IT investments in developing countries: An assessment and practical guide
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IT Investments in Developing Countries: An Assessment and Practical Guide
others has shown that the vast majority of IT investment appraisals in organisations are fictions created to support previously-made, largely subjective decisions. It is a pity that these behavioural and political realities could not have been acknowledged and incorporated. ‘Gut feelings’ and ‘politics’ are mentioned but then brushed aside. The research methodology chapter, with its discussion of bias in research and of case studies as a research method will be familiar to all thesis supervisors. It should have been removed for a commercial publication or, at best, squeezed down and packed off into the appendices. The same can also be said of the research chapter where most readers will not care for half a page on how confidentiality was dealt with, or details of how the author was introduced to his case study projects. As would befit a thesis, data is presented in considerable detail. Unfortunately, page after page of ‘relative chi-squared distances’ and ‘Eigen values’ may be appropriately presented to a thesis examiner, possibly to a narrow academic audience, but not to a general IT/IS or management audience. The nub of the book comes down to ten ‘practical management guidelines’ presented on two pages. They include ‘get to know the drivers for IT investment and what is likely to change in the short to medium term’ and ‘the organization must ensure that staff involvement receives the required attention’. These points are all fair enough, but there is no particular sense that they derive from the field research and it did not need a whole book of text to arrive at them. For an academic audience, the eleven short case studies in the appendix are of more value, since they could easily be used for teaching work. In all, a far heavier editorial hand on the tiller was needed for this book, and in getting results expeditiously into print, the Idea Group must take care to avoid any sense that they are a ‘sausage factory’. One is left with the feeling that, for most IT/IS readers, there was a journal article in all this, but not a book.
By S Lubbe Published by Idea Group, Hershey and London, UK ISBN 1 878 289 55 1
The first thing that strikes about this book is that, despite the title, it is not about developing countries; its cases are drawn from South Africa, but they could as easily come from Italy or Australia. Save for a couple of passing references to Africa and ‘black IT people’, neither the process of development nor the particular conditions of developing countries are considered in the book. We are therefore left with a book about IT investment, aimed, according to its preface, at executives and managers. Although the writing is often clear and accessible, it cannot, in all fairness, be said that this is really a book for IT managers let alone mainstream executives. With two chapters devoted to literature review and chapters devoted to research methodology, research background and detailed presentation of data, this gives every app
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