Digital development for a progressive networked society

Abstract

Unlike their counterparts in the industrialised world, the people of the developing world continue to lack the benefits of being part of a networked society. This is in spite of increasing connectivity enabled by the phenomenal levels of mobile device penetration and the concomitant adoption of social media in the developing world. Key among the inhibiting factors is a lack of collaboration within and between communities and institutions, as well as a growing inequality, which is also fuelled by unequal access to opportunity-enhancing information and communication technologies (ICTs). Networked co-action is also encouraged between developing countries in the form of South-South collaboration and triangular cooperation in ICT4D as articulated by Walsham (2020). While the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment that affect the developing world are due to a lack of human development and capability-enhancing policies as articulated by Sen (1999), the scourge of inequality is exacerbated by the absence of progressive policies such as social protection and progressive taxation (UNDP, 2017). As our increasingly globalised world becomes more dependent on ICTs, building a progressive networked society requires universal access to opportunity-enhancing ICTs. This is because unequal access to ICTs breeds challenges in the delivery and prioritisation of e-services such as e-healthcare, e-education, e-banking and knowledge sharing between the people who live in enclaved economies. Enclaved economies are characterised by pockets of affluence surrounded by vast expanses of poverty. In developing countries, this situation is worsened by the rural-to-urban divides characterised by dual economies, that is, for the rich and for the poor and for rural and for urban, as well as for the connected and the unconnected. The average Gini coefficient of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries is about 0.32 (OECD, 2020), while the average for developing countries, for example, Sub-Saharan Africa, is about 0.5 (UNDP, 2017). A Gini coefficient that is close to 0, for example, 0.24 for the Slovak Republic, is more equal than one that is close to 1, such as South Africa's 0.62 (OECD, 2020). Progressive thinkers who seek to overcome poverty, economic crises, the effect of climate change, political upheavals and health pandemics in developing countries must be concerned about the effect of ICTs on unequal societies. The challenge is how to manage the development of a networked society's impact on people's well-being. Evidence shows that a country's inequalities shape the individual livelihoods, health and longevity of its inhabitants. These traditional barriers of the enclaved society must be challenged by the networking power of ICTs as far as access allows. The boundaries of networked society are more permeable, and they enable interaction between different groups because connecting links will switch between a multiplicity of networks, as articulated by Wellman and Gulia (1999). There are, however, entry barriers such as connectivity, digital literacy and affordability of ICT access that stand in the way. As long as such barriers exist, the networked communities continue to prosper, while the excluded fall behind. When prosperity is generated through digital connectivity and inclusion in networked societies, the individuals and the communities that are unconnected or erratically connected may not benefit from such a networked society. There is, therefore, a call for IS scholars to harness ICTs to progressively reorganise the traditional services into digital versions of what Klein and Hirschheim (2012) call the e-world. Beyond mere automation, e-world services (ie, e-banking, e-commerce, e-learning, e-health, etc.) may be organised for the benefit of all in a progressive networked society. In that way, communities that were previously separated by class, caste, religion, distance and inaccessible terrain, as articulated by Sachs (2005), will benefit from a progressive networked society. A growing body of Information Systems (IS) studies is assessing how ICTs could enable people in the developing world to cope with the shocks that affect their lives and facilitate resilience strategies in developing countries (Heeks & Ospina, 2018). Against this background, there is a need for IS scholars to investigate these problems in order to formulate a progressive networked society that enables people in different parts of the world to collaborate with each other both socially and economically. This does not in any way obligate the global South to mimic the models that were used by the global North. The folly of the transfer and diffusion approach, which has been attempted by others, has been adequately elaborated (Avgerou, 2008, 2010). IS scholars have warned against adopting approaches that seek to harness ICTs in ways that do not comply with the cultures of communities in any particular developing country (Walsham & Sahay, 2006). ICT-enabled interventions must seek to facilitate the collaboration and knowledge-sharing networks in sustainable ways that enjoy the buy-in of the concerned communities. To similar ends, Sen (1999) calls for the expansion of people's freedom to choose and create the substantive opportunities that they wish to exploit or achieve in the different contextual settings they find themselves in. While there is a growing quest for scholars to harness IS to improve the world we are living in (Qureshi, 2015; Sahay, 2016; Walsham, 2012), there is also a need to do so in ways that are compatible with the cultures and resources of people in developing countries. There is also a need to map out the development trajectories that are applicable to them. For instance, scholars must question whether the developing world's future smart cities must mimic Western town planning, garbage collection and sewerage reticulation or formulate another approach that does not disrupt their communal lifestyles. Could such an approach avoid the costly infrastructure that they are currently failing to mimic? According to Gizjen (2020), Africa must not miss the opportunity to pursue a developmental direction that avoids the mistakes made by industrialised nations. For instance, he argues that mistakes such as the use of environmentally unfriendly sources of energy should be avoided. The absence of context-specific innovations in developing countries arguably emanates from a lack of research and development in the high technology sector. This fuels their appetite for foreign products and hence the adoption of non-home-grown models. The only occasion when developing countries deviate from the models that they meant to catch up with is when they decide to leapfrog to newer and yet still foreign models that are not necessarily compatible with their own cultures. The rare exception of mobile money transfer deserves mention because, after leapfrogging to mobile technologies, the innovative adoption and use of mobile money by countries such as Kenya addressed a genuine need to serve an un-banked, low-income and even semi-literate populace. The journey of serendipity that led to the birth of m-pesa depicts a context-specific solution to a local need (Omwansa, 2009). While ICTs will not solve all the challenges that the developing world will face in attempting to build a progressive society, they will have a role to play whenever there is an information, a communication or an automation component to be addressed (McNamara, 2003). The usefulness of ICTs in building a better world has been confirmed by both academics and the development community, but the appropriate approach to harnessing them remains a subject of ongoing discussion. Experiences from the work of IS scholars in the multi-cultural global South suggest that different approaches are required. As if the country-specific challenges are not enough, each domain presents its own peculiar challenges. For instance, at the organisational level, these challenges will vary by sector, organisational culture and by firm size as El-Rassi (2020) discusses in this issue using a Lebanese case study. In our endeavour to build a progressive digitally networked society, we are arguably chasing a moving target because digital technologies are constantly evolving with technological innovation. Each epoch of technological innovation opens a new frontier of new avenues for fighting poverty and inequalities and networking using digital technologies. As new technological possibilities emerge, it is critical for IS scholars and practitioners to constantly investigate how to harness them for digital development and for creating a progressive networked society. The developments on the technological front often introduce newer and more effective tools before earlier ones are adequately tried and tested for use in digital development. This makes our challenges deeper not just because the deployment process is slowed by the sluggish technology diffusion cycle and by user skills acquisition but also because the necessary resources are limited in developing countries. Such a scenario makes IS research more interesting as it constantly introduces fresh challenges and demands different philosophical insights by availing newer options for both users and innovators in academia and practice. This never-ending process of learning, adopting and deployment of newer ICTs must usher in better solutions for fighting poverty in developing countries. The call to harness ICTs for a progressive networked society goes out to academia, industry, governments and non-profit-making organisations. It calls for e-readiness and context-specific adoption models that do not violate the cultures of communities that they are meant to be introduced. While much work has been done at the country and organisational levels by both practitioners and academics, more will need to be done using newer and better technologies. This special issue, therefore, adds its voice to this endeavour by presenting research contributions and case studies that address how to harness IS for improving the lives of people in the developing world. Furthermore, its quest for the building of a progressive networked society resembles Walsham's (2020) call for cross-societal and cross-organisational collaborations in ICT4D. The topics addressed include electronic health care, ICT enabled remittances and e-business adoption. The papers in this issue investigate and address the use of ICTs for the development of a networked society in the developing world. This encompasses the remittance-receiving household level, health and well-being models, as well as the e-business adoption model, that are appropriate for the developing world's small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises (LE). The first paper entitled “Challenges for the adoption of ICT for diabetes self-management in South Africa” is authored by Petersen, Brown, Pather, and Tucker (2020). While the developing world is generally viewed from the perspective