chapter1Review.docx

Running head: CHAPTER 1 1

CHAPTER 1 7

Hello Francis. Thank you for the opportunity to review your Chapter 1 draft. Generally, I think the chapter still needs quite a bit of foundational work, and lot of clean-up in grammar and word usage. You seem to want to build on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), but you do not cite the seminal work by Davis (1989) for TAM, nor do you propose using some form of Davis’s questionnaires for determining a user’s perception of usefulness and ease of use of IoT, as I believe you should. You seem to be misunderstanding the role of the literature review – it is not considered part of your research methodology. I was unable to recognize a specific research problem statement, nor a specific purpose statement. Your single research question is worded like an interview question for participants, instead of the higher-level statement of inquiry that a research question should be. You make a lot of claims of anticipated significance and contribution, but your research question and methodology do not provide a means to deliver on those. I have made a lot of detailed feedback comments in the margin below.

Note: Your Chapter 1 draft has too many sections in it, and it does not follow the required and section names from the NCU dissertation template:

“EMERGING TRENDS IN IOT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A SWOT PERSPECTIVE OF GHANA”-A QUALITATIVE GENERIC STUDY

Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 3
Introduction 3
Background 4
Table 1 6
Problem Statement 6
Research Question 8
Significance of the Study 8
Research Purpose 9
Research Design and Methodology 9
Theoretical Framework 11
Technical Acceptance Model 11
Technical Organization Environmental Model 14
Technological Framework 15
Organizational Framework 18
The Environmental Framework 20
Assumptions 21
Limitation of the research 22
Chapter Summary 22
References 24

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Introduction

After decades of anticipation and discussion, the internet of things has become a reality across the globe. The Internet of Things (IoT) has come with new trends that are creating huge developments and have continued to extend the online world in a myriad of manner. Connecting things to people provides vast opportunities for new ways of learning, responding to issues, and monitoring situations. The IoT is now a single uniform network of connected devices, but its various technologies are put together and working in a coordinating manner to provide several benefits to people both in developing and developed nations. The emerging trends in the IoT are making life extraordinarily facile and accessible for different people. Notably, it’s not only making life simpler, but it’s also turning the world into a small place or village. Thanks to the increasing new trends and advancements, It has become hugely entrenched in the systems of even the developing countries. These trends positively change the different sectors in developing countries like health, business, agriculture, and people’s lives. These trends are now connecting physicals things and work and promoting activities like people with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In developing countries like Ghana, the impact of the emerging trend in IoT has also been felt. The country has continued to see the use of IoT technologies in the development of activities. For instance, in 2017, the government reported over 2 million individuals who become connects online through the technology (Hopalı & Vayvay, 2018). Not within the country has been put through the process of rural interconnection where people from remote regions can now access resources and information that were not previously available. The countries continue to increase their plans for IoT connections by introducing ICT technologies to help in the socio-economic developments. Through the IoT connection from urban to rural regions, the country has enhanced health, eCommerce, and education and made farmers’ lives more accessible across the country (Hopalı & Vayvay, 2018). The new trends are used to facilitate the large and small businesses, which is also benefiting the country to leap big.
Since the technologies continue to move faster and with tremendous speed, the developing country’s consumers and businesses are expected to get significant innovations through IoT, where products are anticipated to be very successful. The massive growth sees different trends that will help elevate various sectors (Odoi-Lartey & Danso, 2018). However, despite the enormous positive growth, the trends in IoT come with critical challenges. One trend that is of great concern is the issue of security. Due to the huge increase in the IoT across the globe, more issues have also emerged. These issues are centered on security problems like cyber threats, which are a huge risk to organizations, industries, and individuals. Specifically, these issues are affecting both developed and developing countries. Thus a country like Ghana is no exception, and being a developing country when it comes to the IoT, it faces enormous risk compared to other countries with sophisticated technology.

