Innovating with government digital platforms in low-income countries: the dynamic capabilities of Woredas in Ethiopia

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to identify the dynamic capabilities of government organisations in Woredas of Ethiopia that digitally innovate on the existing government digital platform, the WoredaNet. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a qualitative interpretive case study strategy using three government administrative regions in Ethiopia (called Woredas), which digitally innovate using the government digital platform, the WoredaNet. A structured interview protocol was implemented for data collection. In total, 5 respondents representing users, information and communication technology (ICT) staff and management were selected from each of the Woredas (districts), yielding a total of 15 respondents. Findings Drawing from the dynamic capabilities literature, the findings reveal that the digital platform governance model plays the strongest role in digital government innovation. Specifically, the Woredas exhibit highly developed adaptive capabilities through learning from the affordances offered by the digital platform. Also, despite the collaborative nature of their absorptive capabilities, there are no clear organisational structures to manifest these capabilities (integrating new learnings). The innovative capabilities (creating digital government products or service innovations) are constrained by the governance model, which is centralised in one ICT unit. Research limitations/implications The research is limited to one of the Regional States of Ethiopia. Further studies would be needed to consider other regional states and more Woredas. Practical implications The research provides a means through which dynamic capabilities can improve digital innovation on government digital platforms, despite the scarcity of resources, especially in low-income countries. Originality/value The paper contributes to digital government and dynamic capability literature in revealing how digital innovations in government agencies might be organisationally enhanced through distributed digital platform governance models.

The use of Software as a Service to improve the Dynamic Capabilities of South African Small and Medium Enterprises

“…According to (Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019;Rashidirad & Salimian, 2020;Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021) the aim of developing dynamic capabilities in this age of the 4 th Industrial Revolution (4IR), is to use Cloud Computing (Adane, 2018), and SaaS to improve the performance of SMEs (Mokwena & Hlebela, 2018;Loukis et al, 2019;Martins et al, 2019;Khayer et al, 2020). Several scholars (Teece, 2018;Schoemaker et al, 2018;Rashidirad & Salimian, 2020) define dynamic capabilities as the ability of SMEs to systematically solve challenges they encounter in the market (Fatoki, 2021), to sense new opportunities and threats (Rashidirad & Salimian, 2020) and to make appropriate decisions (Fatoki, 2021).…”

“…According to (Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019;Pitelis & Wang, 2019), dynamic capabilities are defined by three components, namely: innovative categories (Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021), absorptive (Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019a) and adaptive capabilities (Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021). Kademeteme and Twinomurinzi (2019) define adaptive capabilities as the ability of SMEs to scan the business environment (Schoemaker et al, 2018), to identify threats (Rashidirad & Salimian, 2020) and new business opportunities (Teece, 2018).…”

“…Kademeteme and Twinomurinzi (2019) define adaptive capabilities as the ability of SMEs to scan the business environment (Schoemaker et al, 2018), to identify threats (Rashidirad & Salimian, 2020) and new business opportunities (Teece, 2018). According to Kademeteme and Twinomurinzi (2019), adaptive capabilities are used to identify new opportunities in the market, that will lead to the creation of new ideas (Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021) and business strategies that enable SMEs to adapt to the dynamic business environment (Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021).…”

“…The ability of SMEs to identify the importance of new information (Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019) and then use it to benefit the organizations and improve firm performance is called absorptive capability (Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021). Absorptive capabilities enable SMEs to acquire knowledge from the market to improve marketing skills (Maduku et al, 2016;Abbas et al, 2018;Sumaili et al, 2018;Schoemaker et al, 2018;Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019;Pitelis & Wang, 2019).…”

“…According to (Teece, 2018;Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019;Senshaw & Twinomurinzi, 2021;Jayasuriya & Perera, 2021), innovative capabilities are the ability of SMEs to create new ways of offering products and services. According to Senshaw and Twinomurinzi (2021), innovative capabilities enable SMEs to develop business strategies that benefit from the surrounding environment (Kademeteme & Twinomurinzi, 2019).…”