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Item Leveraging Mobile Payment Affordance For Business Benefit: A Case Study Of Merchants In Ghana(University Of Ghana, 2023-03) Afeti, E.Y.Merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms is critical in market development for mobile payments in Africa. Extant literature has validated that the COVID-19 global pandemic is reshaping the market outlook for payments in Africa and how merchants and consumers respond. The pandemic has also driven a significant change in consumer and merchant behaviours that will continue to exist, even after the post-COVID-19 era. Despite the myriad of research on mobile payment, there exist a paucity of research from the merchant’s perspective on mobile payment platforms’ adoption, their affordances, and the outcomes of merchants’ interactions with these platforms. The dearth of knowledge on the above has revealed four significant interrelated research gaps that need attention. First, arguably there is lack of understanding of merchant decision pathways and the strategic and non-strategic influencing factors in adopting mobile payment platforms aside utility/risk trade-offs. Second, slimily limited knowledge of how merchants interact with, identify and actualise affordances that accompany mobile payment systems and their attendant constraints. Third, the literature project limited understanding of the strategic and non-strategic outcomes of actualising mobile payment affordances after adoption, specifically focusing on what outcomes occur and what goals are achieved due to the affordance actualisation process. Last, there is arguably limited understanding of the context-specific factors that enable, stimulate and constrain specific technology in a specific context and the affordances generated from actors’ interaction with technology. Therefore, the purpose of this research is stated as follows: developing a theoretical and practice-oriented framework that explains mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants and how these platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants. This doctoral thesis formulated four research questions using the Ghanaian context as a case based on the identified gaps. First, "What are the mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants in Ghana and the strategic and non-strategic influencing factors besides the risk/utility trade-off"? Second, "How do mobile payment platforms afford or constrain merchants' transactions in Ghana"? Third, "What forms of outcomes (benefits) do mobile payment platforms afford merchants in Ghana "? last, "What enabling, stimulating and releasing conditions affect the benefits afforded by mobile payment platforms to merchants in Ghana"? Addressing the above research questions contributes to achieving the study's purpose of developing a theoretical and practice-oriented framework that explains mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants and how these platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants. The study employed the Technology Affordance and Constraints Theory with principles from the Rational Choice Theory and literature on e-commerce to develop a conceptual framework. Based on the conceptual framework, five propositions were developed and tested. Further, the study was underpinned by the critical realist paradigm and adopted a qualitative multiple-case study approach using three merchant firms in Ghana to explore an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. The case firms were theoretically selected based on a predetermined set of criteria. The research focused on Ghana because the country is an instance of a developing economy is continuously increasing access to payment systems by leveraging the widespread usage of mobile payment technologies as alternative channel access to financial inclusion and to promote a cash-lite economy. In responding to the first research question, the study found three main pathways by which merchants adopt mobile payment platforms in Ghana. First, rational decision, where the merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms is influenced by cost-benefit analysis based on the utility /risk trade-offs. The second is a strategic decision, where the business model and partnership survival influence merchant adoption of mobile payment. The third is the experimental decision, where merchants incrementally develop capabilities in adopting and using mobile payment. The findings suggest that in Ghana, factors that influence the merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms are multidimensional instead of the unidimensional factors identified in extant literature. Hitherto, there was no mention of the experimental decision, in literature, which, therefore, is a new contribution. Out of the three-dimensional factors that could influence merchants’ decision to adopt mobile payment, the strategic path was found to be most influential because it supported merchants’ organisational strategies of developing new business models. The second research question found that merchants’ interaction with mobile payment platforms afford the merchant a primary affordance of strategic information capturing. Relative to the extant literature, the study further revealed that the primary affordance of strategic information further affords the merchant with action possibilities of possible data analytics on critical customer data, leading to superior secondary affordances such as performance-monitoring, business development, and fraud detection affordances. Despite these affordances, technological deficiency, and value chain shortcomings such as mobile payment platforms interoperability, electronic-levy policy implementation, and network connectivity constrained mobile payment platform affordance actualisation and benefits. The third research question found that merchant mobile payment platform's affordance actualisation leads to strategic and operational benefits, as reported in the e-commerce literature in information systems. The study further discovered three new forms of benefits from mobile payment platforms' affordance actualisation relative to extant literature. This includes transformational, managerial, and organisational benefits. The transformational benefits were vital in supporting valuable and positive change in merchants’ firms leading to efficient merchant service delivery. This conceptualisation has not yet received scholars’ attention in mobile payment literature therefore this finding is a new knowledge and contribution to mobile payment research. Finally, the fourth research question found adoption readiness and stakeholder direction as two key enabling conditions. The adoption readiness factors include a favourable adoption environment, mobile payment pervasiveness, critical mass, and digitalisation uptake from COVID-19 