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This article provides an explanation of how dynamic contextual factors and individual agency influence the adoption of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan. Eight multiple qualitative case studies were undertaken, involving 24 face-to-face semi-structured interviews and were thematically analysed using NVivo. This study found that the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) factors and additional extended micro-level (individual agency) factors strongly influenced the adoption of e-commerce practices by the managers of Pakistani SMEs. Managers need to address factors such as digital readiness, recruiting of skilled ICT expertise, reluctance of customers to switch their preference from traditional business selling methods to e-commerce, obtaining government and local institutional support, and recognizing the characteristics and individual agency of their owner-managers. On top of these factors, there is a strong need to improve the Information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in order for manager to prepare for and to embrace the e-commerce practices in their respective companies. This article extends Tornatzky and Fleischer’s TOE framework by adding the micro-level context of individual agency. Additionally, this article proposes practical implications for policymakers, governments, and local business support agencies.

SMEs are one of the main contributors to job creation and GDP. To ensure the sustainability of their business and meet market needs, the owner-managers these days, switch the functioning of SMEs from traditional to latest technological frameworks. However, even after adoption, local SMEs are still not fully able to exploit and reap the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs). To understand this issue, this research focuses on two research objectives. First, it highlights the impact of ICT usage on SMEs. And, second, it tries to identify different factors that affect the ICTs adoption in SMEs. Main contribution of this research is that it extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) on two antecedents of Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) as a theoretical framework. For this research, qualitative interviews were conducted from ten (10) owner-managers of SMEs in Pakistan. A careful thematic analysis of interview data reveals the emergence of five different themes: the impact of ICT usage on SMEs, cultural decisions, factors affecting the adoption of ICT in SMEs, entrepreneurial characteristics of owner-managers, and the role of governments and institutional support leading to successful adoption of ICT in SMEs. Findings of this study have significance for SME’s owner-managers, government bodies, and relevant business authorities who wish to address issues pertaining to the adoption and increase in ICT usage among SMEs in Pakistan.

The increase of social media (SM) has led to continuous deviations in how day-to-day entrepreneurial activities can be carried out. Additionally, studies devoted to SM entrepreneurship and SM are relatively limited and fragmented in their focus. However there is growing interest from scholars, practitioners and academia for upcoming studies and exploration within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) context. This research explores the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on SM adoption and SME performance in developing countries. We employed the resource-based view (RBV) as the foundation for developing the conceptual framework The present study employed a closed-ended questionnaire to collect data from SMEs located in Pakistan. Partial-least-squares-structural equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was utilized for the analysis of 423 responses. The results proved a direct positive link between EO–SMEs performance, EO–SM adoption, SM adoption–SMEs performance, innovation capabilities (IC), and SME performance. Partial mediation was found between EO and SME performance, and the significant moderation effect of IC was found between SM adoption and SME performance. This paper has implications for practitioners and researchers regarding SM adoption in the SMEs. It builds an empirical, multi-dimensional hypothesized model, including mediating and moderating roles affecting the relationships.

This research is focused on dealing with multiple conflicting objectives in vehicle scheduling problem in an urban delivery context. The distinctive feature of this research is that an interactive reference point approach is applied to support the trade-off analysis of multiple conflicting objectives, including the minimization of total time, distance and CO2 emissions in the context of time-varying congestion data, derived as time-dependent historical average travel speed data from the UK road network. Due to congestion, average travel speeds on different roads change throughout the day and optimal routes may differ across time slots. Because of the conflict among the objectives, a solution that is optimal for one objective may or may not be optimal for other objectives. A hybrid algorithm mixing dynamic programming with an evolutionary algorithm is first developed to generate sets of efficient solutions. The proposed interactive approach is then described, which alternates between solution generation and preference elicitation from a decision maker. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated using a case study that combines synthetic demand data for a company with the actual road and congestion information in the UK. The results obtained using the proposed interactive approach are compared to those obtained when a single objective is optimised.