E-Business Framework for Small and Medium Enterprises: A Critical Review

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are often described as the engine of growth for a country's economy due to their significant economic contributions. At the same time, ebusiness offers an opportunity for SMEs to significantly further their growth as it has been identified as a tool that could improve an enterprise's operational efficiency and competitiveness in the global market. Despite the promised potentials of e-business, its adoption among SMEs has been lower compared to that of larger enterprises. This study offers a multifaceted overview of the existing research by initially summarizing and then critically analyzing a range of research frameworks and evaluating the extent to which they take into account the nature of SMEs and their ability to provide a practical tool to transform SMEs. Our analysis reveals three groups of issues that may affect e-business use in SMEs: 1) Factors that drive and hinder adoption of ebusiness among SMEs; 2) Profiling of SMEs based on their capacity or readiness to adopt e-business; and 3) Implementation models that are inherently centered on specific technologies or ebusiness applications. Our overall analysis shows that the existing e-business frameworks, when used independently, inadequately explain the adoption behavior of the diverse SMEs and insufficiently provide a practical tool for SMEs in implementing e-business. Accordingly, this study suggests preliminary ideas towards an integrated e-business for SMEs framework.