Information technology success factors and models in developing and emerging economies

1. Introduction

Information technology (IT) projects continue to suffer from frequent cost and time overruns and failure to fully deliver on the expected benefits to the users or the organization. Furthermore, what determines the success or failure of IT implementations and use in developing and emerging economies may differ substantially from generally accepted success factors in highly developed countries.

Developing economies are defined by low gross national income per capita and are generally characterized by low standards of living, a weak industrial and commercial base, and a poor infrastructure. There is no general agreement as to what defines an emerging economy, and many researchers use the terms emerging and developing economies interchangeably. However, some still developing economies exhibit robust, continual economic expansion, resulting in fast growing per capita income, clearly differentiating them from less dynamic developing countries (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008b). The term emerging market economy, commonly attributed to van Agtmael (1984), thus describes a country or a region with vigorous economic growth. This vigorous growth of emerging economies is typically enabled by decisive authorities who are sincerely dedicated to economic liberalization (Arnold & Quelch, 1998). In contrast to these emerging economies, other developing countries or economic regions do not exhibit continual strong growth, perhaps not having the necessary resources or the government commitment to implement reforms, or possibly intentionally sticking to existing regulatory structures.

Table 1, an expansion of a previously published chart (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2009), summarizes and clarifies some major differences between developed, developing, and emerging economies.

Table 1. Characteristics of developed and developing economies.

Business environment	Developing economies	Emerging economies	Developed economies
Laws and regulations	Relatively slow, though unpredictable, changes in the regulatory environment	Changing fast and unpredictably	Relatively slow and somewhat predictable changes in the regulatory environment
Governmental control	Often weak and undetermined authorities	Mostly strong and determined authorities	Mostly strong and stable authorities
Workforce characteristics	Low salaries and low demand for highly qualified workers	Low, but rising salaries, accompanied by high demand for highly qualified workers and high employee turnover	High salaries, flat demand for highly qualified workers, and low employee turnover
Management style	Accommodating to economic growth and decline and adept at fast reallocation of resources	Accommodating to fast growth and to developing new products and services	Keeping to the status quo and focusing on improving existing products and services
Customer characteristics	Low per capita income	Low per capita income, but a rising middle class with rapidly increasing consumer demands	High per capita income, but only modest growth in income
Economic conditions	Erratic economic growth	Continuous and fast economic growth	Continuous but modest economic growth

2. Environmental hypothesis for IS research

Sustained economic development requires functional infrastructure, and IT is often an enabler and catalyst for providing this. Not all applications of IT, though, achieve the intended results, and the factors that differentiate successful IT implementations from the many failed attempts are the focus of this special issue. Though IT implementations in developed economies also suffer from high failure rates, the IT applications in developed countries typically have a different focus, as a mature infrastructure is already in place, and project success is often determined by very different criteria.

The differences outlined in Table 1 may have a substantial impact on the effective application of IT, as the existing business environment to a large extent determines the successful adoption and use of IT (Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2008a). Figure 1 depicts the importance of specific factors in the business environment relative to issues in IT. We call this the environmental hypothesis for information systems (IS) research. Thus, researchers and practitioners in the field of IS need to pay careful attention to the specific environment in which IT is implemented and used. This importance of the environment has been recognized in other disciplines. For example, in the medical field, the specific conditions of the environment help explain why some diseases are more prevalent in some geographic locations than others (Spallholz, Boylan, & Rhaman, 2004).

Figure 1. Environmental impact on IT (adapted from Roztocki & Weistroffer, 2009).

While there is still only limited academic research resulting in publications on IT applications in developing and emerging countries, there is already a wealth of practical experience that can be exploited to prevent repeating past mistakes. By learning from successful models of IT implementations and carefully examining the specific factors that contributed to success or failure of IT projects, many future missteps and misdirected efforts may be avoided.

This wealth of practical experience is largely overlooked or disregarded by mainstream IS research, as the majority of publications are still based on the assumption that most of the best practices derived from developed countries are universal in nature and can, perhaps after some minor modifications, be successfully applied in the very different business environments of developing and emerging economies. A possible reason for this disregard may be that the practical experiences and observations collected in the unique environments of developing and emerging economies are difficult to explain with existing and accepted theories, making this kind of research less publishable. Many of the theories used in IS research originated several decades ago, well before globalization became as extensive and acknowledged as it is today.

Consequently, many of the mainstream IS researchers apply theories and models that assume a predictable business environment, emphasizing long-term strategic planning based on hard data. Unfortunately, the business reality in many developing and emerging economies is not that predictable, and long-term strategic planning is much more difficult, as hard data are not always available. In addition, rigid long-term strategy may not always be desirable, as new opportunities as well as hurdles frequently arise. Thus, in contrast to their colleagues from developed countries, managers in developing and emerging economies must frequently redefine their business models while using flexible and incremental business strategies (Kozminski, 2008).

