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Electronic Business in Developing Countries: The Digitalization of Bad Practices

Electronic Business in Developing Countries: The Digitalization of Bad Practices

Carlos Ferran, Ricardo Salim
Copyright: © 2005 |Pages: 35
ISBN13: 9781591403548|ISBN10: 1591403545|ISBN13 Softcover: 9781591403555|EISBN13: 9781591403562
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59140-354-8.ch001
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MLA

Ferran, Carlos, and Ricardo Salim. "Electronic Business in Developing Countries: The Digitalization of Bad Practices." Electronic Business in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Challenges, edited by Sherif Kamel, IGI Global, 2005, pp. 1-35. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59140-354-8.ch001

APA

Ferran, C. & Salim, R. (2005). Electronic Business in Developing Countries: The Digitalization of Bad Practices. In S. Kamel (Ed.), Electronic Business in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Challenges (pp. 1-35). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59140-354-8.ch001

Chicago

Ferran, Carlos, and Ricardo Salim. "Electronic Business in Developing Countries: The Digitalization of Bad Practices." In Electronic Business in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Challenges, edited by Sherif Kamel, 1-35. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2005. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59140-354-8.ch001

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Abstract

This chapter uses information theory to study the effect of the Internet and e-business over the digital divide. It develops a framework that defines four types of information technologies and Internets based on four dimensions of information: physical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Technologies like e-mail that only make use of the first three hardly interact with the industrial infrastructure and superstructure. Nonetheless, technologies like e-commerce that require the pragmatic dimension, which is related to matter and energy (products and services) need such structures. For example, e-commerce requires a trustworthy transportation and payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, developing countries are lacking them. This differential capacity to use the pragmatic dimension of AdvIT/IS (pragmatic fragility) explains why developing countries are not able to skip industrialization and jump into the information era. This pragmatic fragility increases the existing digital divide since implementing e-business in developing countries ends up being the digitalization of bad business practices.

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