Interrogating the effect of environmental factors on e-commerce institutionalization in Tanzania: a test and validation of small and medium enterprise claims

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to interrogate the claims made by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania regarding the environmental factors that negatively affect their institutionalization of e-commerce. SMEs made claims that there was a lack of institutional readiness for e-commerce in Tanzania, as well as inadequate market forces readiness, supporting industry readiness, and socio-cultural readiness. A content analysis approach was used to interrogate institutional policy documents to determine the frequency of use of specific arguments that either support or negate the SMEs’ claims. The theory of communicative action was used as a framework to analyze the truthfulness, sincerity, clarity, and legitimacy of the claims made. The findings from the content analysis show that the Tanzanian Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) policy and SME policy pay scant attention to e-commerce readiness factors. The validity claim analysis did not reveal distorted communications by SMEs, but corroborated their claims that indeed environmental factors were not conducive to the institutionalization of e-commerce in Tanzania. These findings call for a national-level reassessment of e-commerce policies in Tanzania.

KEYWORDS:

• E-commerce
• SMEs
• Tanzania
• discourse analysis
• institutional e-readiness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Salah Kabanda is an NRF-rated researcher who holds a doctorate degree in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interest is mainly in the adoption, use, and consequence of ICTs in business and in government in developing countries. Her work examines the key research foci, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives adopted by researchers when studying technology in developing countries, and specifically in Africa. She has made regular contributions in the following journals and conferences: The African Journal of Information Systems, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries and The South African Journal of Information Management, International Conference on Information Resources Management, European conference of information systems (ECIS), IFIP, and the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT), and the annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC).

Irwin Brown is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems (IS) at UCT, and Deputy Director of the Centre for IT and National Development in Africa (CITANDA). He graduated with a Masters in IS (Curtin University) in 1995 and PhD (UCT) in 2005. Irwin holds positions as SAICSIT Deputy President, IS Associate Editor of Information & Management journal, and Editor of the African Journal of IS. His research interests relate to the use of grounded theory methodology in IS studies, and issues around IS in developing countries. He has published more than 30 journal articles in outlets such as the European Journal of IS, IT for Development, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Global Information Management, and the International Journal of Information Management. He has also published more than 50 peer-reviewed conference papers in outlets such as ECIS, AMCIS, ACIS, IFIP WG9.4, IFIP WG8.2 and SAICSIT Centre for IT and National Development in Africa.