ICT in Transition Economies: Narrowing the Research Gap to Developed Countries

Introduction

The relevance of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the present-day is hardly disputed. However, most of what we know is grounded in the context of well-developed economies. Research on the outcomes of ICT investments in less developed countries is scarce (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2011a). This void is not easily filled, since the body of knowledge for the first reality may not easily be transferable to the second (Hoskisson, Eden, Lau, & Wright, 2000). The differences, as postulated by contingency theory (Sousa & Voss, 2008), might be caused by a number of environmental factors that vary across the level of economic development of countries. Research designs elaborated and used in developed countries may not take into account essential conceptual differences between developed and emerging economies (Hoskisson et al., 2000).

Transition economies are a particular case of less developed economies – those of the countries of the former eastern bloc and the countries that resulted from the breakup of the Soviet Union, which, in the last two decades, have abandoned communist style central planning systems in favor of free markets (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008). These actors account for about one-third of the total world population (Soubbotina & Sheram, 2007) and play an increasingly important role in the global economy. However, coming from their unique background, they present very specific challenges that affect how ICT is adopted and used. The environmental factors within transition economies than can influence the ICT domain include fast changing laws and regulations, mostly strong governmental control, low but rising salaries, accompanied by high demand for highly qualified workers and high employee turnover, and continuous and fast economic growth (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2011b).

The stated gap in the body of knowledge and the current relevance of transition economies motivated our call for research on the role and impact of ICT on them, across facets such as business, technical, social, political, cultural, economical, educational, and legal. The response to the challenge was telling, with many high-quality submissions, of which our Editorial Board selected the nine published in this issue. In the next section we will provide the readers with a more in depth common ground on transition economies and ICT, which may be useful for a better grasp of the issues addressed in the various papers. Then, each paper is briefly introduced in the third section.

ICT in transition economies

Transition economies experience the so called “generalized uncertainty,” caused by deep and prolonged institutional, economic, and social change of business environment (Kozminski, 2008). According to Roztocki and Weistroffer (2009a, 2009b), ICT-wise, there are substantial differences between transition and developed economies, namely in what regards strategy, planning and design, implementation, sourcing, diffusion, management, security, services, economics, and users and organizations. Generally, developing countries often exhibit lower experience with ICT, inadequate or low maturity ICT infrastructures, a focus on short-term operational improvements rather than long-term strategic considerations, and a significant influence of ICT-related foreign investments (Dobija, Klimczak, Roztocki, & Weistroffer, 2012; Huang & Palvia, 2001; Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008; Tan & Leewongcharoen, 2005).

In the following paragraphs we summarize significant aspects that have been established in regard to the use of ICT in transition economies. We hope that they can provide some context to those reading the various papers in this special issue.

• Lack of strategic role of ICT. Practitioners in transition economies reveal lack of long-term thinking in their approach to ICT adoption (Soja, 2011). In general, ICT investments in transition economies tend to focus on short-term influences on the company rather than strategic objectives. Many ICT investments are conducted with the purpose of short-term operational improvements rather than long-term strategic considerations (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008). More recently, it appears that focus of ICT investment in transition economies is shifting from operational to strategic issues; however, this shift is not very radical and a reasonably wide gap still exists between transition and developed economies in this respect (Soja & Paliwoda-Pękosz, 2013).

• Lower level of ICT use. Practitioners in transition economies are not yet in a position to transform the organization nor leverage the existing infrastructure with the help of ICT (Soja & Paliwoda-Pękosz, 2013). Instead, using the categorization of Zuboff (1985), they tend to use ICT to “automate” or “informate” the organization. In the enterprise system (ES) domain, organizations in transition economies reveal a lack of emphasis on business process reengineering (Soja, 2011). Generally, practitioners in transition economies have not yet achieved a level of sophistication in the use of ICT to transform the organization and reorganize their business processes, which seems a general tendency among organizations from developed countries.

