Alemayehu Molla

Exploring E-Commerce Benefits for Businesses in a Developing Country

Developing countries are home to more than 80% of the worlds population, and are the site for growing use of e-commerce. There are theoretical claims that e-commerce could bring significant benefits to firms in developing countries, but we know very little empirically about the actual outcomes of e-commerce implementation. Our article addresses this gap in knowledge through a survey of 92 businesses in South Africa, all of which have moved beyond the basic stage of e-commerce. The findings indicate that e-commerce benefits are, by and large, limited to improvements in intra- and interorganizational communications. More strategic benefits relating to market access, customer/supplier linkages or cost savings were not found in the majority (more than 80%) of organizations surveyed. This therefore limits the likelihood of broader benefits such as incorporation into global supply chains, disintermediation, and improved competitiveness. Turning this somewhat disappointing e-commerce picture around requires a multiprong strategy aimed at building the resources and capabilities of businesses, developing electronic-mediated business routines with partners and customers, and addressing national e-readiness and global trade regulation issues.

The Green IT Readiness (G-Readiness) of Organizations: An Exploratory Analysis of a Construct and Instrument

The realization that legacy information technology (IT) systems have environmental footprint has elevated the sustainability of IT (Green IT) as a significant IT management issue. However, there is a lack of empirical research to explain Green IT capabilities of organizations and the maturity of those capabilities. This article reports a Green IT Readiness framework to capture the input, transformational and output capabilities that organizations need to nurture in sustainable management of IT. It identifies five components of G-readiness and provides an exploratory framework and a research-ready instrument. The instrument is validated based on data collected from a cross-sectional and cross-country survey of IT managers.

Green IT beliefs and pro-environmental IT practices among IT professionals

– The purpose of this paper is to analyze the beliefs and attitudinal factors that affect the private sphere pro-environmental behavior of information technology (IT) professionals in using personal computers. , – A research framework that draws from the belief-action-outcome (BAO) framework and that consisted of 11 hypotheses was developed. Data were collected from a sample of 322 IT professionals and analyzed using structural equation modeling. , – The results identify the pro-environmental personal computing actions that IT professionals are taking and how their Green IT beliefs, attitudes, information acquisition capability, and organizational fields influence their behavior. , – The sample was limited to Australian respondents. The measurement of IT-specific environmental practices was not exhaustive nor were the measures of macro- and micro-antecedents of Green IT belief and attitude. , – National, regional, and international professional associations such as the Association of Information Systems can influence pro-environmental behavior among IT professionals through the creation and dissemination of information that shape both general and IT-specific environmental beliefs. , – The novelty of this work lies in: first, proposing and testing a research framework that can be leveraged in future studies; second, establishing how organizational fields and availability of information contribute to the formation of IT professionals’ environmental beliefs and attitudes; third, applying and suggesting potential extension to the BAO framework to evaluate the association between IT practices and environmental sustainability among IT professionals.

E-commerce and socio-economic development: Conceptualizing the link

Purpose – E‐commerce is diffusing into developing countries (DCs), and is assumed to help deliver the international development agenda. But how can the connection between e‐commerce and socio‐economic development be conceptualised? The aim of this paper is to analyse that connection by drawing from the development studies discipline to take a broader perspective on e‐commerce than that so far provided by firm‐level research.Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopt a literature survey approach, drawing their conceptual foundations from development studies, and supplementing this from the e‐commerce literature.Findings – The paper develops a new, integrated model that explains the way in which e‐commerce can contribute to socio‐economic development.Research limitations/implications – This new model can help provide a foundation for future research on e‐commerce in DCs; research on e‐commerce policy as well as impact assessment research.Practical implications – The discussion and model provide develop...

E-Commerce diffusion in small island countries: The influence of institutions in Barbados

This paper concerns the role of institutions in promoting the diffusion of e‐commerce. Using institutional theory as a framework of analysis, the paper evaluates institutional interventions over a six‐year period in Barbados and how that impacted on the national environment for e‐commerce. The paper explicates the institutional powers of influence and regulation in the context of the ideologies of market supply and demand for e‐commerce. It concludes that at the early stage of e‐commerce diffusion both public and external institutions play key roles in creating conducive conditions and in providing the impetus necessary for the spread of e‐commerce respectively. However, the sustainability of e‐commerce depends on ”bottom‐up” entrepreneurial mobilization to maintain the momentum for growth “top‐down” interventions create.

