MATURITY LEVELS OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES CAPABILITY IN MICRO, SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES

Abstract

There are multiple information technology (it) maturity models available in the literature. Some of them have been validated for smes and few operationalize the method used to classif y organizations into maturity levels. Most of the studies on the subject make a general classification of organizations in a single level of maturity, ignoring that an organization could be at the same time in multiple maturity levels for different classification criteria. In an attempt to overcome this limitation, this work uses the it capability to analyze technological maturity from different dimensions. To do that, we applied a hierarchical clustering on principal components (hcpc) algorithm in order to group 2,470 companies, which resulted in the identification of four maturity levels for each of the dimensions of the it capacity: level 1 or incorporation, level 2 or learning, level 3 or planning and control, and level 4 or alignment. Finally, we propose a method to classif y organizations into these four maturity levels for each of the dimensions that comprise the it capability.