• Need for external support in ICT adoption. During the process of ICT adoption, practitioners in transition economies have greater expectations for higher levels of external support (Bernroider, Sudzina, & Pucihar, 2011). This refers to the interaction and good rapport between various representatives of an adopting organization and the IT vendors and consultants (Themistocleous, Soja, & Cunha, 2011). Such expectations also apply to the pre-implementation phase, when adopters in transition economies seem to prefer the greater interaction with bidders regarding the sophisticated requirements engineering techniques (Lech, 2012). In addition, in the field of ES adoption, projects may go through a different system lifecycle and might require different roles of the project participants, as compared to developed countries (Themistocleous et al., 2011).

• Impact of ICT-related foreign investments. The ICT industry in transition economies is significantly influenced by ICT-related foreign investments. In particular, investors and companies’ shareholders seem to positively perceive the implementation of ICT systems with well-established reputations, usually delivered by global providers (Dobija et al., 2012). Simultaneously, ICT investments in transition economies are influenced by barriers connected with the increased complexity of transforming investment into revenues and lack of necessary socio-technical “know-how” to manage this complexity (Samoilenko, 2008).

• Insufficient customer-orientation. Organizations in transition economies seem to exhibit a product-oriented approach (where suppliers are more important that customers) instead of customer-oriented approach, which is characteristic of well-developed economies (Ketikidis, Koh, Dimitriadis, Gunasekaran, & Kehajova, 2008).

• Inadequate planning. Practitioners from transition economies experience greater difficulties with planning activities such as goal setting and the assessment the condition of a company (Soja, 2008). They put less emphasis on strategic planning, which might be caused by cultural characteristics connected with spontaneous behavior (Ketikidis et al., 2008).

• Restricted resources. Practitioners in transition economies often experience difficulties with available resources needed for their ICT projects (Soja, 2008). That said, company's resources, understood in terms of finance and infrastructure, are no longer the most important problems for companies. Instead, issues connected with people appear to play key roles in ICT initiatives (Soja, 2011).

• Critical role of people-related considerations. ICT initiatives in transition economies seem to experience people-related issues to a greater extent as compared with projects conducted in developed countries (Soja, 2011). It appears that, in transition economies, the main difficulty lies in overcoming the negative cultural inheritance of communism. Problems connected with people's education and skills, although still present in transition economies, do not appear critical at the moment, as they are easier to overcome than the cultural consequences of an almost 50-year long period of communism experienced by transition economies. The most pertinent issues here are negative attitudes towards authority and low level of trust in relationships, which in turn creates a greater desire for control over employees and business processes (Soja & Paliwoda-Pękosz, 2013).

Papers in this issue

We start with the paper “Information and Communication Technology in Transition Economies: An Assessment of Research Trends,” by Narcyz Roztocki and Heinz Roland Weistroffer, where the authors analyze 173 papers published between 1993 and 2012 to identify research trends and gaps in what concerns the use of ICT in transition economies. They conclude that published literature is conducted primarily at the country or organization level and focused on relatively few issues, such as ICT diffusion and implementation.

After this common ground we move on to three papers reporting impacts of ICT on the public sector in transition economies. The first article, “ICT and Innovation in the Provision of Public Services: The Case of Slovakia,” by Veronika Černáková, studies factors that determine the adoption of ICT in public services. Data from 1216 services provided by municipalities in Slovakia shows that larger municipalities, which are district seats and which are financially autonomous, achieve a higher level of ICT adoption in public services. These findings have a direct implication for policy makers in transition economies as regards fiscal decentralization. The second and third papers in this cluster address a different area of the public sector – higher education. In “Semantic Portal as a Tool for Structural Reform of Ukrainian Educational System,” by Vagan Terziyan, Mariia Golovianko and Oleksandr Shevchenko, the authors discuss the use of ICT to increase transparency and empower stakeholders in an ongoing effort to raise the quality of the countries universities and to strengthen their independence. In “ICT in Supporting Content and Language Integrated Learning: Experience from Poland,” Grażyna Paliwoda-Pękosz and Janusz Stal address a common concern in transition economies: the new skills in foreign languages that are required of students that must take courses in non-native idioms. The authors use a design-research approach to arrive at a framework for creating courses that support content and language integrated learning in virtual learning environments.

