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The paper critiques a range of theories and evaluates their ability to provide a lens for explaining the idiosyncratic nature of small firms and their e‐business adoption decisions.

This literature review firstly summarises the existing research evidence that shows that small firms are idiosyncratic when it comes to e‐business adoption. It then critiques theories commonly used in the literature in this field to examine the extent to which they take this small firm idiosyncrasy into account when explaining e‐business adoption decisions.

The critical analysis shows that no commonly‐used theory adequately explains small firm adoption of e‐business because each omits important aspects of small firm idiosyncrasy. The analysis suggests that an integrated theoretical framework is needed. Preliminary ideas on this framework are provided.

Existing research generally applies a small number of selected theories and formulates research models of adoption factors. However, there is no systematic analysis of theories in this field and no consensus about theoretical frameworks. This paper addresses this limitation of the literature by critically evaluating the commonly used theories in terms of their individual suitability as lenses for explaining small firm e‐business adoption.

If IS educators are to provide their students with an understanding of the overall context in which they will develop professional careers, they must have good information about graduates’ employment destinations and their workforce experiences. That information is difficult to obtain from standard data collections. This paper explores the early job experiences of IS graduates using survey and interview data. While the graduates have a strong IS professional orientation and experience friendly work environments, their expectations of access to interesting work, career advice and opportunities for advancement appear to outstrip their experience in the workplace.

Studies and analyses changes to the promotion policies and practices at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and identifies outcomes by gender. Suggests that there are quite a few factors to be addressed before gender equity in academia at UWA is obtained. Discusses, in depth, how to try to deal with lack of networks, socialization, the dual‐role burden, masculine organizational culture and gendered power imbalance in the workplace. States that, although great inroads have been made at UWA, statistics show that there are still very fundamental barriers to be addressed to aid further improvement for women academics.

This paper proposes the concepts of communities of enterprise (CoEs) and virtual communities of enterprise (VCoEs) to describe business networking patterns in regional areas where there is no central organisational or industry focus and small and medium enterprises dominate the economy.

Based on analysis of the literature this paper builds on theoretical understandings of knowledge management, clustering and regional development.

The concept of CoEs is most appropriate for regional areas characterised by many small enterprises in diverse industries. CoEs enhance development of regional clusters by contributing to their intellectual capital, innovation culture, value networks and social capital. The incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICT) creates VCoEs which provide added potential by enabling regions to expand their learning potential through innovation.

This paper provides a conceptual foundation for empirical research into regional network or cluster development using ICT.

VCoEs value creation potential is substantial but only when the socioeconomic elements of regional clusters are understood. The VCoE approach addresses the fact that without an industry focus it can be difficult to engage and link small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from different industries, although this is where the greatest potential for value creation in regional clusters is to be found.

The VCoEs concept specifically addresses the unique requirements of SMEs in regions. It has the potential to provide value for regions in a way few ICT based regional development initiatives have been able to achieve.