Abstract

The digital divide refers to the gap between those who benefit from the digital technologies and those who cannot. The difference in the availability and accessibility to technology and systems is quite dramatic between developed and developing countries. Current practice is to attempt to make technologies available to more people in developing countries by bolstering IT stock without addressing the underlying issues surrounding ICT illiteracy in these countries. Such an approach is only compounding the problems. More often than not, ill-suited technologies paired with systems that do not support local practices meet with minimal usage and are deemed a failure. This research paper proposes three facilitating factors – (i) Technology Exposure, (ii) Cultural Awareness and (iii) Systems Blending to increase the effectiveness of systems deployments in developing environments. The paper extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to measure the impact of each of these three factors on the system adoption outcome.

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