COVID-19 caused significant challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the event industry. To address these challenges, many SMEs leveraged information and communication technologies (ICTs), with some even emerging strengthened from the crisis. Drawing on the technology-organization-environment framework and technology-affordances-and-constraints theory, we investigate the adoption of ICTs as a crisis response strategy in 10 SMEs in the German business event (e.g., corporate events, conferences) industry. Our findings reveal that ICT adoption not only depends on rational decisions based on organizational, environmental, and technological characteristics, but also on these dimensions’ interrelationship and the specific ICTs’ affordances and constraints. Introducing readily available ICTs (e.g., video-conferencing) has significant potential in addressing physical distancing in the short and medium term, while more sophisticated ICTs (e.g., virtual reality) are more likely to gain importance in the long term. Thus, we expand our understanding of organizational technology adoption and ICT-enabled crisis response strategies in SMEs.

COVID-19 给活动行业的中小企业 (SME) 带来了重大挑战。为了应对这些挑战，许多中小企业利用信息和通信技术（ICT），有些甚至在危机中变得更加强大。借鉴技术组织环境框架和技术可供性与约束理论，我们调查了德国商业活动（例如企业活动、会议）行业 10 家中小企业采用 ICT 作为危机应对策略的情况。我们的研究结果表明，ICT 的采用不仅取决于基于组织、环境和技术特征的理性决策，还取决于这些维度的相互关系以及特定 ICT 的可供性和约束。引入现成的信息通信技术（例如视频会议）在中短期内解决物理距离问题具有巨大潜力，而更复杂的信息通信技术（例如虚拟现实）从长远来看更有可能变得重要。因此，我们扩大了对中小企业组织技术采用和信息通信技术支持的危机应对策略的理解。