‘Do I really need to digitalize at all?’: Contextualizing the debate about owner-managers’ intentions towards digitalization adoption for SMEs in two European nations

Abstract

In this habilitation, the salient factors motivating owner-managers of European SMEs to adopt digitalization are examined. Drawing upon an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), a proposed model involving performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), facilitating conditions (FC), and competitive pressure (CP) as potential factors are discussed. This model could explain the intentions to adopt digitalization in European SMEs. The study postulates that there may be cross-cultural differences, and hence an inclusion of the country as a moderator in the model was introduced. In order to validate this model, the study uses a cross-cultural sample involving 188 owner-managers from the Czech and Slovak Republic. The results from partial least structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and use of a global dataset indicate that, PE, FC, and CP significantly affect owner-managers’ intentions to adopt digitalization in SMEs. Finally, a multi-group analysis was applied to the dataset and find that although there are some differences between the two countries regarding the intentions to use digitalization in SMEs, the differences are statistically insignificant. The overall findings have several implications for theory and practice, which are discussed in the concluding section of the thesis.