Adoption and implementation of information technology in Bali's local government: A comparison between single level path analyses using PLSPATH 3.01 and AMOS 4 and Multilevel Path Analyses using MPLUS 2.01

Abstract

Recent advances in information technology have aroused much interest among policy-makers, the business sector, the media and the academic world in developed countries. However, very little is known about the obstacles to accessing information technology (IT) and the diffusion and use of information technologies in developing countries, particularly the low-income economies. This research stems from the issues described above. A variety of factors may influence the outcome of adopting and implementing IT in local governments. These factors range from technological and institutional to personal, social and economic factors, and include not only the information on variables gathered at the employee level but also questions regarding the characteristics of each organization involved in the study. In addition, there are also some district characteristics collected through various secondary data sources. Hence the data files contain information obtained at three different levels, namely individual level, organizational level, and district level. In addition to identifying various factors that may affect each step of IT adoption processes, this paper also addresses more technical issues involved in determining units of analysis and choosing the proper analytical methods since the structure of the data reflects the hierarchical nature. Three different statistical packages were used to analyse the data. The exploratory path analyses were done using PLSPATH 3.01 both at individual level and organizational level separately. The results of these analyses were then compared to the AMOS 4 results. AMOS 4 could only be used to analyze the path model at the individual level due to the small number of cases at the organizational level. Based on these results, two level models were developed and further analysed with MPLUS 2.01.