An analytical framework for exploring context-specific micro-economic impacts of ICT capabilities

ABSTRACT

Increasing investments in ICT is often premised on the assumption that such investments will lead to improvements in productivity and other aspects of development at the organizational and national levels. However, it is reasonable to expect that any such impact will vary depending on the context, including the ability to modify and manipulate a chain of intermediate links within the “investments in ICT → outcomes of investments in ICT” process. In this study, we present a new framework for exploring context-specific impacts of ICT capabilities on microeconomic outcomes. The proposed framework is tested within the context of 24 economies that fall into a set of five mutually exclusive economy groups, where group membership is based on a classification scheme of the International Monetary Fund (2011). The results of the data analysis yield (1) a set of context-specific factors that differentiate five economy groups in terms of the microeconomic impact of ICT, and (2) offer insights into specific areas of strength and weakness of each group with regard to the impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Information and communication technology
• ICT4D
• data envelopment analysis
• networked readiness index

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sergey Samoilenko is an associate professor and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Computer Information Systems at Averett University, in Danville, Virginia. Sergey’s current research interests include IT and productivity, data mining, and IS development. He holds his PhD and MS in information systems from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published in the European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, International Journal of Production Economics, Expert Systems with Applications, and Information Systems Frontiers, among other journals, as well as in numerous conference proceedings.

Kweku-Muata Osei-Bryson is professor of Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously he was professor of information systems and decision analysis in the School of Business at Howard University, Washington, DC, USA. He has also worked as an information systems practitioner in both industry and government. His research areas include: Data Mining, Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management, IS Security, e-Commerce, IT for Development, Database Management, IS Outsourcing, Multi-Criteria Decision Making. He has published in various leading journals, including: Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Journal, Expert Systems with Applications, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Frontiers, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, Information Sciences, Information and Management, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology for Development, Journal of Database Management, Computers and Operations Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, and the European Journal of Operational Research.