The impact of managerial characteristics of top management team on the extent of information technology adoption: An exploratory study with the upper echelon theory

This article investigates the effect of compositions of managerial characteristics of top management team on the extent of information technology (IT) adoption. Adopting the upper echelon theory as theoretic foundation, the study formulated hypotheses relating compositions of top management team (TMT) characteristics to the extent of IT adoption in small businesses. Specifically, the TMT characteristics examined in the study are distribution of age, education level, gender and ethnicity of top managers. The major findings of the research are that the compositions of age, education, and gender are significant predictors of the extent of IT adoption. The research contributes to the body of knowledge in this area by (1) investigating the effect of TMT characteristics on the extent of IT adoption and (2) empirically testing the validity of the upper echelon theory in the field of IT.