Formative Infrastructure for ICT-Adoption in SME's - A Case Study of Conditions for Progress

The focus in this paper is on conditions for ICT use in SMEs expressed as formative infrastructure. Questions concern needs for infrastructure among SMEs, actors roles, and concepts constituting a formative infrastructure for ICT-adoption and use. Few – if any – studies, take the perspective of SMEs’ needs for infrastructure concerning use of ICT. A formative ICT infrastructure is constituted by the identified needs among SMEs, and it contains three parts; (1) sensemaking, (2) sensegiving, and (3) service infrastructures. In SMEs there is less of infrastructure and less of overhead services and these are to be found outside the SME. The adoption processes in SMEs differ from the ones in larger enterprises. ICT adoption is the process where the formative infrastructure is maintained as well as changed by actors enacting this context. SMEs rely more on external relations in a public infrastructure. In dividing ICT infrastructure into two major areas – hard and formative infrastructure, the results indicate that, both are important, but formative ICT infrastructure in SMEs is a less known and a less elaborated concept. When analyzing the need for formative ICT infrastructure, three types, emerge – sensemaking infrastructure, sensegiving infrastructure, and service infrastructure, as three cornerstones of a formative ICT-infrastructure.