Affordances and Constraints of Seaport Smart Service Systems in a Developing Country: A Case Study from Ghana

Abstract

This study seeks to understand affordances and constraints of seaport smart service systems in a developing country context. Smart service systems refer to configurations of smart technologies, people and processes to co-create value for stakeholders. Examples of smart service systems discussed in information systems literature are smart homes, smart cities, smart health, and smart energy. While traditional service systems relied on people and physical processes, smart service systems rely on sensing and autonomous machine capabilities. Thus, based on their awareness and monitoring capabilities, smart service systems sense and respond to dynamic environmental conditions to co-create value for people, other systems, and themselves. Information Systems (IS) studies on smart service systems are limited in three main ways. First, existing IS research lack theoretical foundation. The focus has rather been on conceptualisations and literature reviews. There is, therefore, the need for in-depth and theory-driven studies to investigate smart service systems' use and effects in an organizational context. Second, extant IS literature on smart service systems has focused more on application areas such as smart health, smart building, smart government, smart grid, smart transportation, smart environment, smart home, and smart lifestyles. The area of seaport smart service system is yet to receive attention in IS research. Third, existing theoretical perspectives in affordance conception conceptualise affordances as action possibilities that emerge from interactions between technologies and goal-oriented actor(s) or user(s) while constraints are hindrances that prevent actors from using the technology to achieve intended goals. However, extant IS studies have concentrated on only the affordance-actualization process. Little or no research focuses on the constraint process of technology affordances theory.

To address the research gap, the research questions that guided this study are: (a) why would a developing country seaport deploy smart service systems for security and container handling? (b) how are the uses of smart service systems for developing country seaport enabled or constrained? (c) what are the consequences of using smart service systems in a developing country seaport? Responding to these questions, this thesis employed the interpretivist research paradigm, the qualitative methodology, the case study method, and the technology affordances and constraints theory to understand the use of smart service systems in seaport in Ghana, a developing country. Ghana was selected because its main seaport in Tema had recently deployed smart service systems to address challenges of manual security processes and paper-based container handling systems. Accordingly, this study uses a two-case study comprising a smart seaport security service system and a smart container handling system in Ghana’s Tema Port. The findings show that deployment of smart service systems for seaport can enable autonomous access control, autonomous data capturing, data analytics and dashboard reporting, online submission of documents, and improved security and container handling services. The findings also show that smart service systems can be constrained by inadequate data storage capacity, internet and power supply instability, smart device breakdowns. The study contributes to research, theory and practice. With respect to research, this study extends existing knowledge in smart service systems in two ways. First, the study provides an understanding of affordances, constraints and consequences of using seaport smart service systems in a developing country context. Second, this study has extended the literature from a limited focus on conceptualisations and literature reviews to theory-driven empirical studies

on seaport smart security service and container handling service systems. For theory, this study contributes to the technology affordances and constraints theory by refining the theory in two ways. First, the study extends the existing types of technology affordances by introducing smart technology affordance as a new type in smart service system context. Second, the study introduces affordance-constraint process as a complement to the existing affordance-actualization process. This study also extends the application of technology affordances and constraints theory from human as the only actors to include smart objects as actors in smart service systems studies in IS. Based on the research findings, this study offers four implications for practice. First, management can adopt cloud computing to address the constraint of inadequate storage capacity resulting from big data generation. Second, to address the constraint of device breakdowns, management can procure robust smart artefacts as well as establish and enforce risk assessment and maintenance schedule. Third, management can provide standby smart power generators to take over when the national grid goes off. Finally, port authorities can contract multiple internet service providers to address the problem of internet outages.