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Information Technology for
Development
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Globalization in development: do
information and communication
technologies really matter?
Saj da Qureshi
Published online: 01 Sep 2011.
To cite this article: Saj da Qureshi (2011) Globalizat ion in development : do inf ormat ion and
communicat ion t echnologies really mat t er?, Inf ormat ion Technology f or Development , 17: 4,
249-252
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Information Technology for Development
Vol. 17, No. 4, October 2011, 249 –252
EDITORIAL
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Globalization in development: do information and communication
technologies really matter?
Sajda Qureshi
Editor-in-Chief
Theories and practises of development have evolved since the 1950s when modernist theories
were used to replicate the European model in Southern countries and Structuralist theories
suggested that these countries needed to limit their interactions with the global economy to
allow for domestic economic growth. This trend was followed by dependency theories in the
1960s and 1970s that focussed on government and aid policies to provide for the world’s
poorest people (Willis, 2011). However, Willis (2011) suggests that the global economic problems of the 1980s and the recognition that development theories had not been translated into
practical success led theorists to stop and think about development. In particular, globalization
is becoming a main factor affecting the incomes and living conditions of people. Castells (2004)
writes about the rise of the fourth world brought about by disparities in incomes of people within
the same country. He states that there is a polarization in the distribution of wealth at the global
level, increasing income inequality within countries and a rise in poverty within most developed
and developing countries. It appears that the greatest inequality is between urban and rural
areas with the rural populations being worse off than their urban counterparts (Castells, 2004;
Willis, 2011).
While a number of theories have been developed on the nature and impact of the process of
globalization, there is agreement in that the increasing interconnectedness between people,
businesses and regions affect the lives of people locally (Castells, 2000; Giddens, 2003; Held,
McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999, Hirst & Thompson, 1996; Robertson, 1992; Scholte,
2000; Wallerstein, 1974). Castells (2000) is notable in his description of globalization to be
fueled by information technology in what characterizes this current technological revolution is
not the centrality of knowledge and information but the application of this knowledge and information to knowledge-generating and information-processing devices. Sen (2002) argues that the
economic predicament of the poor across the world cannot be reversed by withholding from
them the great advantages of contemporary technology, the well-established efficiency of international trade and exchange, and the social as well as economic merits of living in open rather
than closed societies. Ajayi (2003) adds to this argument by stating that globalization offers
new opportunities, including expanded markets and the acquisition of new technologies and ideas.
The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can enable development to
take place through access to new markets, increased competitiveness, and access to knowledge
and skill if applied to address local conditions and individual challenges. More recent studies by
Qureshi, Kamal and Wolcott (2009), have illustrated how the most underserved populations
have been able to take advantage of ICTs to access new markets, increase their competitiveness,
and through administrative efficiencies achieve lower costs and higher returns. At the same time,
those who are unable to have access to or use ICTs risk being excluded from the economic and
social processes of globalization. In order to adequately study the effects of ICTs on global
ISSN 0268-1102 print/ISSN 1554-0170 online
# 2011 Commonwealth Secretariat
DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2011.610142
http://www.informaworld.com
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250 Editorial
development, research methods need to be developed that capture these processes and enable
them to be studied. It appears that given the effects of globalization on development, the
nation state may no longer be the main unit of analysis. Yet development is still seen as an
economic process rooted in modernist theories (Willis, 2011). The World Bank, for example,
uses gross national income per capita to divide the countries of the world into development
categories. Non-economic dimensions of development have been captured through the Human
Development Index developed by the United National Development program. The Gini
coefficient is a measure of inequality which is often used to illustrate disparities in income and
standards of living within countries. Yet, there are few methods available to assess the effects
of ICTs on global development as they address the disparities in income and standard of living.
The articles in this issue offer new perspectives that enable the effects of ICTs on development
to be studied in a broader context. By taking into account the economic and social processes of
globalization, they investigate the ways in which ICTs are adopted and assess the effects of
this adoption on overcoming the inequalities within the countries investigated.
The first paper in this issue is entitled “Inter-organizational systems (IOS) adoption in the
Arabian Gulf region: the case of the Bahraini grocery industry” and is authored by Mazen
Ali and Sherah Kurnia. The authors state that many organizations have engaged in inter-organizational systems (IOS) to manage their business operations across the supply chain. Such
systems are mainly based on business-to-business electronic commerce technologies, are seen
to play a significant role in enabling organizations around the world to extend their supply
chain and to engage in global trading efficiently and effectively across many geographical
locations. They argue that the adoption rate of IOS in the Gulf region is very low and this
creates significant challenges to do business with organizations around the world that make
use of IOS. Because there is a limited understanding of the contextual issues related to the
IOS adoption within the Arabian Gulf region, this study, guided by the process model of
Kurnia and Johnston (2000), investigates IOS adoption by conducting a multiple case study
with seven companies within the grocery industry of Bahrain. This study offers important
implications for both academics and practitioners pursuing IOS in the Gulf region.
