Factors Contributing Towards Slow Adoption of Information Technology (IT): A Literature Review

Abstract

Innovation issues have long been regarded as a global concern within worldwide countries
including Malaysia. One of the difficulties is regarding the slow organisational innovation within
construction organisations in adopting Information Technology (IT). A lot of factors have been
discussed in the literature leading towards slow organisational innovation; with respect to slow
adoption of IT. Hence, the objectives of this paper are; to critically review the components
contributing to slow organisational innovation, i.e. slow adoption of IT, and to synthesize the
available literature and tease out the most significant factor causing the slow adoption of IT in
planning the way forward. Using frequency analysis of content-based method, four main
categories were teased and can be broadly divided into four namely, people, management,
technology, and process. Based on the findings, people were identified as the most concerned
factor rose by researchers; which include the managerial skills played by owner(s), leader(s), top
management team or managerial position within organisation in influencing the technological
adoption. A way forward was recommended in order to overcome the problems within ‘people’
in order to help owners/ leaders/ top management team to make decisions in adopting IT innovation
through having ‘good’ managerial skills.