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The increasing availability, use, and globalization of information and telecommunication technologies (ITs) have begun to create relationships between their application and the competitiveness and productivity of industry. What these relationships are and how the positive ones can be stimulated are important issues in the development of national public policies, particularly those relating to ITs.

Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has been working on areas related to this question over the past 4 years. In April and December 1993, IDRC brought together researchers and practitioners in Montevideo, Uruguay, to examine these issues, both generally and in relation to Latin America and the Caribbean. It was agreed during these consultations that the focus of further research should be ITs and their potential for stimulating competitiveness and productivity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

It has since become clear that is not possible to define and develop effective IT policies without clearly understanding the factors that have led to the adoption of ITs and the characteristics of the firms where they have been adopted. Also, as these technologies are constantly and rapidly changing, the definition of policies needs to be informed by analyzing the application of specific technologies and their adoption in SMEs operating under certain conditions.

In this book, Élisabeth and Louis Lefebvre respond to these challenges. Through an analysis of the literature and the various methodological models, they identify the factors affecting the adoption of ITs, the decision-making process for their adoption by SMEs, and the impacts of such adoption. The result is a publication that provides a broad view of the state of relevant research and will be of immediate application to researchers worldwide who are involved in IT policy.

This book greatly benefited from an active discussion on the listserv established for communication among project participants, other researchers, and IDRC. This discussion enabled the authors to revise and extend some sections and to produce this final publication. I would like to thank all the participants in this process, particularly Carlos Correa and Otilia Vainstock of the University of Buenos Aires, Roberto Hidalgo and José Lanusse of the Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas y Tecnológicas, Lucie Déschênes of the Centre for Information Technology Innovation, and Francisco Gatto of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Their active participation in the discussions enabled the resulting publication to be more relevant to the practical question of establishing IT polices for SMEs.

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