The adoption and diffusion of e-commerce in developing countries: The case of an NGO in Jordan

Abstract

The case study in this research involves a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Jordan in the Middle East, which attempted to utilize electronic commerce (EC) to streamline its business processes and information flow to businesses in Jordan and to other international businesses interested in the Jordanian market. The NGO managed to achieve these tasks expeditiously, and its EC initiative assisted in adding an effective digital parallel to existing systems and processes in this NGO. The NGO is directly involved in the e-government initiative empowered by H.M. King Abdullah II. At this end, with this royal support, the NGO successfully adopted EC. During the adoption and implementation process, the organization encountered numerous difficulties, as detailed in this research. However, the full success of EC was hampered by other factors. Initially, other governmental entities related indirectly to this NGO were not EC-ready. Second, although Web site utilization was growing in this NGO, most member merchants were reluctant to switch to the online arena and to abandon traditional practices in obtaining information and resources from this NGO. However, the NGO is aware of these concerns and envisages resolving such hurdles in its medium- to long-term projections. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords:

• NGOs
• Jordan
• electronic commerce (EC) adoption
• transparency
• e-government
• digital economy and electronic commerce
• developing countries