Background

The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet. (Agarwal & Nethravathi 2021). The IoT is a huge chance that is highly gaining ground in this modern computing world. Since the internet has become of great significance to people’s lives, new technologies have continued to rise and creating rapid development in the IoT field (Odoi-Lartey & Danso, 2018). The IoT technology is characterized by the interconnection of smart objects like radio frequency identification and sensors, which help transfer data without human interactions. The progressive developments in informatics, telecommunication, and sensors that created a way to actualize pervasive intelligence have shown the IoT future. It has found its ways in various applications like transportation, logistics, health, agriculture, automation, and remote monitoring (Odoi-Lartey & Danso, 2018). The technologies have not only been felt in the developed countries. Still, they are also being experienced in the developing countries where governments have begun to venture and emphasize the utilization of IoT new trends. The developing countries are pressuring and investing in the public sector to become more innovative, collaborative, and open to help in the actualization of the new trends and be at the global per (Odoi-Lartey & Danso, 2018). This is because they have realized that the internet of things is transforming how people live, travel, work and conduct business. The IoT has become the center of the industrial and digitals transformation of cities, society, and organizations. Since the developing nations differ from the developed nation when it comes to IoT projects, it’s essential to research the realization of IoT within the growing nations. Therefore, it’s important to research the emerging trend in the IoT in developing countries. Moreover it’s also essential to have a survey on a country like Ghana as one of the developing countries to see where they have reached when it comes to development, adaptation, challenges, and utilization of IoT technology. IoT have wide applications in the area of Agriculture technology, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Software, Architecture and Industrial applications. Connected devices make it possible to track production and monitor performance in real-time.

Table 1 Comment by Marty Crossland: For all tables and figures, each one should have three elements. First, each should have a label (e.g., “Table 1.”). Second, each should have a caption describing the overall content of that figure or table. Third, if applicable, the source(s) of the information should be cited as a part of the caption. Finally, each figure or table must be directly referred to from within the text of the manuscript to give it context and meaning (e.g., “See Table 1.”). See this link for more guidelines and examples of properly formatting figures and tables.

Benefits
of the Internet of Things (IoT) Comment by Marty Crossland: I think this table would be more accurately labelled “Applications of the Internet of Things.” You name applications without really expressing any particular benefits in this table.

Area of Application

Applications

Agriculture Technology

The use drone technology for irrigation farming is the new deal providing modern technology for productive agriculture.

Smart City/Buildings

Convenient and cost saving devices for homes including heating HVAC devices that regulate efficiency.

Road and Traffic Management

Self-driving cars makes use of motion sensors and onboard computers. Modern traffic sensors make road management more efficient through apps and

Supply Chain Management

Use of RFID and GPS devices sends important information for warehouse and operations management systems

Smart Electricity Grids

Sensor devices monitor lines for fault detection and efficient management of power distribution

Healthcare Sector

Smart devices monitor patients vitals and provide important information for patient care management

Industrial/Commercial Use

Organizations uses devices to track and measure productivity and track movement of logistics

Problem Statement Comment by Marty Crossland: I am unable to pinpoint a specific problem you are intending to address with this study.

The problem should be clearly stated as a declarative statement such as, “The problem to be addressed by this study is _______________ ” (you fill in the blank with a simple, singular description of how the current research in the problem domain is incomplete, is misunderstood, is missing opportunities, etc.). That declarative statement should appear in the first paragraph of your problem statement section, if not the first sentence. Then spend the rest of the section justifying it from the research literature. The problem should have been defined and/or inferred by other researchers as being necessary to further the collective body of research in that field. Often a good research problem may be stated in terms of some aspects or phenomena in the field of study (hopefully in the context of one or more established theory(s) that are not yet fully studied or are recognized as poorly understood

IoT technological advancements are primarily correlated with globalization. The information era has increased the rate globalization through the widespread use of the internet, which creates an interconnected world (Otu, 2019). In most cases, the adoption of emerging trends and capabilities of the IoT by the developing countries has had a profound impact on their economy when it comes to allowing individuals to communicate over long distances and also reducing the national cost of production, promoting better health care, and establishing standard quantity. However, there is no apparent transformation and development process of how the developing countries have reached when it comes to IoT technology (Otu, 2019).
Additionally, people have only recently recognized the need for IoT technologies appropriate for developing nations’ capabilities. The countries have also been faced with challenges of IoT technology diffusion and the uneven penetration and distribution of the technology within the countries (Ndung’u & Signé, 2020). For the developing nations to effectively participate in the IoT market places, they require adequate resources and expertise to avoid any rapid advances since they will create more challenges (Otu, 2019). Thus, it’s important to research one of the countries to determine how it has progressed and how it has adopted the emerging trends in the IoT. It’s also essential to look at some of the challenges, benefits, and vulnerabilities the developing countries face when it comes to adapting the IoT technology. In spite of the enormous potentials and benefits of the IoT, there has not been a specific research to analyze the various challenges and threat associated with the wide use of its application in developing countries in general, and Ghana in particular. It is therefore essential to undertake a research, first to understand the level of adoption of the IoT in Ghana, the operational application of the technology and finally the levels of challenges and threats that individuals, companies, institutions and government may face with the use of technology.
Additionally, people have only recently recognized the need for IoT technologies appropriate for developing nations’ capabilities. The countries have also been faced with challenges of IoT technology diffusion and the uneven penetration and distribution of the technology within the countries (Ndung’u & Signé, 2020). For the developing nations to effectively participate in the IoT market places, they require adequate resources and expertise to avoid any rapid advances since they will create more challenges (Otu, 2019). Thus, it’s important to research one of the countries to determine how it has progressed and how it has adopted the emerging trends in the IoT. It is also essential to look at some of the challenges, benefits, and vulnerabilities the developing countries face when it comes to adapting the IoT technology.