It is reasonable to assume, thus, that the differences in business environments in developing and emerging economies require very different approaches to IT usage and suggest very different success factors and models for IT applications, as signified by our environmental hypothesis for IS research. Thus, any research on what contributes to IT implementation success and any attempts at explanatory model building need to start with a careful analysis of the environmental factors, as depicted in the four-step approach of Figure 2.

Figure 2. Application of environmental hypothesis for IS research.

3. Papers in this special issue

This special issue focuses on success factors and models for IT applications in the specific business environments prevalent in developing and emerging economies. Three research papers and one View from Practice paper are included in this special issue. Looking at IT implementation from a practice perspective seems to be particularly important when dealing with the business environment in developing and emerging economies.

The first research paper, “Structurational analysis of cross-cultural development of an academic registry information system in Mozambique,” by Markus Pscheidt, describes the dynamics of a project that involved team members from African and European countries. In particular, this research examines how the cultural heterogeneity of the team members (cf. workforce characteristics in Figure 1) may impact project management. The main lesson from this partially failed project is that in many projects in developing countries, persistence and committed leadership are instrumental.

The second research paper, “Sustainable rural ICT project management practice for developing countries: investigating the Dwesa and RUMEP projects,” by C. Pade-Khene, B. Mallinson, and D. Sewry, analyzes two projects conducted in rural South Africa. The objective of the Dwesa project was to improve communication in this particular rural region and thus to promote more business activities and economic growth. The objective of the RUMEP project was to support the professional development of mathematics teachers in underprivileged schools in rural areas. The longitudinal case studies provide interesting insights into the impact of characteristics of the rural community (cf. customer characteristics in Figure 1) on effective project management.

The third research paper, “The spillover effects of investments in telecoms: insights from transition economies,” by Sergey Samoilenko and Kweku-Muata Osei-Bryson, examines how investments in IT (as exemplified by telecoms) may produce macroeconomic growth, using data from 18 transition economies. This research, building on several previously published studies by the same authors (Samoilenko, 2008; Samoilenko & Osei-Bryson, 2008), provides empirical evidence that some countries (labeled as Leaders) are able to capture higher benefits from IT investments than others (labeled as Followers). Specifically, in the case of the Followers, the available infrastructure impacts the capitalization of IT investments (cf. impact on organizations and society in Figure 1). Furthermore, the results of this study show that the state of the economy (cf. economic conditions in Figure 1) affects the availability of IT (cf. adoption and diffusion in Figure 1) for the Leaders as well as the Followers.

The View from Practice paper, “Making the transition from pilot to scale: examining sustainability and scalability issues in a public–private telecenter partnership in Sri Lanka,” by Laura Hosman, identifies challenges and success factors in public–private partnerships, by examining the EasySeva project. The objective of this project was to establish in an underserved region of Sri Lanka a number of small telecenters that will provide customers with Internet and phone access. The project was based on recruiting suitable partners and helping them establish these telecenters by providing them with training, technical support, and financial resources. The telecenter owners were expected to generate profits and repay the loans within 30 months. This view from practice provides interesting observations on how the business environment (cf. customer characteristics as well as infrastructure in Figure 1) may affect the business model (cf. strategy as well as planning and design in Figure 1).

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to the many researchers who served on the editorial board for our special issue: Niv Ahituv, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Mito Akiyoshi, Senshu University, Japan; Francis Kofi Andoh-Baidoo, University of Texas-Pan American, USA; Anton Arapetyan, Ukrainian Catholic University, Ukraine; Elizabeth Baker, Virginia Military Institute, USA; Eszter Ágnes Bartis, Corvinus University, Hungary; Sergey Butakov, Woosong University, Korea; Paulo Rupino da Cunha, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal; Dorota Dobija, Kozminski University, Poland; Anca Draghici, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania; Biswadip Ghosh, Metropolitan State College of Denver, USA; G. Harindranath, University of London, UK; Kalinka Kaloyanova, University of Sofia, Bulgaria; Mehruz Kamal, State University of New York at Brockport, USA; Ranjan Kini, Indiana University Northwest, USA; Ilsang Ko, Chonnam National University, Korea; Niki Kunene, University of Louisville, USA; Abdulrahman A. Mirza, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia; Valter Moreno, Ibmec-RJ, Brasil; Solomon Negash, Kennesaw State University, USA; Nicolau Reinhard, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil; Tomáš Sabol, Technical University of Košice, Slovakia; Sergey Samoilenko, Virginia Union University, USA; Piotr Soja, Cracow University of Economics, Poland; Margaret Tan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Kuldar Taveter, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia; Marinos Themistocleous, University of Piraeus, Greece; and Tibor Vörös, Central European University, Hungary. These reviewers committed a substantial amount of their precious time to provide helpful comments and advice. Their professional and dedicated help made this special issue possible. We truly regret that not all of the submitted papers could be included, but we hope that the constructive feedback received from the reviewers will enable the authors whose articles could not be accommodated in this special issue to revise their work and have it published in a regular issue of the Information Technology for Development (ITD) journal or some other outlet. Finally, we would like to sincerely thank Sajda Qureshi, ITD Editor-in-Chief, for making this special issue a reality and for her very professional guidance throughout the process.