Key Drivers and Critical Success Factors in the Technology Adoption and Use by Asia-Pacific SMEs

It is widely accepted that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) serve as the engines of economies around world. Thus, governments increase their financial aid to develop and sustain them in the effort to stimulate the economy as a whole. Nonetheless, SMEs remain deficient in many resources, financial and otherwise. It is thus important for SME policy makers, advocates and researchers to study how SMEs around the world manage to overcome operational problems due to, and in spite of, their size. Employing the content analysis technique in analysing all current and peerreviewed papers from an extensive collection of journal databases, this study found that across all literature, market forces, organisational factors and external change agents are the key drivers in the adoption of technology by Asia-Pacific SMEs. Other studies in the literature focus on the factors that lead to their successful implementation of technology, and these are: small size and young age of the firm, user training, business and government ties, previous technological experience, length of use of the technology, user satisfaction, and location of the facilities and mentoring. Further, the benefits of improved performance should encourage any SME to invest in new technologies combined with user training. Meanwhile, technology developers as well as managers implementing technology-based projects concerning SMEs should plan or design their projects with the user in mind.