Browsing by Department "Faculty Commerce: IT"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A Habermasian-based critical discourse analysis of the ICT strategies of the Centre for e-Innovation, Provincial Government of the Western Cape
    (2008) Vosloo, Steve; Chigona, Wallace
    There is much political discourse concerning the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in supporting the achievement of development goals. Given the increasing prevalence and importance of ICTs in society, the Centre for e-Innovation (Cel), Provincial Government of the Western Cape, South Africa, has prepared five strategic documents outlining how to utilise ICTs for development and create an information society in the province. Amidst the discourse about ICT for development there is, however, a recurrent theme of technological determinism, which is shown to be a cause of the high failure rate of ICT for development projects. Based on the approach of Cukier, Middleton & Bauer (2003) and Cukier, Bauer and Middleton (2004) to operationalising Habermas' validity claims to assess communicative rationality, I conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the five Cel strategic documents to determine whether or not these are distorted, e.g. through claims of technological determinism. The study found a large number of distortions in the discourse. Suggestions are provided for how to create less distorted strategies, which more closely resemble Habermas' ideal speech situation.
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    Building trust in mobile commerce: a technical report presented to the Department of Information Systems, University of Cape Town
    (2006) Joubert, Janine; Van Belle, Jean-Paul
    Mobile commerce or ITHXll'Tlmerce is seen as the next technological innovation that will transform the marketplace. Despite the hype associated with m-commerce and the massive revenue predictions by research companies, current adoption figures by consumers seem to demonstrate a lack of enthusiasm for more advanced services. A key reason cited in the literature is a lack of trust Consumers regard ITHXll'Tlmerce as more risky than e-commerce. M-comrnerce transactions are often characterised by complex technology, anonymous vendors, lack of transparency and convoluted interactions between stakeholders. It is therefore no wonder that consumers are reluctant to adopt new m-commerce services. Trust becomes more important in situations of inaeased uncertainty, such as m-commerce. This research is the first South African study to investigate a model that incorporates trust and risk factors to explain adoption and usage of ITHXll'Tlmerce. The model is based on the existing trust literature, but complemented with variables that relate to the benefits of mobile technologies, namely Innovation Diffusion characteristics. Two research approaches were followed. Since m-commerce is relatively new in South Africa, qualitative analysis, by using focus groups, was conducted to explore how and why trust and risk influence m-commen::e adoption. This was combined with a more quantitative approach to investigate the relevance and importance of trust and risk issues on a population of potential 'early adopters'. The study provides several interesting findings. The study determined that personal characteristics significantly influence the perceived trustworthiness of the vendor, technology and the institutional framework. It was further established that these factors significantly influence overall trust perceptions and that trust and risk additionally influence intention to use m-commerce services. However, amongst early adopters, benefits were more important than both trust and perceived risks. This can be attributed to the high-risk tolerance of 'earty adopters' and it is possibly not generalisable to later adopters. However, the importance of trust cannot be underestimated, since most of the participants of this study were explicit about limits to their trust e.g. not being prepared to provide aedit card details or engage in high-value transactions. In conclusion, ITHXll'Tlmerce appears to have great prospec1s in South Africa. However, it is important that vendors unleash this potential by designing m-commerce services to reduce risk perceptions and inaease trust To this end, this research also suggests a number of practical vendor interventions.
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    MODELLING THE ANTECEDENTS THAT INFLUENCE BRAND INNOVATIVENESS, AGE AND PERSONAL INNOVATIVENESS IN SOCIAL COMMERCE SHOPPING BEHAVIOUR
    (2023) De Freitas, Vanessa Fernandes; Lappeman, James Roger
    Through the recent growth of information and communication technology and Web 2.0 technologies, a new branch of e-commerce called social commerce has emerged (Hajli, 2013). This study explores the effects of personal innovativeness on the relationship between brand innovativeness and customer-based brand equity among South African social commerce users, aged from 18 to 55 years, of all ethnicities. The conceptual model of the study proposes that the moderating effect of personal innovativeness and age influences the relationship between brand innovativeness and Customer-Based Brand Equity factors, namely brand trust, brand reputation, brand quality, brand credibility and brand loyalty in a social commerce context. The findings of this study aim to find insight regarding purchasing behaviours on local brands by active South African social users. Respondents who formed part of this investigation filled in an online survey to determine the factors that influence the decision to purchase a local brand. The results of the data was analysed using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) programme, more specifically Partial Least Squares 3.0 software package. Most hypotheses in the study were supported, whereas some were not supported. The relationships with the moderating effect of age between brand innovativeness and brand reputation, brand quality and brand credibility, brand trust and brand loyalty revealed a positive and significant relationship. The weakest relationships found was that of the moderating effect of personal innovativeness on brand innovativeness and brand trust and the moderating relationship of personal innovativeness on brand innovativeness and brand loyalty. Furthermore, the findings revealed that age plays an essential role in moderating and that due to individual's personal decision to adopt an innovation, personal innovativeness deems to be a subjective topic. The effects of personal innovativeness and age on brand innovativeness and CBBE factors in social commerce shopping behaviour are new insights provided by this study. The impact of brand innovativeness and quality on attitude (Boisvert & Ashill, 2011), the impact of brand equity and innovation on the long-term effectiveness of promotions (Slotegraaf & Pauwels, 2008), consumer innovativeness in the context of a robotic restaurant (Hwang, Park & Kim, 2020) and the effect of personal innovativeness for e-store loyalty (Jianlin & Qi, 2010) are examples of prior studies on brand and personal innovativeness that were investigated in different situations (Thakur, Angriawan & Summey, 2016). The majority of studies have evaluated the effects of CBBE factors on businesses, brands, and consumers. This study, however, made an effort to look at innovativeness and CBBE from the perspective of the customer. Taking into account the study's findings, management implications are crucial since they show how any company can improve its present and future business practices. The results based on this study calls on businesses to re-evaluate their present business plans and consider developing a social commerce strategy where trust may be established through trust drivers on their respective platforms.
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    A Work Systems View of Unplanned Business Process Change: The Case of #feesmustfall at a South African University
    (2019) Joubert, Trevor; Seymour, Lisa
    Aim/Purpose Improving or changing business processes is one of the most important roles for Information technologies functions. Yet, most organizations struggle with planned process change and even more with unplanned change. There is little support from research as the dynamics of planned process change is understud-ied and unplanned process change is seldom researched. Background This paper describes the impact of unplanned business process change from a systems perspective. The #feesmustfall student protest movement, which be-gan in 2015, and affected Universities throughout South Africa provides the context. Methodology An interpretive abductive case study at a South African university used Steven Alter’s Work System framework to describe the unplanned business process change that occurred due to the #feesmustfall student protest movement. Contribution Theoretically, this paper demonstrates the practical use of Alter’s work system framework to analyze unplanned business process change. Practically, it de-scribes and explains the impacts of the change which may be useful to execu-tives or administrators responsible for operational systems within organizations. Findings During unplanned business process change, change management, staff training, customizable technology and strategic fluidity and focus were found to be im-portant. Unplanned business process change results in all elements of the work systems and its environment changing, even resulting in changed products and customer behavior. Impact on Society If organizations are more aware of the impacts of unplanned process change they will be better equipped to control them. Future Research Future action research studies on unplanned business process change could suggest actions for manager’s dealing with them. Keywords business process management, work system theory, systems thinking, un-planned change, #feesmustfall