Although Internet technology in the Malaysia is still in its infancy, its potential for commercial use appears to be promising. Internet technology can improve productivity, reduce cost, enhance customers’ satisfaction, and increase revenue for Malaysia business organizations. This research will reveal the current status of Internet use among business organization in Malaysia.
Plan of Work
The period of the whole research will be eight months. The following timeline is based on my current course schedule.
Literature Review
The Internet is a unique medium which allows information to be accessed without geographic location constraints. As a communications tool, the Internet has the capability of delivering messages enhanced by color, sound, real or animation images, as well as two way interactions. Growth of this communications network has been rapid with the Internet doubling in size every year since the mid-1990s (Paula, Richard & Marilyn, 1998). Whether the business see such changes as opportunities or irrelevancies, the fact is, the technology of the Internet has altered forever their market environment (Fojt, 1996).
The Internet is comprised of many features that allow its users to find and retrieve information. Some of the most common Internet features such as Electronic mail (e-mail), Telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Gopher, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and World Wide Web (WWW).
Many studies have shown that Internet technology can improve productivity, reduce costs, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase revenues for business organizations as mentioned above. Therefore, it is important to understand factors that contribute to the use of the Internet by business organizations and, subsequently, to provide information to encourage productive use of Internet technology. One major objectives of this study was to identify the factors that are related to the use of the Internet technology in Malaysia business organizations.
Three sets of factors will be study in this research. It consists of:
- general manager factors which include educational levels, computer literacy, and background
- the organizational factors which include size and type of business
- perceived attributes of innovation factors which include relative advantages, compatibility, and complexity
Methodology
The research method will be using both descriptive and correlational designs with the survey questionnaires. The descriptive design is to describe the current status and the scope of Internet use in Malaysia business organizations. According to Gay (1996), descriptive research design is appropriate for studies, which seek to describe the status of subject, object and events. He explained the descriptive study is concerned with the assessment of attitudes, opinions, demographic information, conditions and procedures. Correlational design seeks to explain whether and to what extent a relationship exists between Internet usages and Malaysia business organizations. The primary of this correlational research is to establish that a relationship exists or that it does not and also to make predictions based on the findings (Gay, 1996).
The questionnaires of the study were divided into Internet access, usage factors, objectives of the Internet use, actual benefits and barriers of Internet use. It will employs a five point Likert scale representing a range from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”.
The population of this study will be all business organizations located in xxx, Malaysia, as listed in the 2002 Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM). (to be explained).
The general managers are select to participate in this research because they are the people who usually make the final decision on capital expenditures.
Outline of Chapters
This dissertation will use the five chapters styles which recommended by Perry (1998). The chapters include introduction, literature review, methodology, data analysis and conclusion. This dissertation will follow the APA styles (Douglas & Martin, 2003).
Chapter One (Introduction) will introduce on the purpose of this research, the role of Internet in Malaysia and explained on the statement of problem. Chapter Two (Literature Review) will explored various aspects of the Internet technology as a process of understanding of the issues and problems associated with the use of Internet for business. This chapter will introduce the historical foundation of the Internet, Internet features and factors.
Chapter Three (Methodology) will presents a detailed research methodology. It will provide a description of the research design, population and sample, instrument, data collection procedures and data analysis.
Chapter Four (Data Analysis) will presents the survey response rates, the demographic data, and the research findings as they relate to each research questions.
Chapter Five (Conclusion) will present a summary of the study, along with the conclusions, discussion and recommendations.
Resources
Resources will be reference books, Internet articles, journals and proceedings. The whole research proposal will be managed using the computer to store, manipulate, amend and evaluate the data over a period of eight months, no special hardware and software will be use in this research.
The project cost for this research is as follows:
Projected Cost
All expenses involved in this research will be self-funded.
References
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