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The purpose of this paper is to understand how higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing countries can migrate their physical administrative work environment to a virtual platform to improve information management.

The paper employs an interpretive case study approach and a combined lens of activity and agency theories to understand how a developing country HEI attempted to improve its information management by migrating from a physical to a virtual administrative work environment.

The findings show how contradictions caused by role conflicts, administrative staff’s fear of elimination and external consultants’ limited understanding of administrative rules and procedures can hamper work environment virtualisation. Such challenges should be resolved in order to achieve a successful virtual work environment that supports timely and accurate information management.

The study is limited by its single case perspective in one developing country. However, future studies can compare the experiences of HEIs from developed and developing countries in order to account for contextual differences.

The study provides practitioners with insight into how to address conflicts between employees (as potential users) and external consultants during virtual system development and implementation. In particular, role conflict, fear of eliminating some administrative staff and consultants’ limited understanding of administrative work procedures should be resolved for successful work environment virtualisation.

The study is the first attempt to offer rich insight into the challenges associated with administrative work environment virtualisation for improved information management in HEIs, through the principal-agent relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of cloud computing adoption (CCA) in a developing country context through the lens of the technology, organisation and environment (TOE) framework.

The study was carried out using the quantitative research methodology based on a survey of 305 organisations from different industries in Ghana. Based on the TOE framework, a conceptual model consisting of ten hypotheses were proposed and tested through a confirmatory factor analysis and logistic regression analysis.

The findings indicate that relative advantage, security concern, top management support, technology readiness, competitive pressure and trading partners’ pressure were the TOE factors found to be significant in CCA in a developing country context. Conversely, firm size, scope, compatibility and regulatory support were found to be insignificant.

This study provides insights into CCA across different industries in a developing country environment. The study is arguably the first kind of empirical research into CCA in a developing country context, specifically in Ghana. The findings from this study provide a foundation for other studies as well as constructive insights for the development of cloud computing, due to its infancy in the developing world.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of dot-com pioneers in developing countries to complement the experience of their counterparts from the developed world as documented in the dot-com boom and bust literature. Beginning from this literature, dot-com phenomenon in the developed world has attracted much research. However, despite some entrepreneurial attempts to promote the innovation in the developing world, less is known about dot-coms there.

The study follows interpretive case study methodology and actor-network theory to understand the formation, initial success and final failure of a dot-com pioneer in the developing country of Ghana.

The developing country dot-com pioneer transferred e-tail technology from the developed world. The under-developed infrastructure in the developing world forced the technology to be adapted to local context. The firm managed to succeed temporarily by engaging with actors from both the developed and the developing world. It, however, collapsed largely due to inflation in its developing country context, which rendered its stockless business model with purchasing on order to deliver economically unfeasible as purchasing prices outrun sales prices.

The findings are based on historical reconstruction of events which may differ from current circumstances. The study, however, demonstrates how pioneer dot-coms in developing countries may have fared and offers implications for research and practice.

Stockless e-business model with purchase on order to supply may not be economically feasible under inflationary conditions as purchase prices may outstrip sales prices. Entrepreneurs need to pay attention not only to the virtual world but also the physical world which equally contribute to e-business practice.

The paper is the first attempt to offer insight into the experiences of developing country dot-com pioneers to complement the literature from the developed world.

This paper aims to examine how country-level corporate governance structures influence the level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights in the context of Africa.

Data are collected from the world competitiveness report for the period 2010-2015. To examine the validity of the study’s hypotheses empirically, the authors use ordinary least squares with correlated panel-corrected standards error (PCSE).

This paper offers additional empirical evidence on the level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights in Africa. It highlights that country-level corporate governance structures such as efficacy of corporate boards, strength of investor confidence, regulations of securities exchanges and the operation of the Big 4 accounting firms have significant positive impacts on the level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights.

This paper fails to include all African countries because of non-availability of a report for some African countries. Thus, the findings on the level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights in a country are applicable to the countries used in this study.

This paper emphasizes on the relevance of country-level corporate governance structures to ensuring a reasonable level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights.

This paper partially fills the gap regarding the absence of an empirical cross-country study on how country-level corporate governance structures influence the level of protection of minority shareholders’ rights.

