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Does process reengineering and digitalization eliminate corruption? Examining ‘paperless’ vehicle clearance at Ghana’s port

Does process reengineering and digitalization eliminate corruption? Examining ‘paperless’ vehicle clearance at Ghana’s port
Does process reengineering and digitalization eliminate corruption? Examining ‘paperless’ vehicle clearance at Ghana’s port
Corruption occurs globally but is noted as a bottleneck to socioeconomic development in many developing countries. Reengineering of business processes, alongside digitalization, occurs in various developing countries as part of efforts to improve organizational processes and to help in the fight against corruption. But while such initiatives have been associated with some improvements, they have questionable results in the overall control of corruption. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how and why in developing countries corruption persists in spite of reengineered business processes and digitalization.Through an exploratory case of a reengineered digitalized vehicle import clearance process at Ghana’s ports (dubbed by the government as ‘paperless’), we inductively trace complex interdependencies in the situated sociotechnical work system involving information systems, processes, individuals and organizations as well as associated corrupt practices. Our analysis reveals a complex network of cross-cutting interactions, actors and interests underpinning corruption, as well as the creation of new corruption opportunities where digitalization had disrupted old ones. We discuss the implications of our findings and derive explanatory propositions to guide further research.
corruption, business process reengineering, digital business ecosystem, digitalization, developing countries, paperless port, information systems
Association for Information Systems
Addo, Atta
f0458963-f8b6-4841-88a1-aeb95a94f430
Senyo, PK
b2150f66-8ef9-48f7-af32-3b055d4fa691
Addo, Atta
f0458963-f8b6-4841-88a1-aeb95a94f430
Senyo, PK
b2150f66-8ef9-48f7-af32-3b055d4fa691

Addo, Atta and Senyo, PK (2020) Does process reengineering and digitalization eliminate corruption? Examining ‘paperless’ vehicle clearance at Ghana’s port. In Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Association for Information Systems..

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Corruption occurs globally but is noted as a bottleneck to socioeconomic development in many developing countries. Reengineering of business processes, alongside digitalization, occurs in various developing countries as part of efforts to improve organizational processes and to help in the fight against corruption. But while such initiatives have been associated with some improvements, they have questionable results in the overall control of corruption. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how and why in developing countries corruption persists in spite of reengineered business processes and digitalization.Through an exploratory case of a reengineered digitalized vehicle import clearance process at Ghana’s ports (dubbed by the government as ‘paperless’), we inductively trace complex interdependencies in the situated sociotechnical work system involving information systems, processes, individuals and organizations as well as associated corrupt practices. Our analysis reveals a complex network of cross-cutting interactions, actors and interests underpinning corruption, as well as the creation of new corruption opportunities where digitalization had disrupted old ones. We discuss the implications of our findings and derive explanatory propositions to guide further research.

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e-pub ahead of print date: 13 May 2020
Published date: 1 June 2020
Keywords: corruption, business process reengineering, digital business ecosystem, digitalization, developing countries, paperless port, information systems

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 440952
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/440952
PURE UUID: ddd31257-e005-4fd7-87d1-16f540e8e015
ORCID for PK Senyo: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7126-3826

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Date deposited: 26 May 2020 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:01

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Contributors

Author: Atta Addo
Author: PK Senyo ORCID iD

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