Pursuing the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals: Lessons Learned from a Project in Villages in India
Abstract
The pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations is of economic and social significance to the poorest citizens of less developed countries. Information and communication technologies are seen to have the potential to help achieve these goals. Yet, the presence of a digital divide, which is the gulf between information and communication technology (ICT) haves and have-nots, exists across a variety of demographic, ethnic, and geographic dimensions. Overcoming the digital divide by successfully deploying ICTs in developing countries can have major socioeconomic implications for those countries. ICTs can be a cornerstone for the development of these countries by providing better quality of life through greater access to education, health care, and government. ICT success, typically defined in terms of adoption and use, is rare, with up to 85% failing to some degree in developing countries. The goal of this presentation is to discuss one such large-scale longitudinal (10+ years) research project being conducted in India among over 3,000 farming families across 10 villages.
About the speaker
Prof. Viswanath Venkatesh is a Distinguished Professor and Billingsley Chair in Information Systems at the Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas. His research focuses on understanding the diffusion of technologies in organizations and society. For over a decade, he has worked with several companies and government agencies in different capacities ranging from a systems engineer to a special consultant to the Vice-President, and has rigorously studied real world phenomena. He is most proud of his ongoing work in villages in India, which he has presented at the United Nations where he has also served on an expert panel on the advancement of women in less developed countries. The sponsorship of his research has been about $10M, including funding from government agencies. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in leading journals in information systems, organizational behavior, psychology, marketing and operations management. He is recognized to be among the most influential scholars in business and economics, with about 50,000 cites per Google Scholar and about 12,000 cites per Web of Science respectively. A recent article by Thompson Reuters identified him to be among the top-1% most-cited scholars in business and economics (e.g., highlycited.com). He recently published a book titled “Road to Success: A Guide for Researchers in the Behavioral and Social Sciences” (http://vvenkatesh.com/book). He is currently a Senior Editor at MIS Quarterly and AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction. From 2008 to 2011, he served as a Senior Editor at Information Systems Research. He has served or is serving on several other boards including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of AIS, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, and Management Science.
