twentythree cases. For example, the answers from the majority of participants all point to the need to use the Internet to support human communication. Since this is an exploratory study, the identification of these issues is really a hypothesisgeneration process the goal is not to conclude our research but rather to pave the way for the explanation building exercise in our next phase of research (Yin, 1994: p. 110).
The Internet As A Communication Medium

Most of the twenty-three firms nominated the key function of the Internet is a medium for human communication, and the application used to accomplish this is electronic mail (email). Most of these firms saw the Internet succeed in providing what the telephone or fax services cannot offer asynchronous communications, overcoming time and geographic limitations and multimedia transmission. Cost savings were also been nominated as a key reason for using email, although most did not take into consideration set up and ongoing costs. Being able to transfer electronic documents was suggested by some participants as very important, because neither the telephone nor the fax services allow this to be carried out as easily as email does.

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Most of our respondent firms used email to communicate with customers. Although our findings from the earlier survey (Poon and Swatman, 1996) suggested that the Internet can be used to interact with different business groups such as suppliers, business partners and even competitors, the case study findings suggest that email was primarily used to communicate with customers or business partners. Even so, email-based communication constitutes only a relatively small percentage (often quoted at less than 20% for non-IT related participants) of the total amount of communications with external bodies. This apparent contradiction is largely due to the nature of the respondents to our case studies, most of whom do not have suppliersin the conventional manufacturing sense. The end products or services generated by most of our participants were often value-added information, knowledge or creative works. For example, Firm L (a legal firm) provides their clients with legal solutions. Its services are expert opinions generated by synthesizing solutions achieved by blending expert know-how with existing knowledge. The only supplierinvolved in this process was the person who generated the existing knowledge; and no communication was necessary between a solicitor and the authors of the legal constitutions when reaching the legal solutions. Firm K (a publicity consulting firm) was another example of a firm in which no supplier was providing raw materials for the service generation process. As the solution building process often involved inputs from its customer, the supplier in this case was actually the customer itself. And, in fact, Firm K was using the Internet to communicate with those customers who favour email communication. We have illustrated this communication process in Figure 1.

Small Business

Idea interchange or product development

Customer inputs

Deliver services or products

Business Partner

Customer

Figure 1: Internet Communication For A Non-manufacturing Small Business

Management Enthusiasm In Promoting Internet Use

The importance of management support and enthusiasm for small business IT success has been documented by many authors (see, for example, DeLone, 1988; Martin, 1989; Yap, et al., 1992;
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Cragg and King, 1993). Runge and Earl (1988), who investigated competitive advantage from telecommunications use, reported that the role of a product champion was important for the successful implementation of IT solution. Although Runge and Earl s research was based on large corporations, management enthusiasm and support has been found to be a consistent factor for continuous Internet use among our participants. Among the twenty-three firms we interviewed, all but two (Firm J and Firm P) interviewees were at the most senior level in the firm. Even in these two cases, the interviewees from Firm J and Firm P have very good understanding of the strategic direction of their organisation, because they were both working very closely with the owner/director concerning their respective Internet solutions. Among all the participating firms, at least one of the firm s owners or senior partners played a leading (or even hands-on) role when pursuing Internet solutions. Ironically, but not unexpectedly, given Runge and Earl s findings, most of these owners had not received formal IT training before using the Internet. They learned of the Internet through public media, friends, business partners or even their children, and gradually gained experience through experimentation. The fact that most of the Internet services (eg. email readers, web browsers and newsreaders) are now very much turn-key packages with self installation ability means that users require no more IT training than they would in using a wordprocessor. This clearly assists enthusiastic owners who have little formal IT training.
Perceived Benefits from Internet Use

