Tracing the emergence and formation of small dot-coms in an emerging digital economy : an actor-network theory approach

The purpose of this study is to trace the emergence and formation of small dot-corns tounderstand how they come into being and are made to work or not. The SME e-businessliterature emphasises post-organisation and post-technology formation phases, paying lessattention to the early phases of innovation development such as opportunity emergence andformation. The e-entrepreneurship literature, on its part, investigates such early phases tosome extent but emphasises the personality of entrepreneurs and organisation development,paying less attention to technology and its development. Moreover, commonly used theoriesin both research lines are largely based on deterministic, reductionist and dualist approaches.As a result, the complex sociotechnical nature of SME e-business and e-entrepreneurshipphenomena is less accounted for.In response, this study extends the existing knowledge in SME e-business and eentrepreneurshipresearch by drawing on IS interpretive case study approach and actornetworktheory (ANT) combined with contextualism to trace the emergence and formation offour small dot-corns in the emerging digital economy of Ghana, a developing countrycontext. The findings show that the early phases of dot-corn innovation, from emergence toformation, are non-deterministic, non-linear, complex, and heterogeneously interwoven.Moreover, such processes are created through the collective efforts of human and non-humanactors across physical and virtual environments as well as developed and developingcountries. By employing ANT combined with contextualism, the study offers a noveltheorisation of dot-corn innovation processes. For this reason, it is argued that ANT can beextended with contextualism to offer explanations for unmet expectations of actors andactants beyond an actor-world. The study also advises entrepreneurs to pay attention not onlyto the virtual world but also to the physical world which together support dot-cornemergence, formation, and operation. Finally, in addition to other recommendations, thestudy calls for further research into the early phases of other forms of e-business such asclick-and-mortars and virtual organisations