With paper five of this issue we move to the private sector; “The Determinants of IT Adoption in SMEs in the Czech-Polish Border Areas,” by Jana Hanclova, Petr Rozehnal, Jan Ministr, and Milena Tvrdikova, examines the factors affecting IT adoption in micro, small and medium enterprises in the aforementioned transition region. Awareness of these determinants is key to improve IT adoption and, thus, contribute to the transformation of the economy. Paper six deals with a specific issue that affects companies in transition economies: the lack of professionals skilled in ICT. To compensate for this handicap, a global software development approach that leverages remote programmers is presented by Simon Vrhovec, Marina Trkman, Aleš Kumer, Marjan Krisper and Damjan Vavpotič in “Outsourcing as an Economic Development Tool in Transition Economies: Scattered Global Software Development.” In paper seven, attention is turned to the financial sector, namely e-banking. Marinos Themistocleous, Nikolaos Basias, and Vincenzo Morabito propose and test a methodological framework for the adoption of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) in e-banking and contrast the cases of a transition and a developed economy.

Finally, this issue closes with two practice papers. The first addresses differences between transition and developed economies with respect to collaboration between academy and industry – “Academic-Industrial Cooperation in ICT in a Transition Country – Two Cases from the Czech Republic,” by Jan Ministr and Tomáš Pitner. Drawing from Czech data, a series of differences are identified, including attitudes, volumes of cooperation, flexibility of researchers, and business orientation of universities. The second practice paper, “Development of eGovernment Services in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina,” by Milan Paroški, Zora Konjović, Dušan Surla and Vesna Popović, provides an overview how electronic services were made available to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of public affairs in a province in Serbia. The account of this socio-technical enterprise may help public officials in their decisions regarding eGovernment initiatives.

Contribution to development

Together, the papers in this special issue provide a diversified array of contributions to the topic of narrowing the research gap between transition and developed economies. This refers to various facets of ICT such as business, technical, social, political, cultural, economical, and legal.

Research gaps and avenues are mapped-out by Roztocki and Weistroffer, providing ample ground to cover by researchers on a path to improve development in transition economies. Relevant insights about fiscal decentralization and the significant role of ICT in public service are provided by Černáková, suggesting the pertinence of further work. On the same note, Paroški and colleagues illustrate how it is possible to successfully implement an e-government system in a transition economy despite limited resources and its past inheritance, which may be of value to different countries in the same situation.

Hanclova et al. provide steps to better understand and act on issues related to the availability of skilled workforce in ICT. Understanding the particulars of transition economies is key, since this is also a matter of concern of, and competition by, advanced economies. This thread is further elaborated by Vrhovec and colleagues, who give clues on enhancing competitive advantage of software companies in transition economies, by proposing a novel outsourcing approach for global software development.

Issues that may foster a more effective cooperation between academia and industry and, thus, contribute to the country's development, are discussed by Ministr and Pitner. In keeping with the topic of education, Paliwoda-Pękosz and Stal identify effective techniques for teaching ICT in transition economies playing in a globalized world, while Terziyan et al. point out specific actions implemented in Ukraine to reform its higher education sector.

