Determinants of digitalization in Turkish SMEs

Significance of digitalization is widely recognized today, and organizations increasingly embrace digitalization due to its contribution to their competitiveness and growth. Especially for small-and-medium-sized firms (SMEs), there are countless benefits including improved relations with stakeholders, responsiveness to the environment, operational efficiency, production quality, and organizational image. This study focuses on exploring the determinants of digitalization adoption for Turkish SMEs. The factors that were considered include top management support, perceived benefits, perceived challenges, company size, level of institutionalization, investment in digitalization, and existence of an IT department. The sample for this study consists of 79 SMEs operating in electrical-electronics industry, categorized into three groups based on their employee numbers. Category 1 includes companies between 10-49 employees, category 2 includes those with 50-149 employees, and category 3 consists of SMEs with 150-250 employees. Data were collected through a questionnaire prepared on the basis of an extensive literature review. Research findings demonstrate that investment of digitalization and existence of an IT department have statistically significant positive impact on the extent of digitalization adoption.