Paper long abstract:

A consensus has emerged among the circles of development agencies and academics on the potential role of e-commerce in socio-economic development. Past research in the area has focused more on identifying the national level policy and infrastructure (physical, institutional, financial and technological) pre-conditions of conducting e-commerce. These pre-conditions tend to act as constraints to successful e-commerce adoption and implementation. Though more success stories are emerging in practice, there is an acute lack of theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence to understand how developing country firms realise e-commerce benefits amidst their national constraints. This paper uses the resource-based view of the firm to investigate e-commerce strategies among Ghanaian firms to address the above gap. Findings tend to suggest that in resource-poor contexts, first, ICTs diffuse along the path of least cost of adoption, and managerial capabilities and intangible resources, like social networks, trust and credibility, play a critical role in manner in which firms use ICTs to achieve e-commerce benefits.