Research Question

The following research question will be the underlying guide to gain understanding of the various opportunities and challenges associated with the use of the Internet of Things (IoT): “How does your organization/institution utilizes the IoT and what are the challenges and privacy issues associated with use of the technology?” Comment by Marty Crossland: At this stage, you should be defining your formal research questions, which are higher-level conceptual levels of inquiry. The question you have included here appears to be survey or interview question that you eventually may be asking of your research participants. Normally this will not be considered your research question. An analysis of the survey or interview question(s) should lead you to some indication of how to answer your “bigger-picture” research questions, which should be tightly coupled back to the problem and purpose utilizing the theory(s) upon which you are basing your study. For example, why would the answers to each of these research questions be significant to other researchers in the field?

Significance of the Study

The research will provide insights on emerging trends in IoT in Ghana. The study offers directions for adding practical elements such as sensors to alert people on various issues, thus providing them with information promptly. They can capture much information about their energy consumption over time. Another significance of the study is that Ghana IoT consumers will be empowered to keep an eye for the quality of goods in the market, which is essential in helping them decide on the right time to upgrade an existing commodity in their marketplace. This eliminates the trouble of the consumer regularly checking the next update or the expiry of the current product they currently have themselves, which can be tiring and time-consuming. The study is essential as it provides valuable information to the device consumer that they should only benefit from making purchases that will help them reduce costs and time. Since the Ghana residents are always looking ahead to purchase a device that will save them on price and at the same workloads, IoT only enables that it produces effective instruments that will serve them right where many of the products are automated and can work well without a lot of human effort. While the technology-empowered device helps the user save on time and cost, IoT will translate to increased savings due to performing numerous activities on their own. They also aim at minimizing energy consumption which is good for our environment. Lastly, the study will enable people to know various measures they can use to improve the quality of their lives and help them manage essential tasks. If otherwise, they did it on this own, it led to reducing stress. Comment by Marty Crossland: “will offer.” future-tense. Comment by Marty Crossland: There is nothing in your research question or methodology that indicates that you will be investigating this specific application of IoT at all. Therefore, this is not a potential area of significance for your study. Comment by Marty Crossland: Avoid such hyperbole. Most, if not all dissertations are “essential” or ground-breaking. They simply make incremental contributions to the body of knowledge in the given subject area. Comment by Marty Crossland: You need to provide one or more citations to support all such a factual assertions. Comment by Marty Crossland: Citation to justify? Comment by Marty Crossland: There is nothing in your research question or methodology that indicates that you will be investigating this specific application of IoT at all. Therefore, this is not a potential area of significance for your study.

Research Purpose Comment by Marty Crossland: This section needs to be moved to immediately following the Problem Statement.

The purpose of this research is to provide a brief but well-explained application of IoT, its benefits, and impending risks to the people of Ghana. The study also wants to fulfill the purpose of building a firm framework and further develop the best security companies by either ensuring implementation or analysis of the current schemes and developing new ones. The paper also offers a solid recommendation of the problem and various ways that can be used to fix the vulnerabilities. Specifically, it aims at looking at the emerging IoT trends within developing countries like Ghana. IoT has become a massive stakeholder in businesses across the world. The idea offers benefits and threats essential for economic development (Polat & Sodah, 2019). The research method involved a qualitative study approach. The design used was a structured questionnaire to companies and evaluation of different secondary data. IoT in developing countries is taken as the independent variable that is compared to threats, benefits, challenges, and vulnerabilities of IoT as the dependent variables. Developing nations regularly use technology to promote innovations and social changes (Polat & Sodah, 2019). Comment by Marty Crossland: The study is inanimate and incapable of “wanting” to do anything. Rewrite to remove any such anthropomorphisms. Comment by Marty Crossland: Not a proper purpose statement for a dissertation, since you will not actually be working with companies to do this. Doing so would be beyond the normal scope for an academic dissertation. Comment by Marty Crossland: This is not a paper. It is a dissertation. Comment by Marty Crossland: You have not completed the study yet, so your verbs should be future-tense. This should be “will offer.” Comment by Marty Crossland: I don’t understand this phrasing. Did you mean a recommendation for a solution instead? Comment by Marty Crossland: This is not addressed by your Research Question, and thus it does not align with it. Comment by Marty Crossland: “Looking at” stuff is only part of the process of doing the research — it is not a purpose for the research. Comment by Marty Crossland: I can’t see how this is true. IoT is not an actor that can be a stakeholder. Did you mean to say instead something like “factor” or “component”? Comment by Marty Crossland: What idea are you referring to here? I don’t see any description of an idea. Comment by Marty Crossland: “will use.” future-tense. Comment by Marty Crossland: “to be used is” future-tense. Comment by Marty Crossland: This cannot be a variable because you have not presented or inferred any way of measurement. Comment by Marty Crossland: Likewise, these cannot be variables because you have not presented any way you intend to measure or compare them.

