The COVID-Enforced Adoption of Technology for Reluctant Entrepreneurial Businesses: A Systematic Literature Review

This article presents a systematic literature review aiming to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic enforced reluctant entrepreneurial businesses to adopt technology into their business. A total of 32 academic literature articles published after 2004 in English were identified and analysed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) principles. This article focuses on five main discussion points, namely COVID-19 effect on business, cause for technology adoption, hesitancy towards technology adoption, reasons for technology adoption, the government's role in technology adoption, and the outcome of forced technology adoption. COVID-19 is a relatively recent and developing topic; however, based on the outcome of the discussion, it was found that from a business continuation and survival perspective for entrepreneurial businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways enforced the adoption of technology for reluctant entrepreneurial businesses. There is a need for further studies at a later stage to understand the effect the COVID-19 pandemic had on entrepreneurial businesses in conjunction with the adoption of technology. These studies should aid in understanding the effectiveness of technology adoption in response to business disruption.