Owners/manager commitment was measured based on the degree of their participation in IT projects. This study adopted a similar instrument used by Hussin et al. (2002) to measure owner/manager participation in information system implementation. The instrument which was originally developed by Jarvenpaa & Ives (1991) was tested and validated by Hussin et al. (2002) in the specific context of SMEs. Using a five-point scale (1 = no participation; 5 = high participation), respondents were asked to indicate their level of participation in the
following five areas: definition of needs (information requirements), selection of hardware and software, implementation of systems, systems maintenance and problem solving, and planning for future IT deployment