The landscape of international development has changed significantly since the 1980s. Already at that time there was concern that Africa had ‘lost a decade’, that is, it had faced negative growth, and slipped into recurring famines, wars, and endemically corrupt governments. Nevertheless, there were encouraging examples of industrialization and growth by technology innovation elsewhere, notably Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan (Hobday, 1995; Wong, 1996). Theoretically, the debate on development was still pursued as the confrontation of Marxist inspired views – that saw the problem of poverty in large parts of the world as a consequence of colonialism and dependency due to an unfair trade system – and modernization that advocated the spread of liberal socio- economic systems of the West (Hunt, 1989). Despite the disrepute brought to the planned economies by the bankrupt and brutally authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, socio- economic development was largely considered a responsibility of national government. More importantly, in both these ideologies industrialization and technology innovation were undisputed means for development.10 National IT policies and government action to promote IT as a force for development were part of the development mechanisms, as demonstrated by the attention given at that time to the IT policy in Japan and the literature comparing national IT policies (English and Brown, 1984; Evans, 1992; Evans et al., 1992).
Since then Africa has continued to slip in deprivation, Latin American countries have faced repeated crises and the experiences of the South East tiger economies have not been emulated elsewhere. Two examples of impressive regional growth have emerged, Bangalore in India and Shanghai in China, but they remain islands of prosperity with little evidence that their successes are ‘trickling down’ benefits to the huge impoverished regions of their countries. Theoretically, in the currently dominant discourse of ‘globalization’, development is the result of internationally unrestricted market forces, and one of the most controversial issues is the extent to which governments should interfere
10. Alternative views, such as the appropriate technology movement and basic needs approach to development have always been marginal in relation to the dependency and the modernization theories.
The study of information technology in developing countries 159 with the global open market. According to the dominant current thinking about development, governments are needed in an open market regime to provide the institutions that serve the market – e.g. the legal mechanism to enforce property rights, education mechanisms to create required competences – but it is feared that they tend to meddle with and restrict unnecessarily the valuable market forces (World-Bank, 2002). One of the trickiest jobs of international development institutions is to judge the extent to which governments in developing countries should be allowed to keep in their hands control over the institutions of their societies, such as regulated banking (Wade, 1990; Stiglitz, 2002).
But the discourse on globalization involves more fundamental and multifaceted controversies than the one on market versus government. Pushing to its limits the logic of ‘development’ as economic growth that is achieved by emulating the institutional conditions of western modernity, it sparks widespread discontent and triggers voices from alternative value systems (Rahnema and Bawtree, 1997). With the challenge of a homogenizing globalization, the diversity of the ways people live their lives becomes more prominently visible. The dichotomy market or government is broken by the movement of the civil society that legitimates the action of a plethora of mediating NGOs (Kaviraj and Khilnani, 2001).
The influence of such ideological matters is discernible in the WG9.4 research. For example, at the first conference on New Delhi, recommendations for action were addressed primarily to country governments, an orientation that has changed in more recent conferences. In that conference the most significant actor in making context-specific choices and indeed the protagonist in the effort of IT innovation was seen to be the national government: for education, taxation policy, infrastructures, etc. Although a number of papers presented the rationale about the significance of IT for the competitive advantage of business organizations (for example, Mohan et al., 1990 and Goonatilake, 1990), as it was discussed in the general information systems literature of that period, the argumentation was addressed primarily to government policy makers rather than to business managers. This may have been a consequence of the recognition that one of the problematic features of developing countries was the lack of professionally trained management (Bhatnagar, 1990). Still it is significant that only 15 years ago government was seen as the main actor not only for the shaping the institutional conditions for the development of technological capabilities in its policy making capacity but also as a legitimate provider of IT infrastructures, services and applications.