Given the diverse meaning of benefit in the context of Internet use and the lack of universally agreed upon business models, we decided to qualify benefits gained through Internet use as perceived benefits . Even so, we had difficulty in quantifying such benefits, due to complex causal relationships. For example, acquisition of a product or service often involved a number of stages including: information gathering, option evaluation, bargaining and negotiation; then payment, delivery and post-sales support. Since none of the participants gathered data on how the Internet helped in each of these stages, we were unable to undertake a quantitative analysis of benefits obtained from Internet use. However, we did manage to solicit the ownersperception of how the Internet has benefited them in the past and their view on what benefits they will get in the future. Iacovou et al. (1995) found that perceived benefits were repeatedly identified as one of the critical factors for EDI adoption among small businesses. In common with these authors, we also found that perceived benefits formed a key reason why the participants in our study adopted and continued using the Internet. We attempted to classify perceived benefits into direct and indirect categories: direct benefits, according to the examples used by Iacavou et al., were those which could be readily quantifiable; indirect benefits, on the other hand, were not easily quantifiable and often might not be predictable. We believe both direct and indirect benefits can also be further classified into short and long term benefits. According to the rate of business development on the Internet, short term benefits should be realised within a few months, whereas long term benefits may take longer and can evolve into different forms. The relationships between direct, indirect, short-term and long-term perceived benefits are illustrated in Figure 2.

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Examples: Direct benefits - Save in communication costs - Generate short term revenues

Examples: - Secure returning customers - Long term products or services delivery

Examples: Indirect benefits - Potential business opportunities - Advertising and marketing

Examples: - Ongoing business transformation - New business formation

Short term

Long term

Figure 2: A Framework of Perceived Benefits Related To Internet Use. Our findings confirm that small businesses were not reaping significant short term benefits. By this we mean that when we asked our participants if there was sufficient return directly resulting from the Internet that they can cover their connection costs, the answer was normally either a noor barely . However, most of the participants saw that online purchases and transactions were only one way the Internet could be used to support their businesses. As most of the participants were using the Internet as a communication medium (see Table 1 - Key reasons for using the Net - in Appendix A), the ways the Internet supported their business operations were similar to common communication services like telephone and fax. Even those who admitted gaining short term benefits (particularly direct benefits), were aware that such benefits were only marginal, and often circumstantial. Most participants expressed the view that indirect benefits were keeping them connected to the Internet. As more business start to trade via the Internet, most participants believed it is still much cheaper to access the global marketplace in this way, prior to setting up serious business relationships. It seems that the positive trend of Internet business development was what kept the participants connected to the Internet. Most participants believed not having an Internet presence (most referred to an email address and a webpage) will soon become a competitive disadvantage.
Industry and Product Specificity

When reviewing how this group of participants use the Internet for their business operations, it becomes obvious that industry and product specificity have influenced how involved they were in using the Internet to support their business operations. We observed that if a small business has more customers and business partners using the Internet, it was itself more willing to use the Internet for its business. There seems to be a peer encouragementeffect in this case, particularly if all parties have convincing evidence that they are, indeed, better off. In terms of industry and product dependency, those firms which belonged to the IT (ie. Firm G, N, Q) or Internet-spawned
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businesses (ie. Firm F, H, J, R) were relying on the Internet more than firms from other business sectors. Apart from the fact that these firms were more Internet literate , they had actually experienced first-hand the ways in which the Internet has improved the effectiveness and efficiency of their business relationships. Such improvements made them more competitive and this effect kept the advanced Internet user firms exploring the Internet for assistance in further aspects of their business dealings. As an extreme example, the director of Firm Q even suggested that an outage of the telephone network might not be as quickly detected as one on the Internet. The effect of product (or service) specificity related to Internet use can be measured by investigating how much the customer would be satisfied with an electronic version of the actual thing . Our findings lead us to believe that if the usefulness of the product or service is preserved or enhanced when delivered in digital form, then the small business itself, its customers and business partners would tend to use the Internet more. For example, the group of Internetspawned businesses often used the Internet to deliver their products (eg. software or webpage design), not only because the electronic version was better than its physical counterpart, but also because this saved time and costs (service enhancement). The IT industry group also used the Internet as a reach agent to offer remote services (eg. systems maintenance) for similar reasons. Other participants, like Firm I, K and S were using the Internet as a document transfer medium (to exchange, for example, auction item images, publicity proposals and design documents) because the digital document can reach their target audiences much faster than their paper-based counterpart and can be worked on immediately by their recipient(s).
The Need for Internet-to-Internal Systems Integration