Research Design and Methodology

The research will studied conference papers and journals related to the SWOT analysis of IoT in developing countries and specifically Ghana. Emerging trends in IoT will be analyzed, evaluated, and reviewed in deep detail. Comment by Marty Crossland: Indent the first line of all paragraphs 0.5 inch. Comment by Marty Crossland: This is NOT part of your research design — this activity is part of your literature review.
Guided interviews will be used as data gathering technique. This reflects in the ability to plan ahead for anticipated responses. Also, the interview will ensure unexpected responses are recorded for later analysis. The data collection method offers a framework of schematic presentation of problem topics leading to extensive exploration. This had a consideration of open-ended questions enabling the respondent to give unlimited information. The sample size would involve five stakeholders in the technology industry, five consumers of the IoT products and services, and five distributors.
Data analysis will be enabled through meta-analysis as a statistical analysis method. Information obtained from the review of the articles will be combined and aggregated to articulate study results. The data patterns in the multiple publications will guide data mapping and modeling. Further, data patterns identified from the integration of multiple articles and interviews will assist in the analysis. This will have regards to the model levels research information from participants. Eventually, the results obtained from the analysis will be used in making study conclusions. Comment by Marty Crossland: Usually statistics are not used in a qualitative study. You would instead use some type of textual analysis, possibly using NVivo or some other such tool to look for word patterns and semantic meanings from the transcripts of the interviews. Comment by Marty Crossland: Once again, your literature review is NOT part of your research methodology. Only your interviews provide the data for your analysis. Comment by Marty Crossland: I can’t tell what this means.

