Running Head: THE IMPACT OF ICTs

The Impact of ICTs on Organizations

Oshea Mailo

OGL 365

Arizona State University

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Abstract

In this paper, we explored the impact information and communication technologies (ICTs) can

have on organizations. Through first identifying the potential general impacts of ICTs on

organizations, which is the possibility of improvement in efficiency, transparency, and quality,

we were able to see there is a positive impact ICTs can have on organizations. Then we looked at

female farmers in Cambodia to see real-life examples of ICTs impact. After identifying the

positive impacts of ICTs on these women and their farming businesses and communities, we

then looked at Etsy to identify the impacts of ICTs on their organization. By listing and

explaining some of the tools they implemented, we were able to see that ICT had a positive

impact on their organization as well. To conclude the paper, we compared the benefits of ICTs in

both organizations and saw that size, location, and economy did not have an influence on the

benefits.
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The Impact of ICTs on Organizations

Technology is everywhere; from wheels to computers, there is technology of all sorts.

One type of technology that holds much value in today’s world is information and

communication technology (ICTs). ICTs are important because they are utilized often to manage

electronic information. What is the impact that ICTs can have on organizations? This question

will be answered by exploring the definition of ICT, examples of it, as well as its benefits; by

looking at two organizations that implemented ICTs in their operations; and by comparing the

results of ICT implementation of the two organizations. Research on this topic is beneficial

because it provides organizations the opportunity to evaluate themselves regarding technology

use and how it can influence them. Furthermore, by answering this question we will be able to

see another way in which technology can be used as a tool aside from its use in knowledge

management practices and good governance.

To begin, we define technology as a set of skills, methods, devices, and artifacts, used in

the way of doing things. Information and communication technology (ICTs) is similar in

definition, but it also refers to “the internet, wireless networks, cell phones, computers, software,

middleware, video-conferencing, social networking, and other media applications and services

enabling users to access, retrieve, store, transmit, and manipulate information in a digital form”

(“Information and Communication Technology, n.d., para. 1). From this, we can see that ICTs

are like any other form of technology except it revolves more around electronic devices and

software. Now that we have established an understanding of what ICTs are and their functions,

we will now identify the general benefits of adopting ICTs within an organization.

Some benefits of ICT implementation in an organization include improvement in

efficiency, quality, and transparency; these benefits can be experienced in private or public
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sectors (Zimmermann and Finger, 2005, p. 234). As stated, one way that ICTs can improve

efficiency is through better time efficiency. ICTs make electronic information available to its

users much quicker than other options such as information found on paper. Other than time

efficiency, ICTs can also improve cost efficiency. It can do this in several ways, examples

include better decisions, organizational learning, employee good-will, job satisfaction, and client

satisfaction (Zimmermann and Finger, 2005, p.234). These intangible ways increase cost

efficiency by providing organizations with better employee morale; without job satisfaction or

client satisfaction, it could cost an organization their assets (the employees and stakeholders).

ICTs also offer improvement in quality. Quality is defined as “a situation when a set of

inherent characteristics consistently fulfil the continuously changing requirements of the

organization's customers and other stakeholders” (Elshaer, 2012, p. 8). According to this, quality

is about consistency in fulfilling requirements. ICTs, when comparing it to manual work, it

reduces the number of mistakes and it keeps the proximity between the stakeholder and

organization close through online services (Zimmermann and Finger, 2005, p. 235). Through

reduction in mistakes and keeping client and organization interactions close, quality of services

or products can be improved.

Lastly, transparency can also be improved through ICT usage. ICT makes information

available to its users, but without needed information, they cannot be informed on things they

need to be. This lack of information leads to poor transparency. One way of defining

transparency is it “comprises the legal, political, and institutional structures that make

information about the internal characteristics of a government and society available to actors

both inside and outside the domestic political system” (Ball, 2009, p. 298). In simpler terms,

transparency is about making information available to all who are associated to an organization.
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Transparency is needed in organizations because “it is part of a strategy for both organizational

stability and creating a competitive edge in today's world” (“Creating a Culture of

Transparency,” n.d., p. 1). Without transparency, organizations are put at risk of losing stability,

losing their chance of being any sort of competition, and losing trust from their stakeholders.

With the help of ICTs, information is more easily accessible and available.

Now that some of the general benefits of ICT implementation have been identified, we

will look at examples of organizations that benefited from ICT implementation. The first

organization that will be talked about are the independent woman farmers located in Cambodia.