Literature on IT and strategic advantage (Venkatraman, 1991, 1994; Swatman and Swatman, 1993) often stress that longer term benefits can only be realised with well-planned integration of business functions and IT in an inter-organisational or sector-wide manner. Our findings indicate that at present there is little integration between internal systems and the Internet among this group of early adopters. Among the participants, internal IS functions such as accounting, customer and inventory management were still operating independently of the Internet. For this group of companies, there was a gap between inter-organisational and internal IS activities. Although all firms were using the Internet for information exchange with their customers, none has yet carried out integration so that messages arriving through the Internet, such as orders, could be processed by its internal system automatically. We have identified a number of possible reasons for this lack of integration: C firstly, there is not a sufficient volume of structured messages to justify such automation on either financial or developmental grounds. At this stage, it is still feasible to process such messages manually; C secondly, few of these organisations has in-house system development expertise. At the time of writing, there is still a lack of affordable packaged applications which provide turn-key solutions for integrating internal applications and Internet-based systems. Consequently, small businesses which cannot afford sophisticated, custom-built Web solutions find it difficult to carry out further integration. However, this situation is

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expected to improve as packaged software (eg. Web-based EDI) becomes increasingly viable (see, for example, Premenos, 1995); thirdly, there is no external pressure to force (or even provide) assistance for the integration process, as there often is in EDI relationships between small businesses and large organisations. At present, even larger organisations are struggling to integrate their internal systems with their newly laid-down intranet strategy . As intranets start to mature, there may possibly be a resurgence of the power relationships which have been seen in the case of EDI relationships.

Organisational process adjustment

Full Internet-to-internal application integration (full local integration)

Limited Internet-to-internal application integration (selective local integration)

Minimum Internet-to-internal application integration (purely inter-organisational exploitation)

Potential benefits

Figure 3: The Three Stages of Internet-to-internal Application Systems Integration The results of our studies, in fact, suggest the process of integrating Internet-based systems with internal application systems among small businesses is likely to differ from the conventional, ITenabled business transformation models. For example, Venkatraman (1991, 1994) has presented a model which depicts the stages of IT-enabled business transformation, where the organisations studied were large corporations. The model suggests that IT-enabled business transformation starts with local business functions within the organisation, then expands to inter-organisational and, finally, to sector-wide transformation. Although Venkatraman s model does not explicitly state that the different stages are sequentially connected, this is implied by examples showing organisations passing through these stages sequentially. Our findings concur with Venkatraman s model to the extent that when small businesses use the Internet to improve their strategic position, a stage-based transformation process takes place. This process, however, starts with the inter-organisational dimension, rather than with local exploitation. In fact, we have observed that there is literally no IT integration between Internet and internal IS functions (such as order processing) among our participants at this stage. We have
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adopted Venkatraman s (1991) model and describe the stages of integration in terms of potential benefits and the degree of organisational process adjustment required (see Figure 3). Our belief is that for complete Internet-internal application integration to occur, there needs to be a significant organisational and sector-wide transformation.
The Need To Apply Entrepreneurship To Internet Use