Theoretical Framework

Technical Acceptance Model Comment by Marty Crossland: Technology Acceptance Model
Wei et al. (2018) define the Technical Acceptance Model as the continuous improvement and progress in technology-related applications by deciding on accepting or rejecting a dilemma. Basing our arguments on this, there has been the development of numerous models and theories that attempt to shed light on the efficient use of technology. The most reasonable model is Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). This model stands out in the way it examines issues affecting its users in accepting modern technology. Without considering the foundation, adjustment, growth, and limitations of the model, broad and systematic research of IoT in Ghana would be limited. Comment by Marty Crossland: Technology Comment by Marty Crossland: Fred Davis introduced the Technology Acceptance model in 1989. You should be citing that seminal work for this model. For Chapter 2 you should be exploring and describing the various adaptations and permutations of the model to finally arrive at the version that fits your study.
TAM is an expansion of Fishbein and Ajzen’s Theory of Reasoned Action, whose aim is to provide detailed information of factors that determine acceptance and usage of IoT by the users. According to Surendran (2012), TAM is the most effective model to determine the success rate of IoT applications in developing countries such as Ghana. It includes Perceived usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use which are critical when choosing acceptance of technology by communities and is ideal when analyzing their behavior. According to Wei et al. (2018), various factors encourage the use and acceptance of technology. Such aspects include the ability of the individuals to enumerate their differences, beliefs, social influences, attitudes, and influences by different situations. These aspects play a significant role in influencing the individual’s desire to embrace IoT and encourage the capacity to reject or accept it. Comment by Marty Crossland: You need to provide a citation to the original article here. I don’t even see this reference in your References list. Comment by Marty Crossland: How do you know this?
Additionally, the authors stated that the individual’s behavior is determined by their intention or urge to perform the behavior, which is the ability to make decisions. Their behavior signals this to take a step and engage in the actual conduct, which is adopting IoT in their daily activities. TAM remains the most accepted model. It seeks to define the characteristics that push individuals of a developing nation like Ghana to adopt technology and make it part and parcel of their daily lives. The curiosity of the individuals can determine these characteristics to adopt IoT with the urge to know what it will do for their lives which will propel them into making actual usage of the technology. Another superiority of this model in determining the eagerness of individuals in countries like Ghana to adopt the technology is its ability to envision and predict the curiosity and motivations that will make them make the decision. The intention of individuals to adopt IoT is determined by their nature which reflects their human attitude, subjectivity existing within them, which indicates their social influence, and the last aspect is their perceived behavioral control. Therefore, an individual’s intention to adopt or develop a particular skill can be driven by the aspects mentioned earlier. To validate the model’s reliability, numerous researchers such as Simon et al. (2011) made a physical test of the technique by predicting the possibility of technology acceptance among individuals from service teachers in developing countries. The outcomes indicate that indeed there is a definite relationship between the method and acquisition of information. Shih et al. (2011) also discovered that the personal behavior of accepting a particular technology is valuable. Still, it is incomplete if we fail to look at social aspects and the individuals’ environment. Alharbi and Drew (2014) also found that various issues affected an individual’s intention to adopt mobile usage in making payments. It found out that effort expectancy, performance expectancy, and social influence played a significant role in making the individual accept e-finance. In connection to this, Alenezi et al. (2011) recommend that during the formulation stage, the perception concerning new technology, social norms, and subjective development influences the customer to purchase the technology as they make decisions based on perceptions about the quality of the product or service.
Concerning this, numerous theories have continued to arise which might apply to this research. Some of these theories include diffusion of innovation invented by Rogers in 1983, Ajzen’s ideas of Reasonable Acceptance, and planned behavior. Regardless, we find TAM to be the most applicable theory because it assists technology developers in predicting consumers’ behavior by incorporating the aspects of the approach. Its validity has also been verified and tested, which turns out to be very impressive. Additionally, TAM is more reliable because it is based on two fundamental variables: Perceived Usefulness and the Perceived Ease of Use. These variables are highly influential and are highly adopted by many organizations in describing the ability of their products to gain acceptance by their users. The variables have also carefully incorporated similarities to the individual capacity expected of today’s professionals to gain information literacy skills.
Alenezi et al. (2011) further observed the significance of the relationship between the Perceived Ease of Use and its Perceived Usefulness to a broader context. They found out that the two directly associate with the attitudes used to determine acceptance and use of technology. Pasaoglu (2011) Sees Perceived Usefulness as a subjective prompt that including particular features to specific application systems will increase job performance within that organization which they define as performance expectation. On the other hand, Cheung and Vogel (2013) discovered that the beliefs would drive the Apparent Ease of Use that adoption of the technology will be hassle-free and effortless to acquire or purchase a specific set of skills that the author defines as effort expectation. To clarify the issue, Mojtahed et al. (2011) stated that TAM was in a better position to anticipate that certain attitudes will directly impact the mindset that would propel the efforts of people to adopt the technology.
Over and over again, TAM has proven to be successful, especially when it comes to revealing specific shortcomings within society. In their study, Cheung and Vogel (2013) discovered that apart from the development of information usage, statistics demonstrate that there has been a significant decrease among the elderly, low-income societies, and the illiterate to use technological resources and devices. This is in comparison to the young, learned, and influential individuals in the community. The application of TAM in determining the individuals to target with specific technology has helped developers confirm that education, age, race, and earnings are directly linked to visualizing the significance of information through reliance on technology. This, in turn, develops the necessity and attitudes to incline and initially gather skills to help them access information on how the technology will be used and how it will benefit them.
According to original inventors of the TAM model, the two significant variables, Apparent Usefulness and Apparent Ease of Use play a substantial role in determining the rate at which technology will be adopted. This signals the intention of the user to develop new skills that will suit the technology to be invented. The philosophers also confirm that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can influence the extent to which the technology users are willing to go to acquire the skills required. According to the authors, extrinsic motivation is the desire to execute an activity because others perceive it to help attain precise outcomes which are different and separate from the activity itself. On the contrary, Intrinsic motivation is the decision to carry out a specific task for no apparent reason other than undertaking the procedure for others to see. Comment by Marty Crossland: There was one, Fred Davis in 1989. You have not cited that article here, but you should.

Also, Davis prescribed a specific set of questions for determining an individual’s score for the two variables. It would seem you should be planning to have your participants complete the TAM questionnaire so that you can properly assess their perceptions of usefulness and apparent ease of use of IoT technology.

