Risk refers to the uncertainty of outcomes of an organisations resource commitment. Women entrepreneurs with higher risk-taking propensity are more likely to meddle with matters of uncertain outcomes. It has been reported that organisational innovations result from, among other factors, risk taking in organisations. According to Nohria and Gulati (1997) and Singh (1986), innovation can often result from successful risk taking. Hence, the higher the risk-taking propensity of the entrepreneur, the more likely she is to experiment with computer technology and to eventually adopt it.
This leads to the next hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2b: There is a significant direct positive relationship between risk-taking propensity
and computer technology adoption.
Perseverance is the ability to continue doing something one believes in for an extended period,
enduring difficulties, and finding a solution when facing a barrier (Ndubisi et al. 2005). Kitchel,
(1997) reported that a CEO whose perseverance level is high keeps on working on achieving
goals despite repeated failures. Thus, computer technology adoption is likely to be greater among
more persistent women entrepreneurs.
This assumption is captured in the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2c: There is a significant direct positive relationship between perseverance and
computer technology adoption.
Lastly, the extent of flexibility exhibited by women entrepreneurs could have some implications
on their technology adoption. More flexible women entrepreneurs are likely to adapt more easily
to rapid technological obsolescence. Depending on the frequency of technology replacement or
upgrading need, the more flexible entrepreneurs may have a more rapid adoption. McCalman
and Paton (1992) asserted that technological change due to its dynamic impact on existing
system and also its threatening image can create many challenges for the change agent. While
such challenges may deter less flexible users, more flexible entrepreneurs are more likely to flow
with technological fad.
Hence, the next hypothesis will be verified:
Hypothesis 2d: There is a significant direct positive relationship between flexibility and
computer technology adoption.
METHODOLOGY
Participants & Procedure
The population of study consists of women entrepreneurs that are members of the National
Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Malaysia - (NAWEM). The list of members of
NAWEM was taken from the NAWEM Business Directory. The women entrepreneurs were
surveyed using structured questionnaire. All the one hundred and twenty-five members of
NAWEM were contacted to participate in the survey. Each was sent a copy of the questionnaire,
and seventy-four (59.2%) usable responses were received.
The design of the questionnaire took the approach of that by Davis et al. (1989), which has been
adapted by many other researchers (such as Venkatesh and Davis 1996, Igbaria et al. 1995; 1997;
Ndubisi et al 2003), but in this study with modifications to capture the hypothesised effect of
entrepreneurial traits. Part 1 measured actual system usage with two indicators, the number of
computer supported business tasks performed and the number of different software applications
used.
In line with International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) (1998), the indicators
used in enhancing the reliability of measuring the system usage were specifically:
(1) use of a wide variety of software packages in CBIS environment (e.g. spread sheet, word processing,
graphic, data processing, etc); and
(2) the number of business task performed using systems such as budgeting, planning, analysis and forecasting.
Achieved reliability measure was Cronbach's Alpha 0.83.