Journal of Economics and Business

Women entrepreneur has gained utmost importance in the past few decades in Malaysia due to their significant contribution to the country's economic development. However, few business challenges create a constant obstruction for many women entrepreneurs such as lack of ICT knowledge, time constraint to learn ICT, lack of technological expertise, etc. The present study aims to identify the effect of ICT adoption on business performance and examine how ICT usage helped them handle operational business matters. The present study adopted the qualitative research strategy, and researchers interviewed ten (10) women entrepreneurs for this study. A semi-structured interview technique was applied, and six Malay and four Chinese entrepreneurs made the study population. The result highlights that Malay and Chinese entrepreneurs use ICT in their business operation such as warehousing system, purchasing system, HRM software and accounting system, purchase order system, production system, internal communication, and AutoCAD. The present study may support the prospective entrepreneurs in considering the ICT usage to embark on technology and innovation and provide inputs to policymakers to design a proper support system for Malaysian women entrepreneurs, particularly those new entrepreneurs who are mostly young and inexperienced.


ment (Hill et
al., 2008;Dvir et al., 2010), which could let them experience business failure and losing their investment.

Most budding women entrepreneurs may need strong support from their spouse, family members, or close friends during the early stage of a business venture since they lack business acumen and experience to run a business effectively.Those who come from a family who owns a business could perform more confidently in any entrepreneurship activity than those who are not.In line with this, previous studies revealed that family background and upbringing are considered essential for entrepreneurial success (Shoebridge et al., 2012).This is deemed true since exposure to any entrepreneurial activity since early age could benefit them more than those who are not.The entrepreneurs will be more persevering, more confident and understand the business environment better and faster.

By attending training programs and workshops, women entrepreneurs could gain various new knowledge and skills crucial for entrepreneurship.Comparatively, women entrepreneurs in Malaysia are more fortunate since they can seek financial and technical support from several government agencies and ministries directly involved with women entrepreneurship development, i.e.MDeC, SME Corp, MARA, AIM, etc.Among the new skills that they could gain and improve is ICT skill.With this skill, they can enhance their business competencies i.e. management and operational.

In Malaysia, women participation in business has increased year after year.Even during the present pandemic Covid-19, ore women choose to involve in various business activities from their homes.The Malaysian Companies Commission (MCC, 2015) reported that women had registered 187,264 companies out of 920,624 active establishments nationwide.The year 2010-2015 depicted a fairer gender contribution from 19.2% or 127,422 companies operated in 2010 to 20.3% or 187,264 companies in the year 2015.The data showed that womenfolk opened an average of 10,000 companies annually within five years (The New Straits Time, 2018).The numbers are higher in 2021 since entrepreneurship has a low entry barrier for women.The choices of business venture vary, from manufacturing to services.To date, many women entrepreneurs have to rely more on ICT and technology-related operation to succeed in business, partic larly when they work from home through a social media platform.

Due to their dual responsibilities as an entrepreneur and as a wife and mother, their involvement in business can be classified into three segments or groups based on their businesses' status: women in 'stable' business, women in newly formalised business, and women in non-formalised business.Formalisation refers to the business's legal registration (Fatimah et al., 2013;Lai et al., 2010).Those in a formal and registered business are devoting their time and effort as a full-time businesswoman, w ile others do it as a part-time activity.In contrast, other groups whose businesses are not registered and related to cottage production are mostly working on the base of referrals.These differences reflect the different goal orientations that Malaysian women have in venturing into business (Basit et al., 2020;Noor et al., 2019), precisely due to household responsibilities and duties.Nowadays, many Malaysian women choose non-formalised business to help increase their family's income.They conduct their business from home to cope with the limitation of movement outside the house during the unprecedented pandemic that affects the family's and country's economy.

As a country's progress and development are associated with the success of women entrepreneurship, however, the literature lacks the studies related to qualities of successful women entrepreneur (Alam et al., 2011;Fatima, Mohammad, andJoni, 2013: Noor et al. 2020c;Ariffin et al.,2017).Among a woman entr preneur's qualities are business competency and capability, creativity, innovativeness, ICT skill, etc.Although various studies are done on women entrepreneurship, more studies are still explicitly needed to better understand women entrepreneurs' growth and expansion and how they acquire new knowledge and skills.Hence, the present study explores the effect of ICT usage on Malaysian women entrepreneurs' business performance.It is essential to explore ICT's role among women since it has transformed many businesses to be internationalised within the shortest period compared to conventional business practices.With ICT implementation, prospective entrepreneurs may gain benefit and systematic guidance to operate more effectively and efficiently.


