Abstract:
The internet economy has given rise to new business models which do not require high capital costs. In this regard, technology has enabled organisations to revise their strategy to enhance organisational effectiveness. Consequently, this has resulted in the disruption of traditional business models. Therefore, the central aspect of this study was to consider the effectiveness of technology adoption for strategy implementation. Blue ocean strategy was regarded as a suitable framework to consider customer satisfaction, while technology adoption theory highlighted the importance of influencing factors in the environment and organisation when adopting technology. Exploratory, qualitative data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews from 16 research respondents who were identified through non-probability sampling across differing sectors. The data from these interviews were analysed by means of descriptive coding. Microsoft excel was used to complement the coding process. Three major findings emerged: First, the level of importance of technology, among other organisational components was established. It was understood that technology serves as an enabler of the other components. Next, a unique scoring system was designed to determine the restrictive ability of influencing factors namely, culture, structure, risk appetite, financial resources and compliance in relation to technology adoption. The ranking of the factors was established with compliance ranked as the number one factor to negatively influence the rate of technology adoption. Lastly, the relationship between technology adoption and organisational effectiveness was determined where the results indicated that there was higher organisational effectiveness in those organisations with a higher rate of technology adoption. This study contributes towards existing knowledge in literature and provided valuable insights for businesses in terms of the alignment between IT and business strategies.
