Adoption of information systems by trade and manufacturing enterprises

The article discusses the ability of enterprises to adopt and use information systems. The analysis of scientific literature published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, Springer, M. E. Sharpe, Routledge, etc. show that 5.39 mln. authors are talking about information systems. 4.0 thousand authors mention the role of trade and manufacturing enterprises in this area. Most of these authors pay attention to manufacturing enterprises (it is mentioned by 2.3 thousand authors), others – to trade enterprises (it is mentioned by 911 authors), some of them pay attention to both. In addition, it is important to mention that such topic is not very popular among authors who dedicated books to information systems. Most of them are analysing individual technology adoption or individual organizations’ adoption decisions. Therefore, it is important to reveal the ability of enterprises to adopt and use information systems in the current challenging conditions; to compare enterprises, which have activity in different countries, to evaluate, if enterprises, taking into account the new circumstances, are able to respond and adapt to these challenges adequately. One of the challenges is the adoption of information system is when it is multi-functional. In the literature it’s mentioned that enterprise easily adopt dual-function information system, but not multi-functional, which increases confusion, frustration and indecision thinking about adoption of new information system. The ability of enterprise to adopt information system depends on industry structure, enterprises’ size, environmental factors and information system itself. That’s why the analysis by company size is not included into this study. As in European Union small and medium size enterprises take the largest part (their share is 99.8% among all enterprises).So, the paper presents the results of investigations about the adoption of different information system in two industries located in 32 European countries. National level of 32 European countries is used to seeking to describe environmental factors on country level. The research is aiming to propose framework helpful to compare enterprises by geographic location and their ability to adopt information systems. In literature different factors that influence the adoption of information systems are suggested for benchmarking. Therefore the classical adoption theories are tending to neglect market and industry characteristics as important factors in the adoption decision, in the paper the set of factors are used to explore complex organizations and industry adoption patterns. The study presented in the paper contains three different aspects. First, the adoption of information systems is disclosed from different perspectives. Second, a theoretical framework that incorporates factors determining the ability of companies to adopt information systems is presented. Third, the application of framework for manufacturing and trade enterprises, located in 32 European countries, is given. The article is based on comparative and multiple criteria analysis. For the suggested framework, the set of criteria and the multiple criteria evaluation method (COPRAS) is used. The proposed approach can be useful for decision-making practitioners who analyse the perspectives and adoption of information systems