"Blanket" approaches to promoting ICT in small firms: some lessons from the DTI ladder adoption model in the UK

The current push for small firms to be "wired up to the digital marketplace" is evidenced by the number of initiatives targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to promote this activity. Like other governments worldwide, UK Online's SME targets (together with the supporting DTI adoption ladder) exemplify the "conventional wisdom" view of a homogeneous small business sector, within which firms take an ordered, sequential progression on the route to Internet technology adoption. This approach is questioned by grounding the official rhetoric in the reality of organisational and operational complexity of this important sector of the UK economy. These initiatives are compared and contrasted with similar models of small firm development, most of which neglected to address the diverse nature of small firm needs. The authors recommend a more discriminant approach, focused upon factors such as firm size, age, managerial structure and information and communications technology adoption stages.