pandemic. The prevailing payment culture consisted of mobile payment as the new normal, multi-currency feature and third-party mobile payment support. The stakeholder directional factors were also found to include regulatory factors and competitive pressure. The regulatory factors include government legislation, operational accreditation and interoperability. Finally, competitive pressure relates to usage from other firms and the changing consumer preference. On the other hand, the merchant’s orientation, the kind of business model, perceived extra revenue generation, financial readiness, merchant brand value, and COVID-19 served as stimulating conditions. Furthermore, the merchant's decision to pursue an overall benefit was found to be the fundamental releasing condition. The originality and contribution of this doctoral study to research and practice are as follows. First, hitherto non-existent in mobile payment literature, the research uncovers a new decision-making pathway to merchants’ adoption of mobile payment platforms. Second, this study contributes to theory development in the field of IS and mobile payment studies with several conceptualisations. This includes an empirically-validated conceptual framework that explains how mobile payment platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants; a unique conceptualisation of mobile payment benefits as transformational, managerial and organisational; and six typologies on merchant adoption pathways to mobile payment platforms, affordances and constraints, mobile payment affordance actualisation outcomes and typologies of environmental factors that can enable, stimulate or release affordance perception and actualisation from a developing country context. These were non-existent in the mobile payment literature hitherto this study. Also, policymakers and practitioners can leverage this knowledge to create enabling conditions to ensure merchants’ continuance in the use of mobile payment platforms. This study's contributions have been published in one journal, two book chapters and two conference papers.Item Social Commerce And Value Co-Creation: Evidence From A Developing Country(University Of Ghana, 2022-10) Entee, E.The economic potential of social commerce, an ecosystem of services facilitated by social media and other digital technologies, is apparent, with an estimated 2.46 billion social media users globally and a projected market opportunity of US$ 100 billion by 2030. Despite social commerce's immense financial potential, much more is still uncovered about how value is co-created. Social commerce is critical in Africa because it provides African youth with various jobs and value-creation opportunities. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of academic literature on social commerce value co-creation. Problematising previous social commerce and value co-creation literature reveal three interrelated gaps that need urgent research attention. First, there is arguably a skewed theorisation or lack of theorisation in social commerce research that explains the essential value outcomes of social commerce applications. Second, social commerce research lacks an explanation of the roles that various actors play in the social commerce ecosystem in co-creating value. Third, there is a lack of explanation about the mechanisms that generate value outcomes. Consequently, this study formulates three research questions. (a) What are the actors’ resources and roles used and played during value co-creation within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana (b) What is the value co-creation mechanisms within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana? (c) What are the forms of value co-created within the social commerce ecosystem of Ghana? Answering these questions contributes to achieving the research purpose of developing a framework that explains how value is co-created within Ghana’s social commerce ecosystem. This study utilises the Service-Dominant Logic to explain the resources and roles of actors, value co-creation mechanisms, and forms of value co-created within the social commerce ecosystem of a developing economy to achieve the research purpose. Furthermore, based on information systems value literature, this study conceptualises the outcomes of value co-creation in social commerce as symbolic value and functional value. The conceptualisations culminate in a research framework explaining how social actors integrate their resources during value co-creation. This study uses a Critical Realism-based qualitative case study of a Ghanaian company in the fashion industry to illustrate how social commerce is used in the co-creation of value. The use of a single case study afforded an in-depth examination of the phenomena that led to the development of a new theoretical framework on value co-creation in the social commerce ecosystem. As an example of a developing economy, Ghana presented an opportunity to look at flexible innovations that can improvise new solutions to fit changing situations rather than sticking to long-term plans. Concerning the first research question, the findings indicate that social commerce actors performed two distinct roles during social commerce value co-creation; a collaborator role and an affiliate role. These roles are somewhat different from their formal roles and may be classified as Adaptive (i.e., actors who can adjust to changing conditions) or responsive (i.e., actors who perform actions in response to other actors’ actions). The findings on the resources used during social value co-creation reveal that different resources are unique and specific to an actor in a social commerce ecosystem. The findings also show how previous studies have assumed that resources are held entirely by the social actor of a service ecosystem, ignoring the resource potential of service platforms, which is the medium of interaction and held by all actors. Concerning the second research question, previous studies assumed that mechanisms occur at monodic levels and seem to overlook the possibility of value co-creation mechanisms to develop co-creative activities with networked actors. However, this thesis establishes that social commerce value co-creating mechanisms occur at three levels, namely, Monodic levels, Dyadic levels and Triadic levels. The monodic levels encompass how a single actor influences the functional processes underlying resource integration in social commerce value co-creation. Secondly, the dyadic levels entail how two social commerce actors influence the functional processes underlying resource integration in social commerce value co-creation. Lastly, the triadic levels concern the causal structures that underpin the functional processes of resource integration by three or more social commerce actors in value co-creation. Concerning the third research question, this thesis identifies