The definitions of entrepreneurship are diverse, but in general include the ability to create, innovate, bear risk, manage and achieve targets (Jennings, 1994: 12). Entrepreneurship is often used to explain why some small businesses can compete successfully with larger companies which have better resources. Based on our interaction with the twenty-three small businesses, we propose that entrepreneurship will produce the second-order effects which lead to ongoing success in Internet use. In order to apply entrepreneurship to Internet use, a small business needs to carry out organisational (internal) and market/competitor (external) analysis to map Internet capabilities to organisational and market needs. We observed that all of our participants were applying entrepreneurship to their Internet use to some extent. For example, Firm A diligently monitored the kind of tour its homepage visitors were most interested in, by analysing hit rate statistics and used such information to continuously rejuvenate its homepage contents in an attempt to retain existing customers and attract new visitors. Another example is Firm I, whose owner was interested in the potential of setting up an electronic auction environment. Through participating in mailing lists and gathering customer demographic profiles, he found that there was an ongoing increase in overseas customers who belong to academic institutions. The Internet, to this group of customers, can be a more convenient and even cheaper way than using telephone or facsimile when sending in proxy bids. At the time of the interview, he was exploring the feasibility of such an electronic auction environment by gathering customer opinions. Although we believe that entrepreneurship is important to the ongoing success of Internet use, this factor still requires other influences to produce its effect. Firm C is an example which illustrates this point well. The owner of Firm C saw the opportunities of using the Internet as a document transfer channel which could shorten the project cycle and reduce costs. He planned to use the Internet to send and receive drafting documents between his company, his customers and business partners. He has not been able to achieve this so far because of stubborn resistance from both his customers and business partners. Although he lobbied hard to persuade his trading partners to adopt his idea, he believed that his firm did not have the bargaining power to impart such change within the trading relationship. This example clearly illustrates the intricate relationships between factors which govern the success of small business Internet use. The way in which these factors interact is beyond the scope of this paper and warrants further research, which we propose to undertake as a later stage of the present, long-term research programme into strategic use of the Internet by small businesses.

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Conclusions The Internet, being a very different type of IT from conventional internal application systems, is not necessarily subject to the same research variables found in earlier research into small business use of IT. Our study provides evidence that the most crucial issues affecting ongoing Internet use within small businesses are management s commitment and perceived benefits. Most small businesses are still using the Internet as a communications medium in addition to the telephone and facsimile, although advertising and marketing are also driving Internet use. At this stage, there is little integration between organisational Internet activities and internal IS operations. Based on our findings and Venkatraman s (1991) IT-enabled business transformation model, we propose that the Internet-to-internal-systems integration process starts from the interorganisational dimension and finishes at the internal exploitation dimension. This development is different from Venkatraman s model because it suggests IT transformation starts from local exploitation. When compared to traditional internal application systems, the Internet is a tool upon which users can build their IT processes. Therefore, user input and ways of use will determine how much benefit one can get out of the Internet. This leads us to believe that entrepreneurship applied to Internet use will eventually create the difference between a firm which has a positive attitude towards Internet use compared to those having a negative view of this medium. Finally, we suggest that further research needs to be carried out to study the relationship of factors which contribute to successful use of the Internet by small businesses. References Abell, W. and Lim, L. (1996) Business Use of the Internet in New Zealand: An Exploratory Study.[WWW document]. URL http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb96/business/abell/paper.htm. Barker, N. (1994) The Internet as a Reach Generator for Small Business. Masters Thesis, Business School, University of Durham. Barrett, S. and Konsynski, B. (1982) Inter-Organization Information Sharing Systems. MIS Quarterly, Special Issue, 93-105. Benbasat, I., Goldstein, D. K. and Mead, M. (1987) The Case Research Strategy in Studies of Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, Sep, 368-385. Cash, Jr., J. I. (1985) Interorganizational Systems: An Information Society Opportunity or Threat? The Information Society 3(3), 199-228. Cash, Jr., J. I. and Konsynski, B. R. (1985) IS Redraws Competitive Boundaries. Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr, 123-135.

