TECHNOLOGY READINESS AMONG CONTRACTORS BY FIRM SIZE CATEGORIES

Dr. MASTURA Jaafar, Prof. Dr. ABDUL RASHID Abdul Aziz, Prof. T. RAMAYAH and Basri Saad.
Abstract of Proceeding of 2005 International Conference On Construction and Real Estate Management, 12-13th Dec., 2005; Penang.

The impact of globalization and liberalization in our country has been boon to some but a bane to many others. One group of organizations affected most in a developing country like Malaysia are the construction firms. Since the managers in construction firm are the ones who decide on whether to embark on this perilous journey of technological advances or not, this study specifically focusses on them to gauge their technological readiness. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 96 managers of construction firm operating in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. Technology Readiness Index (TRI) which refers to people's propensity to embrace and use technologies for accomplishing goals in home life and at work developed by Parasuraman (2000) was adopted to measure the readiness of construction firm managers. The findings showed that the overall TRI score (M=3.18, SD=0.23) indicates that the managers are moderate in terms of their technology readiness. In terms of different firm sizes, bigger firms are more optimistic compared to smaller firms but with no significant difference in the overall TRI