Technical Organization Environmental Model
Technology, Organization, and Environment (TOE) is a model which Fleischer and Tornatzky describe as an essential procedure in technological innovation. The authors analyze the model to a profound extent starting from engineers being the initial developers of an organization to the technology being adopted and put to work by entrepreneurs and other individuals. The TOE model represents the segment of the innovation process reflecting on how the context of the organization influences the rate at which the innovations are implemented and adopted. The TOE model is an organizational theory that attempts to explain the various elements incorporated by an entity to influence the decisions to adopt the technology. The three essential elements are the organizational framework, technological framework, and environmental framework strategically positioned to influence innovation (Awa, and Ojiabo, 2016).

Technological Framework Comment by Marty Crossland: For all tables and figures, each one should have three elements. First, each should have a label (e.g., “Figure 1.”). Second, each should have a caption describing the overall content of that figure or table. Third, if applicable, the source(s) of the information should be cited as a part of the caption. Finally, each figure or table must be directly referred to from within the text of the manuscript to give it context and meaning (e.g., “See Figure 1.”). See this link for more guidelines and examples of properly formatting figures and tables.

The technological framework encompasses all technologies that Ghana views to be most relevant and in which some are already in use within the firm while others are in the market. Still, the country is yet to decide to purchase. The current technologies existing within the nation are more important and play a significant role in facilitating the adoption process. They establish a broadened limit on the pace and scope of the nation’s technological transition. The technical innovations in the market but are yet to be adopted by the government also influence the innovation adoption rate because they restrict what is attainable. They show Ghana the technologies they can change and adapt to be more effective in their operations. Inside the innovation groups outside Ghana are the innovations whose aim is to create incremental, inconsistent, and synthetic changes. The innovations that make gradual transitions usually introduce new attributes or new versions of the current technology. The comprehensive technologies often embody the least substantial risk and create a platform of change in adopting innovations within the organization. Illustrations include changing from CRT computer monitors to adopting LCD monitors or executing upgrades from one version of the organization’s ERP system to bringing in a new update. The innovations that develop synthetic transitions usually create a foundation of moderate changes within Ghanaian organizations, where the current technologies or ideas are incorporated in a novel routine. An example of this change is how Ghana Universities deliver the contents of their courses from online sources. And there are no innovations that have been introduced on storing, recording, and transmitting information, and they do not see the necessity of creating innovation in their course content. As a result, the universities can decide to combine their current technologies in a novel way to innovate the education systems to make them better. Comment by Marty Crossland: This is a very long section presenting lots of supposedly factual information and making multiple assertions and assessments, yet without a single citation to any references for support or justification. You cannot frame a dissertation on your own knowledge, experience, and/or opinions. You must support/justify/defend each fact and each assertion you present with citations from authoritative references.
On the contrary, the technologies that bring discontinuous changes within the facility after its implementation are known as radical innovations. They indicate enormous deviations from the existing technology or procedures. An example of these innovations includes implementing bar-code scanning within the grocery industries during the 1980s to adopt PCs in numerous institutions or even shifting to cloud computing. In most cases, in a developing country like Ghana, many industries will be characterized by the technical innovations that will bring incremental changes and synthetic changes at an agreeable pace of technological adoption. Their decisions will be limited to the two choices. On the contrary, some of Ghana’s industries might be characterized by discontinuous changes. Therefore, it will require that the industry’s management make quick decisions that will land them into the next technology to enhance and attract competitive advantage. During evaluation for the discontinuous technologies, the enterprises should always consider whether the technology they will adopt aims to strengthen their competence or destroy it. Competence enhancing technologies empower the organization to change gradually as they establish upon their expertise.
In contrast, competence demolishing innovations usually results in magnificent changes within the industries which is not reputable. An example of competence tarnishing invention includes the shift to cloud computing, which might prove challenging because the organizations are in a country that is currently developing and thus may not have adequate resources to finance the shift. In the long run, the industries that have invested almost all of their resources to achieve high IT function levels may now find that the expertise will no longer give them a competitive advantage.
Instead of adopting a technology that will most probably make them incompetent, the industries can opt to shift towards competence developing institutions that demonstrate vast asset and resource tracking capacity, which I a skill relying on bar-coding and build competence around it. Even with the need to shift, such as involving optical scanners and bar codes with RFID tags to adopting digital scanners, the companies can capitalize on the current databases to act as storage sites. They can move on to adopting new efficiencies within their processes if the manual scanning becomes obsolete. In summary, it is essential that Ghanaian government advisor’s direct organizations on careful consideration of the type of organization they should apply to their business processes that will mainly focus on creating new uses of the existing technologies. It should create awareness to the organization owners that some innovation may bring drastic outcomes if implemented, and therefore they should stay away from them.

