Title: Explaining ERP Failure in Developing Countries: A Jordanian Case Study
Authors: Ala'a Hawari & Richard Heeks
Pages: 31 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-905469-13-0
Source: Development Informatics Working Paper Series, Paper No. 45
Publisher: Centre for Development Informatics, Institute for Development Policy and Management, School of Environment and Development (SED), University of Manchester
Date (published): 17/05/2010
Date (accessed): 02/06/2010
Type of information: research paper
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are increasingly being adopted by organisations in developing countries. As in industrialised countries, this adoption seems beset by significant rates of failure, leading to a large waste of investment and other resources. This paper seeks to understand why ERP failure occurs.

In doing this, it moves beyond the factor lists that have so-far dominated analysis. Instead, it makes use of the "design—reality gap" model. This conceptual framework aims to be comprehensive but also contingent; sensitive to the specific conditions of any individual client organisation.

The design—reality gap model is applied to a case study of partial ERP failure in a Jordanian manufacturing firm. The model analyses the situation both before and during ERP implementation. It finds sizeable gaps between the assumptions and requirements built into the ERP system design, and the actual realities of the client organisation. It is these gaps – and the failure to close them during implementation – that underlie project failure.

The paper draws conclusions about good practice in ERP implementation relating to both risk identification and risk mitigation, and offers examples of both specific and generic actions that can be undertaken. But it also notes challenges existing in some developing country contexts that may continue to constrain the effective use of enterprise resource planning systems.

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Title: Announcing the Technology for Transparency Network
Author: David Sasaki
Source: Global Voices Online
Date (published): 19/01/2010
Date (accessed): 20/01/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Internet technologies give governments an unprecedented ability to monitor our communication, internet activity, and even the microphones on our cell phones. The Internet, however, also empowers citizens with new tools and tactics to hold their elected officials accountable, increase transparency in government, and promote broader and more diverse civic engagement.

Rising Voices, the outreach and citizen media training initiative of Global Voices Online, has launched a new interactive website and global network of researchers to map online technology projects that aim to promote transparency, political accountability, and civic engagement in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and Central & Eastern Europe. Over the next three months eight researchers and eight research reviewers will document at least 32 case studies of the most innovative technology for transparency projects outside of North America and Western Europe.

Title: Nation States, Networks of Flows and ICT-Enabled Development: Learning from Jordan
Authors: Chris Westrup and Saheer Al-Jaghoub
Pages: 37 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-905469-00-0
Series: Manchester Centre for Development Informatics Working Paper 33
Publisher: Development Informatics Group, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester
Date published: 2008
Date accessed: 18/06/2009
Type of information: research publications
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf, MS Word)
Abstract:
This paper argues that information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled development needs to be conceptualised within a dialectic process of globalisation where, on the one hand, the flows of capital, commodities and information are expanding and accelerating while, on the other, nation states are essential components in providing the infrastructures for production, regulation and consumption of these flows. For countries with developmental strategies, this has led to the emergence of developmental network states where a networked polity of private/public agencies are central to glocal processes linking the global movement of capital, commodities and information with local circuits of capital, labour and infrastructure.

Institutions of a developmental network state have to negotiate a series of dilemmas centred on over-autonomy vs. over-embeddedness on the one hand and the capability to sustain and develop through time and space. These concepts enable an analysis of the role of states engaged in ICT-enabled developments and require a network-based approach based on multi-scalar analysis.

Jordan and REACH, its programme of ICT-enabled change, are analysed. Jordan is shown to be a recent developmental network state with REACH being paradoxically over-embedded and over-autonomous – indicative of the difficulties for a post-colonial country in creating a network polity. The mediation of glocal processes in REACH shows how important a variety of non-market mechanisms are to the working of ICT-enabled development and their absence can help explain early problems with REACH failing to achieve its targets for ICT foreign direct investment.

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Educator's guide to student questions for this paper.