Literature Review

Women entrepreneurs are the key to economic growth and development in a country, and increasing their income is related to family wellbeing.Hence, the role of women is utmost important to achieve the main goals of national development in various fields such as nutrition and education of women (International Finance Company (IFC), 2007; the Centre for Arab Women Training and Research (CAWTAR, 2007)), o name some of them.By 1990, nearly five million sole proprietorships in the United States owned by women.Women-owned partnership company accounted for 31 per cent of all small businesses.At present, the percentage is approaching more than 90 per cent, which shows a remarkable increase of women interest in entrepreneurship (Basit et al., 2020) Generally, women entrepreneurs in the 21st century seem to combine entrepreneurial characteristics such as selfdiscipline, focus, independence, systematic thinking, empathy, and creativity.A study found that many women open their businesses after they felt their previous employment was discriminatory to women (Spinuzzi,2016).Therefore, by opening their own businesses, it was a starting point for success in business areas where they could conduct their business the way they prefer in a positive way, such as; i) practice of noble values, ii) caring for the welfare of workers and customers, iii) being a fair leader who can guide and not control, iv) put emphasise on the concept of cooperation rather than com

tition, v) be rece
tive to change, vi) be responsive, vii) willing to learn from mistakes, and viii) spend more time with family (Alam et al., 2011).The uniqueness of women entrepreneurs is that they are the source of strength to attract and inspire more new entrepreneurship talent (Aslam et al. 2012).Based on research on women entrepreneurs conducted in the Asian countries, there is no significant difference between Western countries (Low et al., 1996;Anjum et al., 2012;Ariffin et al., 2017;Brindley, 2016) in terms of challenges.For instance, less-educated women may face financial or human capital constraints, which limit their business pursuits.The individual characteristics such as age, years of formal education, managerial skills, creativity in generating ideas, ability to deal with people, and prior experiences in the industry, are positively correlated with firm performance (Brush, 2018).These characteristics can either directly or indirectly influence their business insights and competencies, i.e. their creativity in idea generation can lead them to be exposed to various new business opportunities.Also, their managerial skills may enhance their leadership quality as an entrepreneur.Moreover, women gained knowledge through their projects in managing and controlling productive resources, skill and experience, and an increase in their ability to source relevant information and solve problems that drove them to become reliable entrepreneurs that can run their business successfully (Hin et al., 2012;Basit et al.,2020).


ICT and Business Performance

Past literature shows that most of the studies focused on one dimension of ICT, i.e. electronic commerce (Kurnia et al., 2015;Turban et al., 2008) that involves buying and selling process.Few studies show a positive effect of ICT on business performance while few shown its negativity (Zaremohzzabieh et al., 2015).ICT is on fame worldwide today that includes broadband, mobile and Internet, providing women entrepreneurs with the opportunity to do their business from anywhere and anytime.Thus, ICT is now becoming the primary business strategy (Etemad et al., 2010;Ong et al., 2015).However, ICT alone may not be sufficient in some business activities, especially in manufacturing and machine-operated activities.Hence, various technologies, i.e.AutoCAD, ERP system, purchasing system, etc., all need ICT to be effective.Whether they like or not, women entrepreneurs today must equip themselves with ICT skill to strengthen business position in the market place and to compete in the international market.

In line with this, Malaysian Government encourage entrepreneurs to adopt ICT in business; however, there is a need of proper planning and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to be successful (Chen, 2013;Ong et al., 2020) and other business systems.As ( Beninger et al., 2016) stated, an adaptation of ICT open new avenues for women entrepreneurs to connect to the entire world market, supplier and customer in a more systematic manner.Without a proper syst

, a business may not have a s
andardise guideline for a routine operation and can end with losses.Earlier studies on ICT are mostly general without specifying the gender, while others focus on critical factors or ICT's determinants (Oly and Kahraman, 2005;Aboelmaged, 2014).It is also suggested that the main hurdles in adopting the ICT among women entrepreneurs is lack of training, expensive equipment, and software packages (Vossenberg, 2013;Bardan 2014).These hurdles can obstruct and affect the women entrepreneurs' confidence in full usage of ICT in their business activities.Other loads are related to the infrastructure that is not up to the mark, and network failure and trafficking (Gilbert et al.,2012).The existing issues and challenges may dampen their interest to adopt ICT to the fullest.