Some background information on the country will be provided as it is necessary in seeing the

importance of ICT presence. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries of several in Southeast

Asia and had to deal with many hardships throughout the 1900s and up to today. During the rule

of the Khmer Rouge Regime, the education system was dismantled resulting in a 40% illiterate

population by 1979 (“Pink Phone, Cambodia, 2015, para. 2). Due to this high rate of illiteracy,

many people fell into poverty, especially those in hard to reach areas, such as the rural areas. The

Pink Phone project is a project created by the U.K. based charitable organization called Oxfam,

in which they give pink mobile phones to “women in Cambodia’s rural communities so they can

access vital farming information, such as crop prices and weather, to help improve their

livelihoods” (“Pink Phones Project, 2013, para. 1). Now that we have identified the conditions of

Cambodia and what the Pink Phone project is, we will go further in depth with the impact the

pink phones have on these farmers.

As mentioned, the Pink Phone’s project is geared towards providing woman farmers in

Cambodia mobile phones in which they use to acquire information that makes their livelihoods

easier. One way that the mobile phones impact these women is that it allows them to be more
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efficient in their business operations. For instance, the mobile phones have helped the farmers to

be more time efficient and cost efficient by helping them to stay ahead of weather conditions as

well as giving them a way to call traders to arrange produce pickups (“Pink Phones Project,

2013, para. 2). Now, the women no longer have to cycle long distances hoping that the trader

will be there. In addition, many of the farmers would lose their crops because of weather

conditions. Fortunately, their mobile phones keep them updated on when the best time would be

to harvest. These are some ways that ICT has helped these independent farmers to be more

efficient.

Another way the phones help the women is through increasing the quality of their

services. With the phones, the women receive vital information on the market prices of crops

they are selling; this allows them to sell their produce at competitive prices (“Think Pink,” 2014,

para. 12). Before the phones, the women had to guess prices for their products, putting them at a

disadvantage. But now they can provide consistent pricing on their produce and provide the best

possible deals. Furthermore, with this information the women also can avoid being taken

advantage of by male farmers when it comes to agreeing on prices.

Aside from how phones help the women with their agricultural business, it also helps

them as leaders in their communities. In rural communities, each one has a deputy that serves as

a bridge to governmental institutions. In that role, the main duty is to communicate concerns of

their community regarding health, violence, or primary education quality (“Pink Phone,

Cambodia,” 2015, para. 5). With the women using their phones in this way, they can improve the

community overall by keeping the government informed of their conditions so they can provide

support when needed. Furthermore, the institutions that they contact, provide them with

information to relay to their communities such as updates on medical, educational, or social

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services. By keeping these communities informed, the deputies along with the institutions can

provide a transparent environment. With mobile phones serving as these women's’ form of ICT,

they are improving their own farming business as well as their communities.

We will now explore the organization Etsy, based in New York, to see the impact of ICTs

on an organization from a different environment. In 2005, Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim

Schoppik created Etsy out of a Brooklyn apartment (Majewski, 2015, para. 2). The direction of

Etsy was to serve as an online marketplace for craftsmen for selling their crafts. Throughout the

years, they continuously added new tools to help their sellers gain more exposure (Majewski,

2015, para. 2). As a result of adding new tools to their online platform, Etsy was able to increase

the quality of their services to their sellers by gaining them more exposure. With this gain in

exposure, annual sales for 2007 reached $26 million (Majewski, 2015, para. 3). With the increase

in traffic and revenue, Etsy saw the need for expansion in ICTs which we will now explore.

In 2009, Etsy acquired an advertising platform company called Adtuitive (Majewski,

2015, para. 4). The purpose of this acquisition was to accommodate the growing need of

marketing for their sellers (Wauters, 2009, para. 3). Acquiring this company helped Etsy by

improving their search algorithms and growing their advertising processes. Although Etsy was

built using one of the most common forms of ICTs, the internet, they kept looking for new ICTs

and different ways of using them. In this case, Etsy acquired an entire platform so they could

improve on their online marketplace. We will now investigate more web-based tools that Etsy

uses to improve their performance and experience for their sellers.

One web-based tool that Etsy implemented is Google Analytics. Google Analytics

provides it sellers useful information about their shop (Jacobsen, 2019, para. 7). According to

Etsy (n.d.), Google Analytics “shows the volume of traffic to your website from different traffic
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sources.” Basically, this tool provides sellers with statistics about how many views their shop

gets and from who. This information is important because if sellers notice a drop in views, they

can start thinking of ways to counteract that. In addition, knowing who is viewing the shop will

help the sellers know who their customer base potentially is. With this information, sellers can

improve their experience on Etsy which in turn will make Etsy more revenue.

