The Digital Divide: Current and Future Research Directions - MISRC ...

Just as the location of individuals can influence their access to ICT, so too will the
location of organizations affect their technology adoption and use. Some locations have
better ICT infrastructure or a critical mass of other high-tech companies, thereby
attracting other technologically sophisticated companies. Azari and Pick [2005] develop
a conceptual framework of social and economic factors that influence the technological
level of a given county in the United States. In this study, technological sophistication is
measured for three sectors: information systems and data processing,
telecommunications and broadcasting, and motion picture/sound recording. Using data
from 164 counties across the U.S., they develop an econometric model to show that
several factors correlate closely with the level of technological sophistication of a given
county, including: size of the workforce involved with professional, scientific, or
technical services, size of the workforce for other services, household income, total value
of federal grant funds received, average level of college education, and ethnicity.
However, only the size of the workforce involved in professional, scientific, or technical
services and household income are significantly associated with information systems and
data processing sophistication. These findings lead the authors to conclude that
technological development within a given county region within the U.S. requires an
underlying base of personnel capable of building, using, and maintaining the technology
environment. Based on these correlations, the authors suggest several policy steps that
local, state and national governments can take to overcome the divide.
Forman et al. [2003a; 2003b; 2004; 2005a] conducted several studies that evaluate
organizational IT adoption patterns as they relate to geographical location. In Forman et
al. [2004], the authors propose two different perspectives on the relationship between the
location of businesses and their reasons for adopting the Internet for business activities.
The first perspective, global village theory, suggests that the Internet is making location
less important. Therefore, we should expect to see significant adoption of the Internet by
rural and remote businesses that seek to use the technology to level the playing field
against competing firms located in more urban areas which have traditionally benefited
from more useful infrastructure services. On the other hand, urban leadership theory
suggests that firms can make better use of the Internet when they are located in more
urban locations, where they have closer access to peripheral ICT services needed to make
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