Wong, C H and Sloan, B (2004) Use of ICT for e-procurement in the UK construction industry: A survey of smes readiness. In: Khosrowshahi, F (ed.) Proceedings of 20th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2004, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
The UK construction industry has been criticised for poor initial uptake of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and integrated IT systems to support their mainstream activities. In the context of the extent of deployment to the implementation domain and user types, ICT uptake has yet to be recognized by the industry as a whole, when compared to retail, manufacturing and financial service sectors. In addition, there is a considerable amount of ICT deployment in large construction firms who have the ability to invest and maximize the ICT uptake advantage, whilst similar deployment in small to medium sized (SMEs) construction firms- the followers, has been limited. Therefore, the current state of ICT implementation and deployment in the UK construction industry embraces a number of contrasting characteristics: firms who own ICT systems with a wide range of sophisticated applications and (small) organizations who pilot their embryonic, ad-hoc and fragmented ICT practices. Recognizing this, the paper investigates the current state of ICT readiness for use in electronic procurement (e-procurement) among UK construction SMEs, and to identify their enthusiasm and commitment to improve business performance through ICT uptake. A structured questionnaire survey was conducted among 220 randomly selected construction SMEs in UK. The results indicate that the majority of the surveyed SMEs are not yet ready for ICT implementation to support routine e-procurement activities.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | e-procurement; information technology communication; small and medium-sized enterprises |
| Index terms: | construction firm, survey, commitment, electronic procurement, routine, information technology, construction industry, implementation, questionnaire, business performance |
| Subjects: | organization, data collection methods, computing systems, psychology, contractual arrangements, performance measurement, sociology, information systems, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Research Practice, Procurement, Digital Applications, Quality Management, Organizational Design |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here