of making a better world by rescuing its people from abject poverty, it must be acknowledged that countries of the global South are at different stages of development. As a result, some developing countries are being affected by problems that are associated with the industrialised world. These include lifestyle diseases and non-communicable diseases that are associated with obesity and inactive lifestyles among other causes. This is happening at a time when some developing nations are suffering from malnutrition and curable communicable diseases that emanate from poor hygiene and weak health delivery systems. The quest to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN Agenda 2030, 2015) in the next 10 years requires attention to all of our challenges so that no one will be left out. For instance, meeting SDG3 (Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Well-Being for All at All Ages) requires managing good health and well-being in all its forms, including non-communicable diseases (NCDs), as articulated by Petersen et al. (2020). The threat posed by NCDs to developing countries makes the theme of this paper relevant to the developing world. It addresses the use of technologies for addressing the plight of victims of NCDs. In this paper, Petersen et al. (2020) assess the adoption of ICTs for diabetes self-management in the global South using the case of South Africa. They set the scene of the study by highlighting the prevalence of diabetes in Africa. They warn that the Sub-Saharan Africa region has about 15.5 million people who have diabetes mellitus. It also has 69.2% of the world's undiagnosed diabetes patients, which is reported to be the world's highest regional percentage (IDF, 2018). If other developing regions have any semblance of Africa's proportion of undiagnosed victims, there should be a need for ICT interventions. The study, however, focuses on the management of detected cases. The study uses a conceptual framework, which consists of four factors of the Extended Technology Acceptance Model (ETAM), that is, educational, technological, economic and socio-cultural factors. Evidence from South Africa's Western Cape province is used for exploring how diabetes patients engage with ICTs. They also investigate their attitudes towards the use of ICT for diabetes self-management. The literature reviewed in the study shows the usage of various ICTs for managing diabetes. These include the internet, mobile phones, tele-medicine and decision support techniques. Of particular interest to scholars of IS in developing countries is the affordability of these ICTs and the data that are required for networking them. The paper, however, points out that South Africa is on a mission to promote the usage of broadband by its people. The unaffordability of expensive medical devices such as the glucose meter and the accompanying testing strips was identified as a key economic barrier to the use of ICTs for self-management. In line with the theme of the special issue, the authors advocate for interventions that address the plight of patients who live in low-income parts of the enclaved economy. South Africa has a Gini coefficient of 0.7, which makes it one of the world's most unequal economies. The socio-cultural factors that have been mentioned in this editorial as key to ICT interventions were found to be essential by the authors of this study. Chief among them is the participants' preference to be attended by a medical practitioner or family member in a face-to-face encounter as opposed to using a device. This suggests the necessity of rich media (eg, video) and trust to enable the adoption of ICT for self-management of diabetes in line with their information culture. High media richness is necessary for encouraging communalist cultures, such as ubuntu of southern Africa, to freely share knowledge through face-to-face communication instead of online communication with people whose gestures they cannot see (Carr, Castleman, Mason, & Parker, 2010). By and large, the study demonstrates that all the four factors identified as a basis for investigation, that is, educational, technological, economic and socio-cultural, indeed form barriers to ICT adoption for diabetes self-management. The question of affordability resurfaces under technological factors. The study shows that, in addition to the lack of ICT skills among the elderly, the cost of ICT access was a key barrier to the consistent usage of ICTs. This re-emphasises the need for progressive policies if we should build a progressive networked society. Otherwise, a networked society of the affluent citizens of the developing world, with a limited number of adversely included representatives for the majority, will be built. Finally, the authors raise the issue of generalisability of their findings in the limitations section of the paper. They state that the findings of this work are not applicable to most parts of South Africa. Instead, they state that the findings may apply to other South African provinces with similar economic, educational and socio-cultural contexts, such as Gauteng. The similarities between the Western Cape and Gauteng boil down to context. Even as we acknowledge the limitations of the generalisability of qualitative case studies, we must give due cognisance to the applicability of models such as the one developed by this study, as articulated by Klein and Myers (1999). For that reason, the paper suggests that its findings provide “a basis to inform how future interventions at the primary health