three dynamic and multidimensional co-created value categories: functional, symbolic, and platform value. This categorisation is not mentioned in the value co-creation literature because they assume that value is consistent across purchase, consumption and evaluation for all actors. First, functional value is the benefit of converting assets into tangible (and intangible) value. In this study, three forms of functional value are co-created. These are interactional value, economic value, and physical value. Second, symbolic value (e.g., positive brand image, online social capital, and reputation) is realised from the “signalling effect” of each actor’s presence on or affiliation with social commerce platforms. Symbolic value is achieved through experiences that help social commerce actors achieve social integration. The study uncovered three forms of symbolic value: exposure, social, and relationship building. Third, platform value, hitherto absent in the literature, is the unique value offered by the social commerce platform. In precis, the study reveals that, after social commerce actors decide to co-create value, the social commerce platform fosters collaboration and venue for co-creation activities. This study’s originality and contribution to research and practice are as follows. First, this study conceptualises and empirically illustrates a framework that explains various actors’ roles in co-creating value within the social commerce ecosystem. Identifying these roles generates a deeper explanation of how actors interact to co-create value. More importantly, this study’s explanation of social commerce roles is the discovery of two new actor roles, i.e., collaborator and affiliate, which is unique in social commerce literature. Second, this study uncovers three value co-creation mechanisms, i.e., co-innovation, value co-seeking, and platform scaling. Hitherto, these remained unexplained. Furthermore, these unearthed mechanisms were identified at three levels: monodic, dyadic, and triadic. Further, this study unearths various forms of how social commerce platforms offer a unique value as “platform value” as a new co-created value beyond the functional and symbolic value reported in IS value literature. Hitherto, existing studies had conceptualised co-created value as either functional or symbolic. Platform value emanating from social commerce platforms is unique because it captures how actors coordinate their collaboration and interactions that facilitate innovation. Further, co-created value can be either be collective or customised. Additionally, there are value creation dependencies which mean value does not just happen it depends on the existence of certain actors and specific resources and processes and sometimes events. Finally, value expands because the social commerce ecosystem, by nature of its integration of actors, resources, and processes, creates a continuous flow of opportunities for the discovery of ideas and relationships which can yield new forms of co-created value. These contributions have been published in two book chapters conference paper. One manuscript is also under preparation for submission to the International Journal of Information Management, an A* journal in the information systems discipline.Item The Role of Adult Education in the Adoption of Innovations by Cocoa Growers in Ghana(University of Ghana, 1976-03) Opare, K.D; University of Ghana, College of Education, School of Information and Communication Studies, Department of Information StudiesThis study was designed to analyse the adoption of recommended cocoa practices among cocoa growers in Ghana and to relate it to the correctness of their knowledge of principles underlying the recommende practices, the growers' sources of cocoa husbandry information selected personal and economic characteristics of the growers; and to examine the relationships discovered and to draw recommendations which will assist the Ghana Government in programmes to increase cocoa production. In order to study these relationships, a personal interview, using a structured interview schedule, was employed to collect the data from a sample of 1,191 cocoa growers in Ghana. Statistically significant association? were found between the adoption of recommended cocoa practices and 1) the correctness of growers' knowledge of principles underlying a recommended cocoa practice; 2) adult education sources of information; and 3) individual grower's output of cocoa. The study indicated that although the possession of correct knowledge of principles was crucial to the adoption of the innovations, the mere possession was not always sufficient motivation to effect adoption. An equally important factor was adult education sources of information. In addition, there was no indication that the adoption of recommended practices was more closely linked with correctness of knowledge than with adult education sources of information. Among the personal and economic characteristics studied, number of wives, number of children, advisory role and number of years engaged in cocoa growing were positively associated with adoption of recommended practices. Male growers were more apt to adopt innovations than female growers. Age was not related to adoption. Literacy was positively associated with adoption of recommended practices. The study shows that possession of correct knowledge of principles is crucial to adoption of recommended cocoa practices. Thus, access to formal instructional activities could contribute to the improved performance of cocoa growers in Ghana. An obvious mechanism for improvement is adult education for the growers.Item The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Poverty Alleviation in Rural Communities in the Central Region of Ghana(university of Ghana, 2013-07) Sam, J; Alemna, A.A.; Badu, E. E.; Egyir, S.I.; University of Ghana, College of Education, School of Information and Communication Studies, Department of Information StudiesInformation and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to improve the welfare of the poor by providing opportunities to increase social capital; improve availability of market information; creation of new economic opportunities; improve economic efficiency and competitiveness; better access to health and education facilities and more efficient and effective governance. In spite of the significant ICT development and growing recognition of their benefits, there are concerns about the role of ICTs in facilitating communication of information for sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation in Ghana, particularly in rural areas. There is a lack of clear empirical evidence between ICTs, livelihoods and poverty in Ghana as the few studies undertaken have not yielded sufficient evidence to comprehensively understand the subject. These studies were also confined to mobile phones to