Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms

In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of lead firms. Drawing on extensive qualitative research in Kenya and Rwanda, including 264 interviews, we examine 3 sectors (tea, tourism, and business process outsourcing) exploring overarching, cross-cutting themes. The findings support more pessimistic expectations: small African producers are only thinly digitally integrated in GVCs. Moreover, shifting modes of value chain governance, supported by lead firms and facilitated by digital information platforms and data standards are leading to new challenges for firms looking to digitally integrate. Nevertheless, we also find examples in these sectors of opportunities where small firms are able to cater to emerging niche customers, and local or regional markets. Overall, the study shows that improving connectivity does not inherently benefit African firms in GVCs without support for complementary capacity and competitive advantages

Digital control in value chains: challenges of connectivity for East African firms

In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of lead firms. Drawing on extensive qualitative research in Kenya and Rwanda, including 264 interviews, we examine three sectors (tea, tourism, and business process outsourcing) exploring overarching, cross-cutting themes. The findings support more pessimistic expectations: small African producers are only thinly digitally integrated in GVCs. Moreover, shifting modes of value chain governance, supported by lead firms and facilitated by digital information platforms and data standards are leading to new challenges for firms looking to digitally integrate. Nevertheless, we also find examples in these sectors of opportunities where small firms are able to cater to emerging niche customers, and local or regional markets. Overall, the study shows that improving connectivity does not inherently benefit African firms in GVCs without support for complementary capacity and competitive advantages

Towards an interpretative integrative framework to conceptualise social processes in large information systems implementations

This paper develops a new interpretative framework to study large information systems implementations. This framework is used to make explicit the various links between the implementation process, the wider organisation and external context. This framework is applied to a substantive case to integrate relevant organisational levels and distinct activity domains, as well as the interconnections between those levels and domains through time. More specifically, the paper extends a previous substantive case analysis with an interpretivist conceptualisation and theory triangulation in order to uncover the deeper structure and meanings embedded in a major information systems (IS) implementation process. The research scope of the IS implementation ranged from initial project formulation, to system development and management training, managing support from key stakeholders, and marginal system use. The substantive case, which has been published elsewhere [33], is based on a national information systems initiative to support the decentralisation and modernisation of management functions in health districts of the Ministry of Public Health in Ecuador. A key objective of this paper is to build a process theory of IS implementation, situated within the context of the substantive case study