) The process of adopting
and implementing the portal could now be seen as the complex set of interactions that
it was, and not just the inevitable result of the innate characteristics of this technology as
innovation diffusion theory would suggest.
Persuading.Local.SMEs.to.Use.the.Bizewest.Portal
For the project to be successful, the Bizewest portal needed to be seen by the proprietors
of the SMEs as a necessary means of undertaking e-commerce and business-to-business
transactions. They needed to be convinced that this technology was more worthwhile and
offered them better business prospects than the approaches, such as post or fax, which they
had previously used. In actor-network terms, the portal needed to set up a problematisation
(Callon, 1986b) of B2B trading that brought out the benefits of using a portal for this purpose.
There also needed to be an interessement (Callon, 1986b) to interest and convince these SMEs
to change from their old business culture and adopt the portal. It was not enough for those
promoting the portal to eloquently espouse its benefits: The SMEs would also have to give
up at least some of their old methods of business-to-business transactions. After enrolment
of these businesses, the portal could be judged to be truly successful when SME proprietors
began advocating its advantages to each other (Tatnall & Burgess, 2002).
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