Undoubtedly, women entrepreneurs' knowledge, experience and technological expertise play a catalytic role but lack technical skills, creating a more challenging situation (Ong et al.,2020;Beninger et al., 2016;Anjum et al.,2012).Literature ighlights the lack of studies about the adaptation of ICT and business performance among women entrepreneurs in Malaysia.Hence, the present study explores the effect of ICT on women entrepreneurs' performance in Malaysia.


Research Objective and Question:

RO: To explore the effect of ICT on women entrepreneur business performance in Malaysia.RQ: How does ICT affect women entrepreneur business performance in Malaysia?


Methodology

The study adopted the qualitative methodology.A semi-structured interview technique was used for data collection.However, for any research method as highlighted by (Hall et al., 2016), philosophical underpinnings are considered very important as it depicts the researcher stance and covers the researcher's entire schema based on data collection and analysis technique.Moreover, questions are considered the base for the phenomena under study (Clough et al., 2012).The current study follows interpretivism as it deals with people's experience (Creswell, 2012).For this study, researchers had interviewed ten (10) women entrepreneurs from the northern part of Malaysia.The interviews were conducted in English and Malay and completed in four months.Interviews were tape-recorded and later on transcribed for analysis purposes.The int rview lasted about 30 minutes to 45 minutes.The semi-structured interviews were based on ICT usage on women entrepreneurs' business performance.Hence, each interview question was transcribed to traceable chunks and coded by the participants for three interview questions.The study followed Johnny Saldaña's (2018) technique for data analysis.Subsequently, NVivo Software was used for the final data analysis (Hall et al., 2016).Table 1 depicts the interview questio

.


Discussion

The interviews we
e conducted to get a holistic view of women entrepreneurs' (Malays and Chinese) business performance after adopting ICT.The coded data cross-referenced to highlight t

similaritie
and differences of participant views.As (Crotty, 1998) explained, continuous comparison leads to fewer themes for research questions.Table 3 depicts the main themes and sub-themes generated from transcribed interviews.


Findings

The study's findings concerning ICT usage that most of them use ICT to develop a company website (M-6, C-4) for advertising (M-5, C-4) account system 8(M-4, C-4), ERP system (M-5, C-2), UBS system (M-3, C-3), Warehousing system( M-5, C-4), Training (M-4, C-3), Purchasing system (M-5, C-2), Internal Communication (M-6, C-3), and AutoCad (M-5, C-4).These results show that ICT usage is considered an essential tool in the business, and they only use it for specific purposes.The feedbacks of the participants below show the importance of ICT in women entrepreneurship.

"We cannot run away from ICT, whoever wants to succeed in business must use ICT, because it has no boundaries, especially from the marketing side" (E3)."We use ICT mainly to develop production system, 142 tilizing 142 ing between departments for internal communication.The company also use AutoCad for tooling design and development" (E6)."We use ERP system in procurement, CAD or CAM in designing machines and UBS system in accounting"(E9).

The results above highlight that all entrepreneurs use ICT in certain areas in their business operation, and Malay entrepreneurs are ore inclined to adopt ICT than Chinese.Therefore, ICT can be treated as an essential tool that influences business success.There are various tools the entrepreneur

may adopt t
enhance the success rate.For instance, Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) must be closely adhered to manage and align their business operating efficiently.The finding is in line with previous research that proper use of ICT will ensure the business success (Kurnia et al., 2015;Turban et al., 2008;Chen, 2013;Ong et al.,2020;Zaremohzzabieh et al., 2015).ICT may provide a wide range of opportunities for women entrepreneu

' busines
development and act as a driving force to boost their business venture internationally.Malaysian women entrepreneurs adopt ICT usage in various business tasks such as drafting letters, preparing reports, database setup, planning, budgeting, resolve the overall analysis of problems, etc. ICT also provided the channel for speedy communication with suppliers, vendors, retailers, sellers, customers and other parties.It is proposed that in order to make women more active in ICT usage, more training programmes and workshops must be provided by the government agencies an ministries for women entrepreneurs, especially to those who live in the rural areas, to make them more familiar and confident in utilising ICT.These programmes could either be free or with a certain amount of fee charges based on the type and level of training and workshop.


