Information and Communication Technology Skills Possessed by Small – Scale Business Entrepreneurs for Growth in the Electronic World Era in Abia State, Nigeria
The rapid technology developments in this electronic era have completely changed business environment to digital world; the world that makes significant use of the computer technology in every sector of the economy notably business and industry. This study on Information and Communication Technology skills possessed by small-scale business entrepreneurs for growth in the electronic world era, in Abia State, Nigeria was aimed at identifying the extent of possession of Information and communication technology skills by small scale business entrepreneurs in order to become relevance and improve productivity in this electronic world. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population was 700 registered small-scale business entrepreneurs in Abia State out of which 350 (50%) were sampled using simple random sampling technique. A 30 – item structured questionnaire on a 4–point rating scale was used as an instrument for the data collection. The questionnaire was face validated by three lecturers from the Department of Business Education. Cronbach Alpha reliability method measured the internal consistency of the instrument which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.73, signifying that the instrument was reliable. The collected data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the three research questions while the null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using t-test statistics. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents had not possessed the identified skills, therefore the possession level was significantly low and that has contributed partly to poor performance of the entrepreneurs. Based on the findings, the study recommended, among others, that all the local government councils should establish well equipped computer training centers to train the entrepreneurs on the basic ICT skills required for improved performance while the small-scale business entrepreneurs should also be assisted with android and smart phones, laptops and other ICT resources.
Keywords: abia, business, communication, electronic, entrepreneurs, era, growth, information, nigeria, possessed, scale, skills, small, state, technology, world