Another tool that Etsy implemented is Etsy Rank. Etsy Rank allows sellers to input

information about the components of their products which then provides the profit and profit

percentage (Jacobsen, 2019, para. 10). By providing its sellers a way to price their products

properly, they can increase the chances of one seller’s products being sold over another. Without

this tool, users of Etsy would have to calculate pricing manually which is not as efficient as using

this tool. Now that we have discussed what Etsy is and some of the tools they implemented, we

will now compare the impact of ICTs on Etsy and the female Cambodian farmers.

Both organizations saw a need for something different in order to improve their

performance. From the Cambodian farmers we saw how they used mobile phones to increase

their profits, reduce production loss, and increase efficiency of their operations. From Etsy, we

saw how they implemented various web tools to provide an easier and more efficient experience

for their sellers. Doing this led to an increase in sellers, more than 1.5 million, and an increase in

revenue, from $74.6 million in 2012 to $818.79 million (Clement, 2020, para. 1). Although both

organizations vary in size, location, and economy, they benefited from ICTs in similar ways.

Each were able to improve the efficiency of their transactions and each were able to access

information that they could use to increase their profits. The only thing that the farmers were

able to gain from ICTs that was different from Etsy is that they were able to be advocates for

their communities and create transparency in them.

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In conclusion, ICTs can have major positive impacts on organizations globally. The

general benefits of ICT implementation include improvement in efficiency, quality, and

transparency. In the rural areas of Cambodia, female farmers used cell phones to provide better

quality services to traders and buyers; to reduce loss of crops; and to better support their

communities. In the U.S., Etsy used web-based tools to improve the overall experience for sellers

using their platform. With this, it is apparent that ICTs are necessary for organizations looking to

grow and prosper.

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References

AIMS. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://aims.fao.org/information-and-communication-technologies-

ict

Ball, Carolyn. (2009). What Is Transparency?. Public Integrity. 11. 293-308. 10.2753/PIN1099-

9922110400.

Clement, J., & Mar. (2020, March 3). Etsy: annual revenue 2019. Retrieved from

https://www.statista.com/statistics/409371/etsy-annual-revenue/

Creating a Culture of Transparency. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://training.hr.ufl.edu/resources/LeadershipToolkit/job_aids/CreatingaCultureofTransp

arency.pdf

Elshaer, I. (2012). What is the meaning of quality? Retrieved from https://mpra.ub.uni-

muenchen.de/57345/1/MPRA_paper_57345.pdf

Jacobsen, T. (2019, March 17). A Really Big List of Etsy Tools & Resources (60 and counting!).

Retrieved from https://marketingartfully.com/big-list-etsy-tools-resources/

Majewski, T. (2015, November 5). A brief history of Etsy on its 10th anniversary. Retrieved

from https://www.builtinnyc.com/2015/11/04/brief-history-etsy

Oxfam & You. (2014). Think Pink. Retrieved from

https://www.oxfamireland.org/sites/default/files/upload/pdfs/autumn-2014-oxfam-

you.pdf

Pink Phone, Cambodia. (2018, April 3). Retrieved from https://uil.unesco.org/case-

study/effective-practices-database-litbase-0/pink-phone-cambodia
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Pink phones project for Cambodian women – in pictures. (2013, March 8). Retrieved from

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2013/mar/08/pink-phones-

cambodia-women-pictures

Wauters, R. (2009, December 18). Etsy Buys Retail Product Ad Platform Adtuitive, Gains Five

New Programmers. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2009/12/18/etsy-buys-

adtuitive/

Zimmermann P and Finger M (2005) “Information- and Communication Technology (ICT) and

Local Power Relationships: An Impact Assessment” The Electronic Journal of e-

Government Volume 3 Issue 4, pp 231-240, available online at www.ejeg.com

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How I Addressed Feedback

First, I took the instructor’s suggestion about doing my topic on the impact of ICTs on

organizations. My previous draft focused more on ICTs impact rather than its role in knowledge

management. By taking this suggestion, I was able to have clearer direction when writing the

paper. Furthermore, my PPT received feedback suggesting more informative analysis and

consistency in my citations. I made sure to be very detailed in all explanations and I made sure to

refer to APA in-text citation rules to reduce citation issues. Lastly, I read over my paper to make

sure everything flowed as smoothly as possible with little to no awkward phrases.