care level may be developed to overcome the identified barriers in efforts to integrate ICT tools into diabetic patients” daily self-management routines'. The second paper entitled “Examining the use of electronic money and technology by the diaspora in international remittance system: A case of Somali remittances from Canada” was co-authored by Elmi and Ngwenyama (2020). The authors add their voice to the discourse on the developmental role of ICT-enabled remittances from international workers to developing countries by investigating the remittance-sending behaviour and use of technology through the conceptual lens of Social Network and Altruism theories. The study interrogates the socio-cultural factors that underpin the technology-enabled network that facilitates the sending of remittances by international labour to developing countries. They adopt a mixed-methods approach to explore the institution behind the Somali Hawala system and how it is enabled by technology. This covered a sample of 143 Somali remittance senders and Hawala businesses based in the Greater Toronto Area of Canada. By uncovering the Somali remittance sending behaviour, the study opens a window through which a deeper understanding of the role played by ICT-enabled remittances can be attained. Most importantly, the role of remittances in supporting the livelihoods of the people in developing countries is presented as the teleological end of the altruism school. The absence of a functioning state makes it difficult for Somalia to receive foreign direct investment (FDI). Evidence from the ICT4D literature suggests that remittances often fill that gap and, in other situations, exceed the FDI of some developing countries, which suggests that Somalia has a serious need for remittances. Against this background, it is, however, important to note that a mere focus on livelihoods without a clear understanding of the context that enables them is a fallacy that was problematised by IS scholars (Avgerou, 2019). The paper describes Somalia as a country of extreme conditions that should paradoxically enable and also impede any financial system such as international money transfer. A beleaguered state whose systems are not functioning adequately faces some challenges that impede the flow of remittances. At the same time, the need to support the elderly in the absence of social security system calls for remittance sending. The authors also point out that, against all odds, the Somali social institutions are coping and, in some cases, thriving even when they should have failed. In this scenario, the importance of both social and technical imperatives as forces that work together in the process of facilitating trans-diasporic linkages and hence remittances must not be downplayed by advocates of either of them. This contribution, therefore, confirms the role of culture by providing a typical example of the socio-technical phenomenon that underpins the functioning of the Hawala system in a networked society. While the system predates the use of novel technologies such as mobile ICTs, its current efficiency depicts the potency of socially embedded ICT interventions in an enabling cultural setting. It inadvertently warns against technological determinism and transfer and diffusion of Western models to developing countries. Avgerou (2010) problematises the information society's endeavour to transfer acultural models to the developing world. For instance, the trust that glues the Hawala system together is different from the European trust between business partners and customer, which is mainly based on a supporting legal system (Paskaleva-Shapira, 2006). The paper discusses how the Hawala system survived the several assaults from Western governments that are concerned about its possible misuse by illegal elements that may attempt to fund terrorist activities through it. IS scholars, particularly those in the ICT4D subdomain, have acknowledged the usefulness of ICT in enabling remittances to developing countries (Olugbenga & Egbe, 2017). Their ability to bypass the geopolitical impediments such as sanctions, as well as abuse by corrupt officials, is unprecedented because they are a rare source of overseas funding that unfailingly reaches intended recipients. This makes them ideal for plugging the resource gaps that affect the households, as well as foreign exchange deficits that affect many countries in the developing world. While the state of Somalia, which is the paper's unit of analysis, is a state that is allegedly facing difficulties, the functioning of a trust-based system such as Hawala, in tandem with technical systems such as the mobile networks in Somalia's ICT sector, demonstrate the vitality of the socio-technical domain in which this journal is situated. The disturbing truth is that the information society's understanding of the social imperatives that affect life and shape the dynamism of culture in different developing countries is not as easy to understand as technological innovations. IS practitioners will always understand the usefulness of the technologies that emerge in each wave of technological innovation that shapes each industrial epoch, but they may not always understand how to deploy them in each context. This is because the functionality of technological innovations is uniform, yet the context-specific interventions are as diverse as the socio-cultural situations of each country. In this paper, Somalia's Islamic religion and local community leadership are key factors that complement the trust that