Finally, Themistocleous and colleagues propose a methodological framework to help the practitioners from transition economies in increasing the rate of adoption of SOA in e-banking. SOA has long been adopted by utilities and financial companies from developed economies in search of agility in their IT systems. This paper extends the body of knowledge with particulars of a transition economy, namely Bulgaria.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the many authors who submitted their work to our special issue. We regret that we could not include all of the submitted articles; however, we hope that the feedback received will help the authors to revise their work and have it published in a regular issue of the Information Technology for Development (ITD) journal or other outlet. We would also like to express our thanks and gratitude to the many scholars who served on the editorial board for our special issue: Jonathan P. Allen, University of San Francisco, USA; Antonio Diaz Andrade, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand; Zora Arsovski, University of Kragujevac, Serbia; João Barata, CTCV, ISMT and University of Coimbra, Portugal; Lasse Berntzen, Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Norway; Rosario Cação, CISUC, University of Coimbra, Portugal; Petr Doucek, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic; Marcelo Fantinato, University of São Paulo, Brazil; Catarina Ferreira da Silva, University of Claude Bernard, LIRIS CNRS, Lyon, France and University of Coimbra, Portugal; Mariusz Grabowski, Cracow University of Economics, Poland; Dieter Hertweck, Heilbronn University, Germany; Andrzej Kobyliński, Warsaw School of Economics, Poland; Ella Kolkowska, Örebro University School of Business, Sweden; Tor J. Larsen, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway; Przemysław Lech, University of Gdańsk, Poland; Rui Lourenço, INESCC, University of Coimbra, Portugal; Paweł Lula, Cracow University of Economics, Poland; Viljan Mahnic, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Luiz Maurício Martins, Unipê, Brazil; Jan Ministr, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Antão Moura, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil; Celina M. Olszak, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland; Grażyna Paliwoda-Pękosz, Cracow University of Economics, Poland; José Antonio Robles-Flores, ESAN Graduate School of Business, Peru; Petr Rozehnal, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Narcyz Roztocki, State University of New York at New Paltz, USA and College of Management “Edukacja” in Wrocław, Poland; Miguel Mira da Silva, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; Janusz Stal, Cracow University of Economics, Poland; Margaret Tan, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore; Marinos Themistocleous, University of Piraeus, Greece; Maria Beatriz Felgar de Toledo, Instituto de Computação, Unicamp, Brazil; Pere Tumbas, University of Novi Sad, Serbia; Cornel Turcu, University of Suceava, Romania; Cristina Turcu, University of Suceava, Romania; Heinz Roland Weistroffer, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA; Agnieszka Zając, Cracow University of Economics, Poland. These reviewers devoted their valuable time and provided precious comments and guidance for authors and editors. Finally, we would like to thank Sajda Qureshi, ITD Editor-in-Chief, for her support and professional guidance throughout the process of publishing this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This research has been financed in part by the funds granted to the Faculty of Management, Cracow University of Economics, within the subsidy for maintaining research potential.

Notes on contributors

Piotr Soja is assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Cracow University of Economics (CUE), Poland. He holds a postdoctoral degree (habilitation) and Ph.D. in economics from CUE. He also holds an MBA. from the School of Entrepreneurship and Management at CUE in association with the University of Teeside, UK. He has over eight years of experience in industry as an ERP consultant, system analyst and software developer. His research interests include enterprise systems adoption, ICT for development, and inter-organizational integration. Piotr has published in Enterprise Information Systems, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Information Systems Management, and Information Technology for Development, among many other journals, as well as in numerous conference proceedings such as AMCIS, HICSS, ICEIS, and ISD. He is currently member of the Editorial Board of AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems and Information Technology for Development. He has acted as Program Committee member in numerous international conferences including BIR, ECIME, EuroSymposium, ISD, and ICTM. Since 2009, Piotr has served as mini-track chair for AMCIS conferences in the area of enterprise system adoption and ICT in developing/transition economies.

Paulo Rupino da Cunha is assistant professor of information systems and the head of the IS Group at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Paulo is Director of Informatics and Systems Lab of Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN), a non-profit association for Innovation and Technology Transfer. Paulo holds a Ph.D. in Informatics Engineering from the University of Coimbra. He has been Adjunct Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, USA, from May 2009 to December 2012, and Visiting Associate at Brunel University, UK, from 2008 to 2010. He has been the Vice-President of the Board of Instituto Pedro Nunes and of IPN-Incubadora, a Business Incubator. For a period of three years, he was the elected Coordinator of the Informatics Engineering Chapter for the center region of Portugal of the Portuguese Engineering Association, and for a two year term he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra. He has been involved in the organization of mini-tracks in several conferences, including AMCIS and HICSS. Paulo serves in editorial boards or program committees of several outlets and has reviewed for MISQ, EJIS, ICIS, ECIS, AMCIS, HICSS, among others.