Today organizations of all types are utilizing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) around the
globe, not only for cutting costs and improving efficiency, but also for providing better customer service.
Governments too, around the world, are adopting ICT to provide better services to their citizens. The
adoption of ICT by organizations requires a business environment encouraging open competition, trust and
security, interoperability and standardization and the availability of finance for ICT (UNCTAD 2004).
Most of the large and international organizations in Oman have effective computer systems to efficiently
conduct business. A number of large organizations have spent huge amounts of money on installing
computer systems to support their business processes. However, the situation has not been the same with
SMEs - similar to other parts of the world for various reasons (Parker and Castelman 2007), (Shiels et al
2003), and (Fink and Disterer 2006).
No studies have been carried out on this topic in any of the GCC countries. So why Oman? Authors believe
that Oman is a country with unique features such as Oman is a developing country, an oil producing country
but is neither as poor as some of the other developing countries nor as rich as other oil producing countries.
It does not intensely depend on foreign labor as some of the other GCC countries and is expanding its small
industrial base. With its small population and a large geographical area Oman has international standard
grade roads to link all major cities of the country. Similarly education and health facilities are expanded to
rural and remote areas. Telephone, land lines or mobile, and Internet services are available to more than
80% of the population. The female workforce represents 17% of the total workforce of Oman which is a very
distinctive feature as compared to other Arab countries of the region. Oman has limited resources (monetary
and human) and has to use these resources in an efficient way learning from the experiences of other
countries. These and many other geo-political, social and other factors make Oman an interesting case to
study in what aspects Oman is different or similar to other countries in ICT adoption for SMEs.