Determinants Of Business Information Systems Adoption In Business Operations In Kenya: A Case Of Selected Tea Companies In Nandi County

ABSTRACT Innovation of new business information systems or existing information systems in organizations in Kenya has become a necessity rather than a norm. Tea firms in India, Sri Lanka and other global tea producing countries are going through major challenges in doing business namely, rising labor costs, price volatility on world markets, revaluation of the Kenyan shillings vis-à-vis the US dollar and production outpacing exports. To survive in the global economy, stringent methods must be employed or embraced to ensure doing business becomes sustainable. The researcher explored the factors that influence business information system adoption. Many theories and several empirical studies had been carried out in this area of study, but not necessarily in the rural setup of the tea industry in Kenya, and in particular targeting only large scale tea firms and multinationals(MNC). The study was done in Nandi Hills Town of Nandi County, in selected large scale firms and MNC. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires supplemented with both face-to-face interviews just to ensure the response rate is adequate. The sample of 67 respondents was selected from senior managers, middle managers and supervisors who have an in depth knowledge in the area of study, and this was found to be advantageous to the researcher as this worked positively towards advancing the course of the study. Logistic regression was used to model and analyze the data, employing Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), plus descriptive statistics were used. This choice was made because the dependent variable was dichotomous in nature and the expectation was either adoption or otherwise none of it.The findings demonstrated that large and multinational tea firms generally embraced BIS. This can be attested to the findings that explained the logit model. The Nagelkerke‟s R2 was lowest at 0.519 (for management technical orientation) and the highest at 0.815(for environmental factors) respectively. Furthermore there was a general significance of the independent variable on the full model as all p-values were less than 0.05.The limitations stem from the limited sample thus generalization of findings would be inappropriate. The findings of this study however would be invaluable to organizations and management in the tea industry, as they would be useful in tackling bottlenecks in the implementation stage of major and challenging projects. The other sector that would find the study useful are the tea industry partners like TRFK, TBK and even the ministry of agriculture in the government of Kenya .Further research should be conducted in other tea growing regions in Kenya or other countries in the world and even other industries not necessarily the tea industry to confirm if these findings are consistent therein.