An analytical framework for exploring context-specific micro-economic impacts of ICT capabilities

Increasing investments in ICT is often premised on the assumption that such investments will lead to improvements in productivity and other aspects of development at the organizational and national levels. However, it is reasonable to expect that any such impact will vary depending on the context, including the ability to modify and manipulate a chain of intermediate links within the “investments in ICT → outcomes of investments in ICT” process. In this study, we present a new framework for exploring context-specific impacts of ICT capabilities on microeconomic outcomes. The proposed framework is tested within the context of 24 economies that fall into a set of five mutually exclusive economy groups, where group membership is based on a classification scheme of the International Monetary Fund (2011). The results of the data analysis yield (1) a set of context-specific factors that differentiate five economy groups in terms of the microeconomic impact of ICT, and (2) offer insights into specific areas of strength and weakness of each group with regard to the impact.