Business Commons^™

“E-Commerce Institutionalization Is Not For Us”: Smes Perception Of E-Commerce In Tanzania, Salah Kabanda

The African Journal of Information Systems

E-Commerce in least developing countries (LDCs) is believed to be non-existent because few businesses, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who are usually the vanguard of the LDCs economy, have adopted E-Commerce and even those that have, none have institutionalized the technology. Using structuration theory as a lens, this study attempts to provide an explanation as to what E-Commerce means to SMEs with the purpose of unraveling the underlying cause for the lack of E-Commerce institutionalization in LDC - Tanzania. Results indicate that SMEs use their social context to create symbolic interpretive schemes that facilitate their shared understanding of E-Commerce. …