Interpreting the correlation between the capacity of generating added value and the use of business information systems through the example of SMEs

This research has two main objectives. It aims to investigate the relation between ICT development and enterprise capacity to generate added value and explore companies’ IT infrastructure with reference to Hungary, Slovakia, Italy and Portugal. Data have been obtained from international datasets and an online survey including about 300 enterprises classified into microenterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and corporations. With reference to company IT infrastructure, findings indicate that enterprises of the two Southern European countries are more developed in relation to the number of workstations, the use of server-based networks and business information systems regardless of their size. Hungarian and Slovakian businesses seem to hardly use any of these systems. In addition, results suggest that business size does play a role in IT adoption in all examined countries. This implies that policy-makers should pay attention to business size and country-specific conditions as these two factors might affect ICT policy implementation.