Since then the research of the WG9.4 community came to assume a market environment with less government and with other legitimate actors, such as NGOs and international aid agents. Even though relatively little research effort has been devoted to issues of IT and
competitiveness in professionally managed business organizations as is typical in the information systems research,11 there are many signs that the market is taken for granted as the appropriate context for exploiting the potential of IT. For example, one of the main concerns of telecentres is their sustainability as profitable business enterprises. While most telecentres are created with sponsorship from government and international development agencies, they are not seen as public services in the way broadcasting, telecommunications, or postal services used to be, but are expected to operate as competitive business concerns. Similarly, no distributive policies to benefit wider population from the success of localized software industries are discussed. Studies of government IT policy that featured large in the first few conferences of the Group are relatively marginal in its latest conferences, apparently reflecting the diminishing attention to government as an actor in IT and development. Instead, international aid organizations and non- governmental organizations (NGOs) became prevalent as influential institutional actors in the diffusion and utilization of IT in developing countries (Madon and Sahay, 2000; Frasheri, 2002).
It is at least a plausible hypothesis that the socio-economic order set by western modernity, which development in the current era of globalization aspires to achieve, is not universally acceptable. If so, the pervasive failure of IT implementation projects and the difficulties in utilizing IT to provide the infrastructures of modern society in developing countries may be a manifestation that the universal development ideal is not meaningful in all societies. The free market economy, the democratic minimal government, the disassociation of economic activities from personal and family affairs, the entrusting of organizing of all types of collectivities on professionally trained managers may not be valued universally. Yet, IT enters all societies loaded with promises of enabling such modern social institutions. And the commonly observed difficulties of implementation and unsustainability are likely to suggest deeply rooted silent resistances to the institutions of advanced modernity.
If indeed the core problem is the unconvincingness of the socio- economic development logic that IT is mobilized to support, the constructive facilitatory research orientation that is the core value of the WG9.4 research is going to continue to be faced with disappointed results. Thus, the investigation of the ideology of development and the role IT may play in societies which are suspicious of or unable to appreciate the currently dominant development ideal is not a futile pre- occupation.
11. However, attention has been given to IT and management in SMEs, which are thought to be of crucial importance in developing countries and more deeply embedded in local cultural conditions, see, for example, Lind (2000) and Volkow (2000).
The study of information technology in developing countries 161
■
Conclusions
In conclusion, my review of the series of the IFIP WG9.4 conference proceedings suggests the following distinct characteristics of this research stream:
1 A mission to produce constructive knowledge that aims at facilitating the utilization of IT for the improvement of life conditions in developing countries.
2 Challenging of evidence that IT implementation is met with too many obstacles and too often fails to deliver effective information systems, let alone to contribute to socio-economic improvements. 3 An effort to investigate the nature of this challenge by turning
attention to the socio-cultural contexts within which IT interventions are attempted.
A tension surfaces between the first – the commonly assumed mission – and the third – the findings of the investigation of the reasons for its witnessed difficulty of realization. Probing into the social context of IT initiatives tends to reveal the limitations of instrumental knowledge when confronted with mismatched visions and mistrust to the modernizing forces. Apparently technical mechanisms deployed by IT projects are shown to threaten to subvert deeply rooted social orders and the contrary: silent acceptance of technical change often hides resistance that annihilates plans for far-reaching change. In other words, information systems research in developing countries has stumbled upon questions about the meaning and consequently the feasibility of the development end that IT is expected to support.
I believe the main value of this research community and its distinctiveness amid the many others who are committed now to promote the IT-for-development cause is its awareness of this tension. IT is a powerful technology and it is worth persevering to make it available in developing countries in relevant application areas. But it is not entering in the developing countries as a neutral tool, it is loaded with specific prescriptions for organizing business, government and society at large. In the historically developed alternative social arrangements in developing countries, the process of IT adoption and the kind of changes IT is mobilised to support are neither self-evidently an improvement of their life conditions nor feasible to pursue. The debate on development and the developmental use of IT are closely linked and it is the investigation of this link empirically and theoretically that I find of crucial importance in the WG9.4 research.