The second paper in this issue is by Richard Duncombe and is entitled, “Researching the
impact of mobile phones for development: concepts, methods and lessons for practice.” The
author suggests that the use of mobile phones is an increasingly important part of development
efforts particularly in low-income countries. He states that as investment in mobiles for development (m-development) is being led by the mobile phone industry together with donors and
development partners across a wide range of development sectors and as the adoption of
mobile phones increases, it becomes important to research and understand their impact and to
assess to what extent the expansion of m-development is assisting broader development
efforts. This paper provides guidance for conducting research on impact assessment for
m-development by reviewing 18 published impact studies, and suggests four key building
blocks for good practice in impact assessment. These building blocks encompass: the extent
to which the studies address the needs of defined audiences or beneficiaries, the choice of
types of impact to assess and units of assessment, the application of suitable conceptual frameworks, and the rigor of the methodology followed. The findings suggest that m-development
impact assessment to date falls into three main categories: purely quantitative approaches
rooted in information economics, and purely qualitative approaches rooted in social impact
assessment. A further mixed method category provides cost-effective and timely findings, but
with the result of diluting the rigor evident at the methodological poles. The paper identifies
m-development impact research as a contested area, and by taking stock of experience thus
far, seeks to raise the level of debate concerning the relative merit of alternative methodological
and conceptual approaches.
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Editorial 251
Traci Carte, Ajantha Dharmasiri and Travis Perera are the authors of the third paper in this
issue entitled “Building IT capabilities: learning by doing.” The authors argue that as ICTs are
ubiquitous in much of the developed world, with the growing interest in business process
outsourcing, further deployment of these technologies in developing countries is a valuable
economic development tool. Unfortunately, digital inequity, from inadequate information
infrastructure, lack of IT skills, language barriers, and illiteracy often constrain ICT adoption
and use in developing countries. In order to address this problem, the case study presented in
this paper, focusses on an e-learning initiative within Sri Lanka. A key government ministry
selected 150 of its employees for inclusion in a hybrid learning post-graduate diploma
program in public administration. While this program does not focus on teaching information
technology skills, its hybrid context provides the added benefit of developing technology
skills among participants. The authors followed the participants of the program from start to
finish. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, they found that over the
course of the program, participants became more aware of Internet availability and female
participants displayed improvements in computer self-efficacy. These results suggest a hybrid
learning program such as the one studied in this paper may indeed serve to simultaneously
deliver content and improve IT skills and awareness.
There are two papers in this issue’s View from Practice section. The first paper is entitled
“Improving the browsing experience in a bandwidth limited environment through traffic
management,” and is authored by Augustine Odinma, Sergey Butakov and Evgeny Grakhov.
The authors aim in this paper is to share their experiences with the establishment of a cost-effective
policy for the utilization of limited infrastructure resources in developing nations. They report on
a case study of the American University of Nigeria that provides an example of the successful
management of limited Internet bandwidth among a large group of users. Data from an Internet
proxy server were studied to determine how traffic was allocated to different categories of
digital content. The results from this study show that only a tiny fraction of expensive bandwidth
was used for resources directly related to education. To address bandwidth limitations, a
restrictive policy was proposed as a solution to improve the user browsing experience while not
compromising access to critical resources. Preliminary policy implementation trials restricting
certain applications, such as downloading large files and prohibiting Peer-to-Peer traffic, indicated
good results. The study also shows very positive financial implications of the proposed policy.
These results show that limited investments in infrastructure management can reduce the
running expenses of the project, which facilitates its sustainability.
The final paper in this issue is by Leyland Pitt and Richard Watson and is entitled “The case
for cases: writing and teaching cases for the emerging economies.” The authors of this practice
paper have highlighted an important means of addressing the need to educate future leaders
working in the global economy scenario. They suggest that teaching cases are important instructional mechanisms for educating business leaders. Cases must be relevant to the context in which
the students will work so they can make informed judgments and defend their position to their
peers. Their description of the case is made for developing a set of teaching cases based on
business challenges in emerging economies to provide students in these regions the contextual
realism necessary for a valuable classroom experience. They also provide guidance to novice
case teachers and writers.
References
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Castells, M. (2000). The information age economy, society and culture. Volume 1: The rise of the network
society. Oxford: Blackwell.
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252 Editorial
Castells, M. (2004). The rise of the Fourth World. In D. Held & A. McGrew (Eds.), The global transformation reader (pp. 430 –439). Malden: Blackwell.
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