Investigating Capabilities Associated with ICT Access and Use in Latino Micro-enterprises

While the process by which Information Technology enables growth in medium and large enterprises has been wellresearched, the corresponding processes in micro-enterprises are poorly understood. In fact, such micro-enterprises lie at the heart of many economies. This insight is important as information technology enables businesses to connect with each other through knowledge networking to carry out their basic business operations. There is thus a need to build our understanding of how micro-enterprises access and use technology in order to be able to assess the benefits they derive from ICT adoption. Following an analysis of two case studies of Latino micro-enterprises using Sen’s capabilities model, this paper uncovers the ways in which Latino micro-enterprises adopt information technology to grow their businesses in terms of their means, ends and freedoms. The contribution of this paper is to what we know about how Latino micro-enterprises adopt technology. This adds to our body of knowledge on challenges facing Latino micro-enterprises in the U.S. (an important subgroup within the under-researched area of micro-enterprises) and how such businesses may adopt ICT to benefit and grow their businesses. This has implications for global development in enabling adoption by microenterprises to be investigated, and in enabling techniques to be developed and deployed to improve the ability of micro-enterprises to adopt ICT to grow their businesses in ethnically cohesive communities.