Theoretical Justification

This study is governed by the Resource-based view (RBV).RBV is a method used to achieve competitive advantage.The concepts of resource, capa ility and competence have been widely discussed in management literature.As compared to the larger firms, smaller firms are less competitive because they may possess less of those three factors (Barney, 1991).According to Barney (1991), the resource-based view (RBV) implies that differences in performance between businesses may be better clarified through differences in firm resources and accumulation and usage.Businesses have a propensity to grow because of wanting to reach for economies of scale (Chandler & Hanks, 1994).There may still balance to use internal and external resources ( Alvarez & Busenitz, 2001).RBV focuses on the activities that can perform with business resources.Some researchers divide resources into four categories: human, financial, physical and intangible, or four factory outputs: performance, flexibility, innovativeness, and delivery plus three network outputs; namely accessibility, mobility, and learning (Kellermanns, Walter, Crook, Kemmerer, & Narayanan, 2014).The resource-based theory is focused on performance relative to competitors (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2001).Resource-based perspective needs to achieve and support the competitive advantage.In most situations, competitive advantage is beneficial to the business when the small number of firms implement a value-creating strategy.In the resource-based view, entrepreneurs in Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a manager are vital to controlling the firm's performance by utilising its resources (Barney, 1991).They have to choose the suitable strategy to make the most effective use of the firm's resources

d capabilities.The firm re
ources comprise capabilities, processes, firm attributes, knowledge, and information controlled by a firm (Barney, 1991), which leads to the firm's competitive advantage.Contrasting to Barney (1991) was Wernerfelt, who identified resources to have consisted of anything that might be thought of as a given firm's strength or weakness ( Wernerfelt, 1984).Resources can be turned into tautological and circular.

Resources are considered to include anything contributing to a firm's sustainable performance (Wiklund and Shepherd,2003).The resource-based perspective can still be considered lacking maturity.Even the exact definitions of key concepts, such as resources, competences, core competencies, capabilities, and dynamic capabilities, have not been agreed upon or remain ambiguous and controversial.The resource-based view has been instrumental in improving the legitimacy of the strategic management field as perceived by scholars in other, more conventional disciplines, including mainstream economics and organisation science (Kellermanns, Walter, Crook, Kemmerer, & Narayanan, 2014).


Conclusion

Woman entrepreneur's contribution to the Malaysia economic is very significant and should never overlook all parties.The present study examines the effect of ICT on women entrepreneurs' business performance.This study examines and gathers detailed information on women entrepreneurs and how successful women entrepreneurs in Malaysia are by strategising ICT in business.The research findings indicated that the entrepreneurs use ICT freely as they are more comfortable with ICT usage in business and are almost similar for both ethnics, Malay and Chinese.Their experience, issues and problems are also identical.Future studies may be conducted using a quantitative approach to find the most trends of women entrepreneurs' business success by ICT usage.Since this research focuses on Malaysia's northern region, further research should explore the impact of ICT in women entrepreneurs' businesses in different areas, sizes, and types of business.Also, Indian women entrepreneurs can be included in future study.

Table 1 :
1
Interview Questions
Sr.noInterview Questions1Does your business oper tion use ICT?2In which area or function ICT is applied in your organisation?3Do you think it is important to use any ICT related or Business Intelligence (BI) in providing the rightinformation or knowledge for your business decision?

Table 2a :
2a
Participants Personal and Business Background


Table 2a :
2a
Participants Personal and Business Background
QuestionParticipantsNotypesE1E2E3E4E5Categoriesindividual1 Age Category30-39 years40-59 years40-59 years40-59 years40-59 yearsfactors2 Marital StatusMarriedMarriedMarriedMarriedMarriedYes -2Yes -6Yes -3Yes HowYes -43 Do have a child/childrenmany?education4 Education levelpostgraduatesecondarytertiarypostgraduatepostgraduatebus