enables the Hawala system to harness technologies in the absence of the state apparatus that manages it in other developing countries. This case shows the importance of socio-cultural factors in context specific IS interventions. It tilts to the social the scale of the latent disagreement between IS scholars about whether our discipline should adopt a more social than technical stance. The final paper in this issue entitled “Why one e-business adoption model won't fit all firm sizes: The case of Lebanon's e-service industry” is authored by Mary Ann Barbour El-Rassi (2020). ICT adoption and e-readiness are critical challenges that the developing world must address for them to become competitive in an increasingly globalised world. This is because they are among the 12 themes of the global competitiveness index of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2019). This contribution challenges the mistaken view of considering the enterprises in developing countries as homogeneous entities that require the same adoption models. In this paper, the authors explore the differences in the adoption models that are appropriate for LEs in comparison with SMEs. This is done through an assessment of the impact of internal and external factors by firm size on the adoption of e-business. The authors endeavour to argue that one e-business adoption model will not fit all firm sizes. Their study demonstrates this by assessing the LEs and SMEs in the Lebanese e-services sector. They set the scenf the study by demonstrating the importance of e-readiness in the context of the adoption of e-business in developing countries. After that, they argue that the earlier studies which assess the internal and external factors of e-readiness of enterprises in developing countries did not consider how they differed by firm size. The authors adopt Molla and Licker's (2005) Perceived e-Readiness Model (PERM) for building a conceptual framework for investigating e-readiness in developing countries. This enabled them to consider managers' perceptions of e-readiness factors according to their intrinsic significance by grouping them into two dimensions. These are: Perceived Organizational E-Readiness (POER), including awareness, commitment and resource availability in addition to governance, and Perceived Environmental E-Readiness (PEER), such as government support, market pressure and supporting industry e-readiness. A survey was conducted using a sample of 276 senior managers from Lebanon's e-service industry. The authors conduct multiple discriminant function analysis in order to determine an effective set of variables in predicting the e-readiness of enterprises under the LE and SME categories. The authors demonstrate that the factors which influence enterprises' e-business adoption vary depending on the firm's size. This answers the study's main research question and confirms the hypothesis that one adoption model does not fit all firm sizes. They found that LEs are more influenced by managers' commitment and the e-readiness of supporting industries than SMEs. This highlights the previously unpublished limitations of the first generation of e-readiness studies that assume a “one-size-fits all” model could be applicable to any organisation size. That is, the original PERM cannot be generalised to organisations of all sizes in the e-service industry despite the importance of its interactionism perspective. A key contribution of this study for practitioners is that, as they are influenced by their internal and external environment, SMEs that intend to expand globally and reap the benefits of e-business should strengthen their internal organisational capabilities. These include awareness, commitment, business resources, human resources, technology resources and governance as these could help them improve their competitive position. This is because, despite their better flexibility compared to LEs, they must sharpen their ability to react to their external environment, to which they must react as they cannot change it. This special issue provides some insightful food for thought. First, we must consider whether the proliferation of SMEs in developing countries should continue to be problematised. Should business development experts stop criticising SMEs for their inability to grow into LEs and instead re-engineer them into the era of a networked society where SMEs that co-create may perform better than LEs that stand alone? It also calls on us to conceptualise IS in developing countries as a field of academic enquiry that analyses diverse communities instead of a monolithic society. Finally, it highlights the inadequacy of adopting a technocentric lens that marginalises the social phenomena in a society that underpins its business on trust, as can be seen in the Hawala system. I acknowledge the efforts of the Associate Editors of the ICT4D track of ECIS 2018 (June 23rd – 28th 2018/University of Portsmouth, UK), which contributed some of its best papers to this special issue. I am heavily indebited to Track Chairs Dr Isabella Rega, Bournemouth University; Dr Rislana Kanya, Baze University, Nigeria; and Dr M. Sirajul Islam, Örebro Universitet, Sweden. Sam Takavarasha Jr is the Dean of Management and Entrepreneurial Sciences at Women's University in Africa. He is an Information Systems researcher, editor and author of ICT4D, IT Project Management, Capability Approach and Activity Theory. His teaching interests include IT Project Management, e-Commerce, e-Business and Information Systems Research Methods.