AFRICA’S RURAL COMMUNITIES AS KNOWLEDGE PROSPECTING DOMAINS FOR EMERGING eâ€BUSINESS MODELS
Journal Title: European Journal of Business and Social Sciences - Year 2013, Vol 2, Issue 3
Abstract
The research reported in this paper is a continuing exploration of the concept of Knowledge Prospect Domains (KPD). It is an attempt to discern its applicability to characterize African rural communities (ARC) in an e†Business environment, thereby depicting them as a structured entity from where knowledge could be extracted for emerging eâ€Business models. By describing African Rural Communities as KPD, and seeking alignment to emerging technologies, adaptive technologies, convergent with proprietary technologies, will be created that could lead to the discovery of new e†Business models. It will be argued that rural communities with its own set of complexities could be realized as a rich source from which knowledge could be appropriated for the innovation of novel business models. Human practices, by processes such as reification, sedimentation, habitualization will be explored. Most eâ€Business systems that are developed on traditional scientific, engineering and business principles †to serve a well defined set of processes and information flows required by modern business systems †are sometimes in complete cognitive dissonance with human social reasoning processes and needs. The mindset is often to impose technologyâ€driven systems onto society instead of imposing societyâ€driven needs onto technology. Literature review shows that there is a growing disposition in developing societies towards a socioâ€informatic, needsâ€driven technology adoption rather than technology adoption for the sake of playing catchâ€up with developed societies. Pertaining to these perceptions some use will be made of social construction theories, like technological determinism (TD), social construction of technology (SCOT) and social shaping of technology (SST). The research attempt to shows that despite the perception of tranquillity, stagnation and fossilization, pertaining to rural societies, they find themselves in the KPD of Boisot’s Iâ€Space and are therefore compliant with soâ€called Schumpeterianâ€Learning (Sâ€Learning) as compared to Neo†classicalâ€Learning (Nâ€Learning). The hypothesis predicated in this paper is that, if African rural societies are constructed as KPD, then valuable knowledge will be extracted that could be utilized for the innovation of sustainable eâ€Business models.
Authors and Affiliations
Daniel F Botha| dfbotha@sun.ac.za Department of Information Science Centre for Knowledge Dynamics and Decision Making University of Stellenbosch www.infoscience.sun.ac.za
Keywords
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