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Castles, I. (1993) Small Business in Australia: 1993. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, Australia. Cragg, P. B. and Zinatelli, N. (1995) The evolution of information systems in small firms. Information and Management, 29(1), 1-8. DeLone, W. (1988) Determinants of Success for Computer Usage in Small Business. MIS Quarterly, Mar, 51-61. Fuller, T. and Jenkins, A. (1995) Public Intervention in Entrepreneurial Innovation and Opportunism: Short Cuts or Detours to The Information Superhighway?. In Proceedings of the Babson Entrepreneurship Conference, London, UK. Iacovou, C. L. Benbasat, I. and Dexter, A. S. (1995) Electronic Data Interchange and Small Organisations: Adoption and Impact of Technology. MIS Quarterly, Dec, 465-485. Jennings, D.F. (1994) Multiple Perspectives of Entrepreneurship: Text, Readings and Cases. South-Western, Ohio, USA. Johnston, H. R. and Vitale, M. R. (1988) Creating Competitive Advantage with Interorganizational Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, June, 153-165. Keen, P.G.W. (1986) Competing in Time: Using Telecommunications for Competitive Advantage, Ballinger, Mass., USA. Lees, J. D. and Lees, D. D. (1987) Realities of Small Business Information System Implementation. Journal of Systems Management, 38(4), 6-13. Lymer, A., Johnson, R. and Nayak, A. (1996) The Internet and the Small Business: Case Studies in business development and technology. In Proceedings of the 19th ISBA National Small Firms and Research Conference. Birmingham, UK. Lymer, A., Johnson, R. and Baldwin-Morgan, A. (1997) The Internet and Small Businesses: A Study of Impacts in the Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Information Systems, Cork, Ireland (forthcoming). Malone, T. W., Yates, J. and Benjamin, R. I. (1987) Electronic Markets and Electronic Hierarchies. Communications of the ACM, 30(6), 484-497. Martin, C.J. (1989) Information Management in the Smaller Business: The Role of the Top Manager. International Journal of Information Management, 9, 187-197. Montazemi, A.R. (1988) Factors Affecting Information Satisfaction in the Context of the Small Business Environment. MIS Quarterly June, 239-256.

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Poon, S. and Swatman, P.M.C. (1995) The Internet for Small Businesses: an enabling infrastructure for competitiveness. In Proceedings of the Fifth Internet Society Conference (Kilnam Chon, Ed), 221-231, Hawaii, USA. Poon, S. and Swatman, P.M.C. (1996) Electronic Networking Among Small Business in Australia - An Exploratory Study In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on EDIIOS (Swatman, P.M.C. et al. Eds), 446-460, Bled, Slovenia. Poon, S. and Swatman, P.M.C. (1997) Internet-based Small Business Communications: Seven Australian Cases in the Proceedings of the 1997 PACIS Conference, Brisbane, Australia. Premenos Inc. (1995) Premenos Announces Its World Wide Web EDI Strategy [WWW document]. URL http://www.premenos.com/premenos/press/webedi.html. Raymond, L. (1985) Organizational Characteristics and MIS Success in the Context of Small Business. MIS Quarterly, Mar, 37-51. Reich, B.H. and Benbasat, I. (1990) An Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing the Success of Customer-oriented Strategic Systems. Information Systems Research 1(3), 111-130. Runge, D. A. and Earl, M. J. (1988) Gaining Competitive Advantage from Telecommunications. In Information Management: The Strategic Dimension (Earl, M, Ed), 125-146, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK. Sieber, P. (1996a) Swiss Firms on the Internet: An Empirical Study in the Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Information Systems (eds.) Coelho, J. D. et al., Portugal, 183199. Sieber, P. (1996b) Virtuality as Strategic Approach for Small and Medium Sized IT Companies to Stay Competitive in a Global Market in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Sytems, Ohio, Cleveland. Swatman, P.M.C. (1993) Integrating Electronic Data Interchange into Existing Organisational Structure and Internal Applied Systems: The Australian Experience. PhD Thesis, School of Computing, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. Swatman, P.M.C. and Swatman, P.A. (1993) Business Process Redesign using EDI: An Australian Success Story In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Electronic Data Interchange and Interorganizational Systems, 116-137, Bled, Slovenia. Venkatraman, N. (1991) IT-induced Business Reconfiguration In The Corporation of the 1990 s: Information Technology and organizational Transformation (M. S. Scott-Morton, Ed), 122-158, Oxford University Press, NY, USA.

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PAWEC 97

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