Transferability of information technology and organisational practices

Abstract

In this paper we argue that organisations in developing countries should be cautious when they adopt systems development methods and try to introduce organisational change by means of implementing IT based information systems. Transfer of techniques, methods, models and organisational practices, may impede rather than facilitate the utilisation of the potential of IT in developing countries. Organisations in developing countries need to learn ways that can serve their own requirements. To that end, developing countries may gain much more by following the theoretical efforts that have been made in the West to understand the nature of IS and organisational change, rather than by transfering practices packaged in the form of methods or organisational change recipes.