People:

• Suling Zhang
• Jerry Fjermestad

Description:

Currently the small business related research is in two parts:

The first part: Small businesses contribute significantly to the economy. With typically limited resources, small businesses have to carefully select and manage its Internet-based communication technologies (ICT). Though there has been significant growth on the research about the adoption and implementation of ICT in small business context, such research offers little insight into how small business responds to and actively exploits the opportunities of the information technologies. Our study addresses this research gap with a focus on a particular communication technology, instant messaging (IM). IM, as a low-cost easy-to-use communication tool, is being commonly used in workplaces. IM comes with a variety of organizational benefits but also problems. We conducted two comparative case studies were conducted, exploring how small businesses deal with the challenge of managing IM usage. IM was found beneficial to small businesses in a number of ways, and a set of organizational and managerial factors were identified critical to the achievements of these benefits.

The second part: There has been very limited research in the area of small business decision making. Many issues remain unexamined and one important issue is the communication processes underlying the inter-organizational decision making in small businesses. In the trend of globalization, small businesses build network or alliance with other businesses to tap into external resources. Considering this web of relationships, decisions of small business are often made as an inter-organizational communication and negotiation process. To examine how technology can support such communication process, we have conducted a case study and identified problems in the communication processes. We have studied preliminary technological solutions to these problems. We plan to conduct a larger-scale survey to test our findings in the case study.

Publications:

Zhang, S., and Fjermestad, J., Exploitation of Instant Messaging in Small Businesses: A Comparative Case Study, under review of International Journal of Electronic Commerce

Zhang, S., (2005), Inter-Organizational Communication and Decision Support in Small Businesses, the International Council of Small Businesses 2005 International Conference