Institutional governance has recently attracted significant attention, fuelled by increasing numbers of global high‐profile corporate failures and scandals. In many countries issues have been raised about university governance. In Ghana, university governance has become crucial following the upsurge of private universities in recent years arising out of: increased demand for tertiary education resulting from high population growth; and expanded enrolment at basic and secondary levels, which have far exceeded the capacity of existing institutions. This study aims to explore and assess the governance arrangements of private and public universities in Ghana.

A multi‐stage sampling technique was used to select three private and two public universities. An exploratory and comparative approach was used to examine the governance arrangements of private and public universities in Ghana.

Both private and public universities in Ghana follow the “traditional”, “business”, and “trusteeship” models of university governance, although in different proportions. Additionally, both types of institutions follow the bicameral system of decision making.

Only five of 19 universities in Ghana were sampled. Future research might expand the sample size to test and validate the initial perspectives from this study and also investigate differences between governance arrangements of faith based and non‐faith based private universities.

The paper reports the findings of the first nation‐wide investigation into governance arrangements of Ghanaian universities. It will interest policy makers, university authorities, and other stakeholders in the higher educational sector.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are viewed as a reform tool for resolving inefficiency and absence of dynamism in water supply delivery in developing countries. However, the requirements for their successful implementation have received very little attention. This paper aims to describe a set of critical success factors (CSFs) that, when given special and continual attention, would ensure a successful project implementation and to provide a predictive tool to aid implementers to evaluate the likelihood of a successful PPP water supply project.

Fourteen perceived CSFs were initially derived from project cases and extant literature, and verified through a two-round Delphi survey. Factor analysis established five critical success factor groups (CSFGs) that were then used to develop a fuzzy synthetic evaluation tool for assessing the chance of a successful project.

The five key CSFGs are commitment of partners, strength of consortium, asset quality and social support, political environment, and national PPP unit. The model output showed that, overall, these factors have a “very high” positive impact on a successful implementation of a water supply project. Hence, there is an excellent correlation between achievement of the CSFGs and project success. Success indices of individual principal factors are also “very high”.

The study presents a tool to public clients and private audience, and it is hoped that the study will trigger policy development towards PPP practice in developing countries, because these findings have wider implications for legal and regulatory systems, public capacity, financing, public procurement and politics.

The academic support service provided by the library is critical to the attainment of the University’s central mission of teaching, research and service. This paper contributes to the quest for appropriate approaches for the training and development of academic librarians to ensure that the important role assigned to the library is fulfilled. It discusses schemes available in Ghana for equipping academic librarians with the requisite training and skills to enable them to fulfil their roles efficiently and effectively. In the process, a number of important issues such as training needs assessment and responsibility for training receive attention. Recommendations are made for more structured, consistent and systematic training and development programmes for academic librarians in Ghana.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of brand preference on the relationship between bank advertising and customer loyalty in Ghana’s banking industry.

A total number of 600 respondents participated in the study. Convenient sampling technique was employed to select a cross-section of customers from the universal banks currently operating in Ghana. Structural equation modeling technique of PLS was used to test the nature of relationships in the research hypotheses.

The study found a significant positive relationship between advertising effectiveness and brand preference. Also, there is a significant positive relationship between advertising and customer loyalty. Again, there is a significant positive relationship between brand preference and customer loyalty. Finally, brand preference positive mediates the relationships between advertising and customer loyalty.

The study provides a useful guide to strategy and policy formulation in marketing communication by establishing the potential viability of advertising strategy in bank marketing and its potential to generate brand preference and customer loyalty.

The study has practical implication for, and relevance not only to the banking industry communication strategy but also the entire financial services industry.

The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative approach for the strategic design of public–private partnerships (PPP) and private finance initiatives (PFI) based on ontology.

Adopting a historic approach, it introduces a posteriori knowledge, deriving from the scheme’s stakeholders at the construction and implementation phase of PPPs. Continuous failures of these collaboration schemes and initiatives underline the necessity for a novel project structure. The conceptual argument is based both on empirical and epistemological approaches. It integrates the value-added (VA) of the ontological theory in the PPP/PFI business strategy.

The research emphasises contemporary design gaps of their current structure and proposes an ontological redesign. The proposed redesign produces a conceptually innovative scheme, which enhances the VA business strategies and their objectives to the structure of these collaborating schemes.

The ontological design of this paper is useful for academics and business consultants around the world and especially in Europe for the successful growth and development of such dynamic collaborations.

Enterprise ontology bridges conceptual and structural gaps of strategic objectives, which are primarily responsible for the failures of PPP collaboration.