ICT Assimilation in Selected Ethiopian Public Organizations

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) affects how organizations deliver services to their customers. ICT is now used not only to improve back office routine activities but also to act as strategic tools for achieving organizational goals. It increases internal efficiency and reduces costs. Although ICT has many benefits for organizations, its assimilation is the most challenging process as there are high failure rates as reported by many researchers. This paper develops a conceptual framework that is used to investigate the success of ICT assimilation in public organizations. The study uses a field survey research method to empirically test the proposed model. The result of the study shows that ICT staff support services, top management participation, consultant involvement and consultant knowledge transfer as important factors that affect ICT assimilation in Ethiopian public organizations. Managers as well as decision makers should pay emphasis to those variables to increase the success of ICT in their organizations. Although the proposed model was adapted from international experiences, the factors that are identified as important determinant factors of ICT assimilation weakly explains the study phenomenon thereby further research with qualitative methods are recommended to identify factors that best explains the phenomenon of ICT assimilation in public organizations. Keyword: ICT assimilation, public organizations, top management championship