Green IT diffusion: An international comparison

This paper provides a preliminary insight on the status of the diffusion and maturity of “Green IT” as well as some of the driving and inhibiting factors that influence it. The report is largely descriptive and is based on a survey of 143 organisations from Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Overall, the findings indicate that organisations are developing the “right mind-set”, taking a number of “softer actions”’; and investing in new technologies to use IT as part of the solution to pursue both ecoefficiency and eco-sustainability objectives. Nevertheless, the state of Green IT among the surveyed organisations can be considered at the early stage of maturity. In particular: • The results indicate that disposal of IT in an environmentally friendly manner is the most relevant organisational concern about Green IT. It is therefore not surprising that there is significantly more attention paid to policy and practice in the end-of-IT-life management aspect of Green IT. On the other hand, attention to Green IT sourcing is the least adopted. • The need for greater IT efficiency and the pursuit of tangible cost savings from IT operations are the primary drivers for adopting Green IT which has to be articulated in the strategy of an organisation. Likewise, the cost of Greening IT and unclear business values from Greening IT top the list of the factors that inhibit Green IT adoption. This implies that as IT budgets continue to shrink, IT managers may turn to Green IT only if Green solutions are affordable and yield tangible and near term cost savings. Thus, of all the items used to assess Green IT, server virtualisation and consolidation have the widest uptake. Many believe that server virtualisation can produce quick–win cost reduction. • In less than half of the cases reported, the role for coordinating Green initiatives is defined and CIOs are taking a leading role in all Green (IT and non IT) initiatives. However, in the majority of organisations, IT is not yet responsible for its own electricity costs and there are no well developed metrics for assessing the impact of Green IT initiatives. Hence, executives might not know the tangible returns from implementing Green IT. • Limitation of the small sample size withstanding, the findings of this study hint at differences in Green IT initiatives among US, New Zealand and Australian organisations. In Australia and New Zealand, environmental consideration is the primary concern. In US the primary concern appears to be energy efficiency and cost reduction. Thus, while Australian and New Zealand organisations are leading the ‘softer” side of Green IT policies and practices to reduce the environmental impact of IT, US organisations are far more advanced in the adoption of technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency. This might be because of differences in the scale of IT operations. Generally US organisations have larger IT shops. • Despite the initial steps, most CIOs believe that their organisations lack an adequate level of readiness for Green IT. Acknowledgements The research has benefited from inputs of the members of the Green IT research team at the School of Business Information Technology, RMIT Dr. Vanessa Cooper, Prof. Hepu Deng, Dr. Konrad Peszynski and Dr. Say Yen Teoh. Thank you to all respondents for taking the time to complete the survey; Minh Vu and Keith Lau for assistance in hosting the online survey. The School of BIT, RMIT University for funding the research. Green IT Working Paper No.1/2009 2

Business Transformation Through ERP: A Case Study of an Asian Company

Abstract Research into enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) has investigated how these systems add value to an organization, implementation issues and how these systems should be linked with other technologies within the organization and across the supply chain. This case study takes a slightly different approach and explored the potential of ERP to transform a business. The result indicates that key dimensions of the case organization, that is its strategy, structure, system, staff, skill, style, and shared values changed materially following the implementation of ERP. The transformation is greatly enabled by ERP but its cause might not necessarily be attributed to ERP only. The marketing and production innovations and work practices complexities that the implementation and use of ERP allowed and the acceptance and assimilation of those practices by the case organization’s staff and management have contributed to the transformation of the case organization. Based on the experiences of the case company, several theoretical and practical implications that are relevant to managing and sustaining IT-enabled changes are outlined and discussed.

Adding Clicks To Bricks: A Case Study Of E-Commerce Adoption By A Catalan Small Retailer

This paper explores why and how one small business adopted e-commerce. Understanding the importance of a chronological perspective, the paper first develops a conceptual model that explicitly incorporates both different stages of e-commerce functionality and the different phases of the e-commerce adoption process. It relates these to a set of adoption factors classified into contextual, organisational, managerial, and e-commerce-specific categories. The paper explores and illustrates the model with the case history of a wine retailing microenterprise based in Catalonia, Spain that ultimately failed. The presented model is found to provide a workable basis for analysis, and the findings demonstrate the way in which different factors affect different phases of the adoption process. More generally, it finds expected contextual factors such as competitors or customers to have little impact on adoption, which is affected more by informal processes and social relations. The paper ends by questioning the simplicity of progressive e-commerce models that fail to incorporate abandonment of the technology, and fail to account for the lack of business value that some e-commerce projects deliver. The cases chronological approach also identifies the path-dependent manner in which earlier decisions impact later e-commerce trajectories, with short-term, subjective decisions potentially constraining e-commerce in the longer term.

Advancing E-Commerce Beyond Readiness in a Developing Country: Experiences of Ghanaian Firms

This paper identifies factors affecting the assimilation of electronic commerce in Ghana and the solutions that Ghanaian firms have developed. Drawing from the elements of two electronic commerce readiness frameworks, the study analyzes the readiness of Ghana to support the conduct of electronic commerce at the firm-level. The study covers the government, technology, market and culture readiness factors. Findings suggest that social networks, managerial capabilities and government commitment have an attendant effect on adoption and use of tangible resources like electronic commerce applications. The findings imply that future research and practitioner efforts should focus on developing a broader perspective to address electronic commerce challenges encompassing issues like how firms can advance to more complex forms of e-commerce after initial e-commerce adoption.

Identifying IT sustainability performance drivers: Instrument development and validation

IT firms vary in their performance to improve the environmental sustainability of their own operations and in their ability to provide products and solutions that enable and transform the environmental sustainability of other industries. In the parlance of the balanced scorecard, performance has two dimensions, that is, “drivers” and “outcomes”. The drivers, also known as leading performance indicators, refer to learning and innovation, processes, and customer value propositions. The outcomes, also known as lagging performance indicators, refer to financial results. This study has developed and validated an instrument to measure the environmentally sustainable IT performance (eSITP) drivers. We established the nomological network of the eSITP by drawing from several theoretical domains in the areas of innovation antecedents and values, balanced performance measurement and IT and eco-sustainability. Based on a survey of 133 IT firms, we developed and validated a four-dimension, 17 items eSITP instrument covering eco-learning, eco-process, eco-brand and eco-value governance. The instrument is validated by following a seven step rigorous process. The paper breaks new ground from both research and practice perspectives. The instrument makes it easier for other researchers who wish to explain the leading (drivers) and lagging (outcomes) of IT firms’ environmental sustainability and for IT business managers who want to improve their environmental sustainability performance.