A Study in the Effect of Individual and Environmental Factors and Readiness for E-Business in Developing Countries’ Universities

Faculty members of the universities and higher education institutions are considered as the most influential social classes in the development of public culture. This important feature do achieves more importance in development of social competencies. One of the important social competencies in contemporary society is the use of electronic resources that are directly related to the level of preparedness of the people. This study examines the level of readiness for e-business activities among the Universities' faculty members in Iran and the related influential factors. The research method is of descriptive-survey type. The statistical population of this study included all faculty members of Iranian University among which 122 units were selected for data collection through stratified random sampling based on Cochran formula. According to the results of this study, the readiness for e-business among the faculty members at initial application stage was obtained. Direct influence of individual factors (risk, perceived benefits, trust, knowledge, experience, function perception) and environmental factors (E's infrastructure of the country and socio-cultural factors) over readiness for e-business activities amongst the faculty members were confirmed and the related impact for each of the factors was obtained as 0.524% and 0.323% respectively