Organizational Framework Comment by Marty Crossland: Same observation as the previous section.

This is a very long section presenting lots of supposedly factual information and making multiple assertions and assessments, yet there is only a single citation to a reference for support or justification. You cannot frame a dissertation on your own knowledge, experience, and/or opinions. You must support/justify/defend each fact and each assertion you present with citations from authoritative references.
The organizational framework often refers to the attributes and resources of the Ghanaian organizations, including the linking structures among staff, the size of the firm, intra-organizational communication procedures, and the volume of slack resources held by the organization. Historically, there are numerous ways in which this context affects the rate of innovation implementation and adoption in its decisions. The first mechanism in the organizational framework is linking structures that link subunits of the institution or the extent of internal boundaries to spread innovation. The presence of unofficial linking agents, including boundary spanners, product champions, and gatekeepers, is related to the adoption. The cross-functional employees and teams with unofficial or official linkages to other departments or other value chain associates are supplementary illustrations of the mechanisms.
More extensively, the organizational framework has been carefully researched to discover its association with innovation adoption in many institutions in Ghana. For instance, decentralized and organic organizational structures are linked with innovation adoption. Ghana institutions that have fully adopted this form of corporate structure focus on creating teams equipped with a high degree of fluidity in their responsibilities and encourage lateral communication as an extension to enhancing communication partners along the reporting lines. Other researches on the kind of organizational structure an organization should adopt signify that while the decentralized and organic system can be a perfect match for the adoption phase of the innovation process. on the other hand, mechanical structures emphasizing more clear employee roles can be best suited for the innovation process.
Procedures of communication adopted within an organization have also played a significant role in promoting or inhibiting innovation adoption. Top managers can nurture innovation by establishing an organizational framework that will readily accommodate changes, and that will always support innovations that supplement the firm’s core mission and vision. The behaviors portrayed by Ghana’s top management and the communication they will decide on adopting should focus on describing the responsibility of innovation in the firm’s overall strategy, indicate the significance of the invention to the staff, and approach to reward innovation legally and informally. The communication process to be embraced should focus on placing the history of innovation within the firm at the heart of its operations and building an excellent leadership team that will be able to cast a compelling and achievable vision for the future of the organization.
Other most discussed aspects within Ghana’s organizational framework impacting IoT adoption are the firm’s size and slack. While many literature pieces indicate that an entity’s slackness enhances adoption, other articles suggest that innovation can occur even with the absence of this aspect (Pasaoglu, 2011). Others prove that the presence of slack within the organization’s business processes does not mean that it is successful in adoption. While slack is attractive and helpful in many instances, it is neither necessary nor adequate for innovation to occur. The size of the facility is another widely studied context but a valid link to illustrate the relationship between the two aspects is nowhere to be found. Generally, large-scale organizations within Ghana are more likely to embrace innovation. Still, most of this research has faced a lot of criticism on the foundations that size is often considered a crude proxy for more precise and meaningful underlying organizational factors. Such factors include the ability of the organization to possess a specific superior resource. As a result, the relationship between the size of the organization and the adoption of innovation cannot be decisively confirmed. Researchers are constantly arguing to use more or more precise measures or organizational variables instead of relying on the generic and straightforward action, which is the firm’s size.

The Environmental Framework

The environmental framework involves the way Ghana structures its industries, the absence or presence of robust technology service providers, and the government’s ability to regulate its environment. Numerous studies have been carried out to investigate industry structure in Ghana in various ways. For example, stiff competition within Ghana’s consumer markets stimulates the adoption of many innovation strategies. Similarly, dominating firms within the value chain can have a high possibility of influencing the decisions made by the other value chain partners to involve themselves in innovating their value chains. About the industry’s life cycle, many studies argue that organizations situated in rapidly growing industries have a high tendency to innovate more frequently (McKinn, 2016).
On the other hand, organizations situated within declining or maturing industries do not have clear-cut innovation strategies. Some firms employ innovation decline to attract innovation by improving the efficiency of their creation to minimize costs. However, empirical research validating the relationship between the life cycle of Ghana industries and the rate at which innovation is being adopted within these industries remains to be researched.
Another aspect that links to the environmental framework is that the availability of support infrastructures for technology impacts innovation. Firms forced to pay high salaries for their skilled labor are frequently compelled to execute creation by implementing labor-saving innovation strategies. The presence of skilled laborers and consultants or any other technology services supplier can attract a positive or negative impact on innovation. Lastly, the company of legal restrictions can have a beneficial or destructive effect on innovation (Gangwar et al. 2015). A good example is when Ghana’s government imposes new regulations on its industry, including the requirement of pollution-control types of machinery within the energy sector. The innovation for these measures is essentially directed at the firms in the energy sector. In a similar context, the government may impose lenient testing and safety requirements which may end up retarding innovation processes of numerous industries. For example, when such harsh measures are implemented in the construction industry where incoming raw materials are thoroughly for safety and quality checks before they can be used or in agriculture where crops have to be patented and licensed, the cost of innovation will snowball. Another example is in the banking industries where the government implements strict measures on privacy which may prevent these financial institutions from inventing new ways that customers can use to access their financial information. Therefore, there is an evident relationship between government regulations and innovation because one action can either discourage or encourage the other. Comment by Marty Crossland: Citation of the source of this example?

