Parts 2 and 3 respectively measured perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Perceived usefulness indicators were improvement on job performance, increase in productivity, enhancement of job effectiveness, and system usefulness in the job. Indicators of perceived ease of use included; clear and understandable interaction with system, system compliance to commands, minimal mental effort in interacting with the system, finding the system easy to use. These indicators were adopted from Davis et al. (1989), with reliability estimates of a = .90 for perceived usefulness and a = .88 for perceived ease of use.
Part 4 measured the traits of the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial traits in this study included
innovativeness, risk-taking propensity, persistence/perseverance, and flexibility. Traits items
were adapted from Kitchel (1997) and Harper (1996).
The following items were used to measure
innovativeness (e.g. acting to diversify business, products, or service into new fields; finding a
unique way to solve problems; producing new ideas or innovative solutions and trying out new
ideas); risk-taking propensity (for instance not hesitating to put money into new business that
could fail if the possible reward is high; seeing risk-taking as an integral part of a challenging
career, willingness to take profitable business risk); perseverance (don't easily give up on things,
even on very difficult tasks; having staying power to do work that requires long hours and hard
work; looking for alternative solutions when one fails); flexibility (willingness to apply changes
that will bring better results; willingness to change position even on important issues, if faced
with a good argument; not afraid of change).
The reliability of the items was confirmed based on
the following alpha values: innovativeness (.92), risk-taking propensity (.83), perseverance (.70),
and flexibility (.82). Part 5 measured the demographic variable using single items such as: age,
educational background, job function, primary business activity, period of establishment, number
of employees, and prior computer experience (Ndubisi et al 2003). For parts 2-4, respondents
were asked to indicate the extent of agreement and disagreement on a five-point Likert scale
ranging from (1) "strongly disagree to (5) "strongly agree". The schema of the proposed
relationships and p-values are schematized as Figure 1.
RESULTS
Respondents are engaged in various activities, from manufacturing, to sales, education, interior
decoration, fashion designing, etc. Seventy-three percent of the entrepreneurial ventures have
been established for over five years, 20.3% and 79.7% are respectively in the manufacturing and
service sectors, 89.2% are employing less than one hundred staffs, and 84.6% are ownermanaged.
A total of 58.1% of the entrepreneurs are graduates, 43.2% are below forty years while
the rest are forty years or more. There are more Chinese (64.9%) than Malay (32.4%) and Indian
(2.7%) women entrepreneurs.
IT Usage Pattern
The results in Table 2 show that all respondents (100%) are using word processor, 73% are using
electronic mail, 57% are using application packages, and so on. Job tasks where systems are used
are letters and memos (88%), producing reports (77%), internal communication (66%), data
storage/retrieval (62%), budgeting (49%), controlling & guiding activities (47%), etc. It is
observed that 59.5% of respondents are using a minimum of four out of the seven varieties of
systems presented, and 54.1% are using a system for at least five out of the ten job tasks.