Discourses on ICT and development.

Research on ICT and development (ICTD) involves assumptions on the nature of ICT innovation and on the way such innovation contributes to development. In this article I review the multidisciplinary literature on ICTD and identify two perspectives regarding the nature of the ICT innovation process in developing countries - as transfer and diffusion and as socially embedded action - and two perspectives on the development transformation towards which ICT is understood to contribute - progressive transformation and disruptive transformation. I then discuss the four discourses formed by combining the perspectives on the nature of IS innovation and on the development transformation. My review suggests that ICTD research, despite its remarkable theoretical capabilities to study technology innovation in relation to socio-economic context, remains weak in forming convincing arguments on IT-enabled socio-economic development.

Exploring the socio-economic structures of internet-enabled development: a study of grassroots netpreneurs in China

types: ArticleThis is an open access article that is freely available in ORE or from the publisher's web site. Please cite the published version.There is increasing interest in the potential of internet platforms for networking and collaboration - often referred to as web 2.0 - to open up unprecedented prospects for individuals to come together and engage in economic and political activities, bypassing and indeed subverting the corporate structures of the market economy and state control. The prevailing discourse on this technology-driven transformative potential focuses on networks of individuals interacting through technology tools with little, if at all, attention to the social context that gives rise and sustains their networked economic or political activities. In this paper we study the social embeddedness of the empowering potential of internet-enabled economic activity. We present and discuss a case of intense entrepreneurial activity in a Chinese community, engaging in e-commerce trading conducted on a platform of internet tools. Our analysis of this case juxtaposes the emerging views on web2.0 business activities with views drawn from a long established literature on entrepreneurship as a networked activity. We found that internet-based entrepreneurial activity at this case of grassroots development enacts online social networking mechanisms of peer-to-peer and vendor-customer interactions and heavily depends on a corporate service provider, as well as the historically developed community infrastructure for commerce. Overall, our research explores whether economic activity enabled by web 2.0 is an individualistic phenomenon, or it relies on institutional bearings and if so what is their nature

Information Systems in Developing Countries: A Critical Research Review

In this paper I review the Information Systems (IS) research on how developing countries have attempted to benefit from information and communication technologies (ICTs). First I identify three discourses on IS implementation and associated organizational and social change that coexist in information systems in developing countries (ISDC) research, namely as a process of technology and knowledge transfer and adaptation to local social conditions; as a process of socially embedded action; and as a process of transformative techno-organizational intervention associated with global politics and economics. I then point out the distinctive research agenda that has been formed in ISDC studies, both in the more familiar IS themes - failure, outsourcing, and strategic value of ICT - and also in studies of themes relevant specifically to the context of developing countries, such as the development of community ICT and information resources. Finally, I call the reader\u27s attention to the potentially significant theoretical contributions of ISDC research for understanding IS innovation in relation to social context and in relation to socio-economic development theories and policies

The Social Embeddedness of Industrial Networks in the Age of the Internet: A Tale of Two Regions In China

In this article we examine the extent to which theoretical views of social embeddedness of economic development that were developed from the study of regional industrial networks continue to be relevant in cases of entrepreneurial networks that are formed in developing countries through the use of internet-based platforms and business services. We frame our research against the background of current libertarian discourse regarding the internet as an enabler of social networking which changes the institutional bearings of production and economic activity of modernity. We draw data from two cases of industrial networks of micro-entrepreneurs in China. Our research shows that although important relationships of the industrial network are virtual, conducted through the electronic tools and services, the networks are strongly socially embedded, sustained through close relationships with the corporation that provides the internet platform as well as the governmen

A Review of the Methodologies Movement

Methodologies seem to have dominated the past two decades of research into information systems. They have been a focus of direct research, and seen as the obvious outlet for many other research finding and ideas. This paper presents a review of the methodologies movement, and explores some of the consequences that have arisen as a result of this particular focus

Interpreting the trustworthiness of government mediated by information and communication technology: Lessons from electronic voting in Brazil. Information Technology for Development

Original citation: Avgerou, Chrisanthi, Ganzaroli, Andrea, Poulymenakou, Angeliki and Reinhard, Nicolau (2009) Abstract The electronic voting system of Brazil is understood to be widely trusted by the citizens of the country and international observers. More precisely, it is seen as a trustworthy mechanism of producing elections results that accurately represent the choices of the electorate. In this paper we discuss briefly the concepts of trust and trustworthiness and focus to examine the formation of beliefs regarding the latter. We argue that the belief of trustworthiness is only partly attributable to the perception of the merits of the technical system and its enactment procedures. Significant role in the formation of this belief in the case of the Brazilian electronic elections has played the the reputation of the institutional actors responsible for the elections -the Superior and the Regional Electoral Courts. We therefore conclude that, unlike common assumptions about the potential of e-government in developing countries to restore trust in government institutions which are considered untrustworthy, the production of trust in ICT-mediated government services relies on citizens' perceptions of their trustworthiness

Trusting e-voting amid experiences of electoral malpractice: The case of Indian elections

This article constructs explanatory theory on trust in e-voting, a term that refers to the use of stand-alone IT artefacts in voting stations. We study e-voting as a techno-organisational arrangement embedded in the process of elections and the broader socio-economic context of a country. Following a critical realist approach, we apply retroduction and retrodiction principles to build theory by complementing existing studies of e-voting with insights from an in-depth case study of elections in India. First, we seek evidence of trust in e-voting in the responses of the public to the announcement of election results. Then we derive the following four mechanisms of trust creation or loss: the association of e-voting with the production of positive democratic effects; the making of e-voting part of the mission and identity of electoral authorities; the cultivation of a positive public attitude to IT with policies for IT-driven socio-economic development; and, in countries with turbulent political cultures, a clear distinction between the experience of voting as orderly and experiences of malpractice in other election tasks. We suggest that these mechanisms explain the different experience with e-voting of different countries. Attention to them helps in assessing the potential of electoral technologies in countries that are currently adopting them, especially fragile democracies embarking upon e-voting