Assumptions

The research assumes that currently, there are numerous realities regarding the same situation, and therefore, the researchers of those opinions must be reviewed and the audience. It is also assumed that there is more than one approach to one context involved in our study. The third assumption is that this research is based primarily on text comparison and uses inductive forms of logic where categories of analysis may emerge from our observation or use others’ opinions to frame understanding to the audience. Another one is that discovering an underlying pattern of theories greatly helps explain the subject of interest. Lastly, the research also assumes that producing accurate analysis depends on synthesizing as much information as possible with the existing research and the different sources indicated.

Limitation of the research

It is essential to highlight that the research was faced with some limitations. A lot of information on IoT is mainly restricted to developed countries and not developing countries like Ghana. Therefore, the research is only limited to investigating the emerging trends that will apply to the developing countries reflected on by the researchers in small amounts. Again, the study will use qualitative analysis, which demands that the researchers analyze vast quantities of literature to obtain factual information. Therefore, the outcomes in the research are based on analysis of theories and other people’s opinions and judgment instead of actual and statistically proven results.

Definition of Terms

The below list of terms will provide the reader with a study context and better understand the research concepts and constructs.

Cloud Computing.
The practice of using a network of servers on the Internet to store, manage, and process data without using a personal computer or local server (Drissi, Benhadou, & Medromi, 2016).

Grid computing.
Grid computing refers to a network of computers set up to complete a job submitted to the network on any available network computer (Leavitt, 2009).

Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet. (Agarwal & Nethravathi, 2021).

Technical Acceptance Model
. Technical Acceptance Model is the continuous improvement and progress in technology-related applications by deciding on accepting or rejecting a dilemma. (Wei, Wang, Zhu, S., Xue, and Chen, 2018).

Chapter Summary

From the chapter above, we can deduce that IoT adoption in Ghana has become widespread across the nation. It is not only to the organization but also to individuals. We can also see that IoT emergence in these nations is influenced by organizational, technical, and environmental frameworks within an entity. With this reality, it appears that the TOE framework will continue to offer meaningful insights for Ghana. The technical Acceptance Model will also play a significant role in enabling IoT product developers to narrow down to determine their technology acceptance by consumers in developing nations like Ghana. Comment by Marty Crossland: You have not presented any data or information with which to do any deduction. You are simply describing your problem domain and how you intend to study it. Comment by Marty Crossland: I can’t tell what this is suppose to mean. Comment by Marty Crossland: Aren’t you focusing only on Ghana? Comment by Marty Crossland: Unclear what this refers to. Comment by Marty Crossland: What is the context to this phrase. You have only expressed an intent to use this framework thus far, so it is premature to talk about any kind of continuation of any action. Comment by Marty Crossland: You have not yet gathered any data, so you cannot draw such conclusions yet. Comment by Marty Crossland: This is not really the context for using TAM. TAM is a tool for predicting the likelihood of individual users to use a particular technology.
Chapter 1 introduced the concept of the Internet of Things and how it has changed IT industry and the technology landscape. The chapter also highlighted the technical framework associated with the adoption of new technologies. The chapter also defined the purpose of the study and the research question. The remainder of this study will include Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5. Chapter 2 is a literature review that describes the literature on the Internet of Things opportunities, challenges, threats, and privacy issues. This chapter also discusses how organizations’ and institutions use IoT to maximum operational competencies and be competitive in the ever evolving digital technology landscape. Chapter 3 describes the research design and methodology, which includes the sample selection process, data collection, analysis, and guided interviews. Chapter 4 provides an empirical analysis of the results of the study. Lastly, Chapter 5 deals with the results and provides recommendations, concluding comments, a summary of findings, and future research opportunities.

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