the exclusion of radio and television which are widely used in rural communities. This is the research gap the study intended to fill. The overall research question was: what is the use of some information and communication technologies (mobile phones, radio and television) in poverty alleviation at the individual and household levels in two rural districts of the Central Region of Ghana. The study was guided by the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) as developed by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DfID). The case study research design, with a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection with the quantitative as the dominant method used for the study. Data was collected through the use of questionnaire, focus group discussion and key informant interviews. The respondents for the study was made up of four hundred and twelve heads of household, fifty one focus group participants and eleven key informants. Data collected was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Descriptive statistics including frequencies and percentages were computed and used to summarize data. The research results obtained were presented in a very simple and non-technical form by using percentage and frequency tables, and charts. Inferential statistics was used and various tools for inferring meaning, including measures of central tendency (mostly the mean and standard deviation), and chi-square evaluations were made in order to appreciate the deeper implications of the results and to confirm the results which the percentages will not be able to bring out clearly. The study established that most of the heads of household were below the age of 50 years with Junior Secondary School Certificate as the highest qualification obtained by majority of them. Crop farming was the principal occupation and main source of income with about a third of the respondents earning less than GH¢500 ($250) per annum. The respondents had modest accommodation with electricity and pipe borne water available in some of the houses. It was found that majority of the respondents had access to and made use of mobile phones more than radio and television. The ICT tools under study have been beneficial to the owners as well as non-owners of the tools since they share them with the owners. Network coverage as well as quality of service was generally good. Cost of mobile phone services was generally high and some innovative means have been found to reduce it. Time of broadcast, language and programme content are the determining factors for watching television or listening to radio and most of the respondents watch and listen to entertainment, musicals, local and international news The study established that the ICTs under study have played significant roles to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods through expanding and strengthening social networks, overcoming social and economic exclusion, dealing with emergencies, reducing cost and increasing productivity, minimizing physical risks, improving efficiency of activities, increasing entertainment options, increasing awareness and general knowledge of respondents to participate in development activities. Some detrimental effects and barriers to effective access and use to the studied ICTs are noted. These include: increased immoral behavior, exposure to unethical information, high cost of ICTs and erratic power supply, among others. Recommendations made include: rural development strategies incorporating ICTs, social protection policies and improving infrastructure, among others with the view that when these are implemented it would go a long way to improve access to and use of the studied ICTs. This would eventually improve livelihoods, well-being and reduce poverty. The purpose for which the study was conducted was achieved and areas have been identified for further research.Item The Impact of Information Systems Strategy on Bank Performance in Ghana(University of Ghana, 2014-02) Ankrah, E.; Badu, E.E.; Banuro, F.Y.; Alemna, A.A.Today’s business environment is very dynamic and undergoes rapid changes as a result of technological innovation, increased awareness and demands from customers. Information system strategy is a plan that aims to (1) identify the required IS assets, structures, monetary resources, and technologies and (2) Allocate the existing Information System assets in the most efficient way. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of information system strategy on bank performance of six banks in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. There are two measures of performance that relate to how efficient and profitable a business entity is and these are Return on Asset (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE). The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and was comfortably placed within a scientific epistemology of logical positivism. The cases or study settings investigated were local and foreign banks. This study has three categories of population; the strategic staff, the operational staff and the bank customers from the six banks all selected at their Head Offices in Greater Accra region. A proportionate sample size of 62, 348, and 1,352 were used for the strategic staff, operational staff, and bank customers respectively. Simple random sampling was used for the selection of the operation staff whilst purposive sampling was used for the selection of the bank customers. The instrument used in this study was the questionnaire. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the analysis of the data. A frequency, percentages, charts and Chi- square test of independence to ascertain the significance of the relationship between variables has been used to present the results of the study. Logistic regression is also used to predict the value of a dependent variable using more independent variables. The findings revealed that, the foreign banks (Bank D, Bank E, and Bank F) have invested more in IS than the local banks (Bank A, Bank B, and Bank C). All the foreign banks exhibited increasing trends in the ROA but this trend did not occur in the local banks. This is in line with the second hypothesis that statistically concluded that banks with higher levels of information systems investments have increasing operating profits than banks with low level information systems investments. The effects of IT investment on increasing profitability (ROA and ROE) for banks are significantly great. Strategy appears to have direct effect on IT and IT has direct effect on ROA. The analysis suggests that IT can play a meaningful role in the strategy-ROA relationship. Despite these caveats, the strategic context makes a significant difference in the correlations observed between IT adoption and ROA. Without strategy variable in the model, the correlations would have been underestimated.