No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Barriers to Accessing Assistive Technology in Africa
... For instance, there appears to be a lower availability of ATs designed for hearing and communication compared to those designed for mobility [4]. The lack of financial resources and unstructured institutional policies are the main reasons for the observed issues with the accessibility and availability of ATs in these countries [4,5]. ...
Background
A significant proportion of individuals with disabilities in resource-limited countries require at least 1 assistive technology (AT) device to enhance their functioning and autonomy. However, there is limited evidence regarding the actual needs of AT users in these regions concerning the adequacy of ATs.
Objective
This research aims to assess the effects of ATs on AT users in a resource-limited country.
Methods
A cross-sectional study will be conducted in Benin, a sub-Saharan African country, using a nonprobability sample of AT users. Participants will undergo evaluation using standardized tools to assess their psycho-affective status, satisfaction with ATs, perception of the functional effects of ATs, well-being, and quality of life. Additionally, a survey based on the World Health Organization's rATA (rapid assistive technology assessment) tool will be conducted to gather sociodemographic and other data concerning the use of ATs. The findings will be organized and discussed using the Consortium on Assistive Technology Outcomes Research taxonomy, focusing on aspects related to the effectiveness and social significance of ATs, as well as the subjective well-being of AT users.
Results
The process of identifying potential participants began in August 2024, and data collection is scheduled to start in January 2025 and continue for 12 months.
Conclusions
This research will provide an overview of the effects induced by the use of ATs, as well as describe the profile of AT users in Benin. To our knowledge, this will be the first study to examine the impact of ATs in Benin. It will therefore make a significant contribution to the existing data on the use of ATs in sub-Saharan Africa.
International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)
PRR1-10.2196/60869
This article inductively builds theory on how transaction costs may be alleviated, and institutional voids bridged in developing economies, based on the case study of the successful migrants' entrepreneurial involvement in Nigerian agriculture: Shonga Farms. We posit that the iterative process of building conditions of trust that initiates with long-term commitment, involvement of the regional government, appropriate modes of financial contracts, and the gradual transitioning of controlling interests to private actors, are factors of success. We draw additional lessons by contrasting our case study with other similar migrant schemes that failed.
Background
Millions of people in Southern Africa are deprived of basic human rights such as the right to education and work because of the large and growing unmet demand for assistive technologies (AT). Evidence is needed to better characterize the lack of AT access.
Methods
This study serves to identify the sociodemographic factors that are associated with access to AT in two countries in Southern Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. To achieve this aim, logistics regression was applied to a subset of variables from two Living Conditions Studies, nationally representative surveys that were conducted in Southern Africa (2014 and 2010).
Results
In Botswana, 44% of people who needed AT did not receive it, while in Swaziland the unmet need was 67%. Among the sociodemographic variables tested, the type of disability was the most important factor in determining AT access in both countries. The likelihood of AT access was highest in both countries for those who had mobility limitations (i.e., difficulty walking/climbing stairs) [Botswana: 6.4 odds ratio (OR) = 6.4., 95% confidence internal (CI) (3.6–11.3); Swaziland: OR = 3.2, CI (1.4–7.3)], in comparison to those with non-mobility types of disabilities.
Conclusions
These findings provide support for governments and other stakeholders in the AT sector to prioritize AT to address the large unmet demand, and expand the range of AT products provided so that people with hearing, seeing, self-care, communication and cognition difficulties have equal access to AT as those with mobility impairments. A step toward achieving these aims is to inventory AT product types that are commonly covered through the public sector in each country, and identify common gaps (e.g., daily living aids). Advancing the AT sector as a whole within Southern Africa will require large scale qualitative studies that achieve a comprehensive understanding of the bottlenecks in regional AT supply, procurement, and delivery systems.
From the Preface: The research journey for this book began fifteen years ago when we were teaching in a Harvard Business School Executive Program, Managing Global Opportunities in China and India. The program targeted Western multinationals and investors interested in business opportunities in the then rapidly growing Chinese market and the newly liberalizing Indian market. In Mumbai, as part of that executive program, we invited Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons Limited, to share with the group Tata's strategy for the new Indian market. We were surprised to see Western executives' reaction to Tata's ambitious plans for exploiting the new ambient opportunities. Their experience in Western markets had convinced these executives that emerging market business groups like the Tata's, consisting of several dozen companies in disparate, seemingly unrelated businesses, were anachronisms, doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs unless they radically restructured and focused on one or two core businesses. The disconnect between how emerging market senior leaders like Ratan Tata and leaders of Western multinationals in our executive program thought about the strategic implication of emerging market opportunities was truly fascinating to us. The crux of this book is to advance a structural framework for thinking about the nature and extent of differences between emerging markets and mature markets on the one hand, and among emerging markets on the other. That is, the so-called BRIC economies—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—differ from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan on the one hand, but they also differ from each other quite extensively. We specify how. In particular, we articulate a framework to calibrate the differences in soft and hard institutional infrastructure— we refer to the absence in emerging markets of things we take for granted in our backyard in Boston as institutional voids—that permeate emerging markets, and then offer solutions for dealing with these. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Future and Yours (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).
In many developing countries those living in poverty are unable to participate in markets due to the weakness or complete absence of supportive institutions. This study examines in microcosm such institutional voids and illustrates the activities of an entrepreneurial actor in rural Bangladesh aimed at addressing them. The findings enable us to better understand why institutional voids originate and to unpack institutional processes in a setting characterized by extreme resource constraints and an institutional fabric that is rich but often at odds with market development. We depict the crafting of new institutional arrangements as an ongoing process of bricolage and unveil its political nature as well as its potentially negative consequences.
We review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined the strategies by which organizations navigate institutionally diverse settings and capture rents outside of the marketplace. We synthesize this body of research under the umbrella term institutional strategies, which we define as the comprehensive set of plans and actions directed at leveraging and shaping socio-political and cultural institutions to obtain or retain competitive advantage. Our review of institutional strategies is focused on emerging market contexts, settings that are characterized by weak capital market and regulatory infrastructures and fast-paced turbulent change. Under such challenging conditions, strategies aimed at shaping the institutional environment may be especially critical to an organization’s performance and long-term survival. Our review reveals that organizations engage in three specific and identifiable sets of institutional strategies, which we term: relational, infrastructure-building, and socio-cultural bridging. We conclude by highlighting fruitful avenues for cross-disciplinary dialogue in the hope of promoting future research on emerging markets and defining the next frontier of institutional theory in organizational analysis.
This chapter discusses the operationalization of transaction cost economics. Vertical integration, an understanding of which serves as a paradigm for helping to unpack the puzzles of complex economic organization more generally, is described in the chapter. Some empirical tests of the transaction cost hypotheses are summarized in the chapter. Transaction cost economics adopts a contractual approach to the study of economic organization. As compared with other approaches to the study of economic organization, transaction cost economics (1) is more microanalytic, (2) is more self-conscious about its behavioral assumptions, (3) introduces and develops the economic importance of asset specificity, (4) relies more on comparative institutional analysis, (5) regards the business firm as a governance structure rather than a production function, (6) places greater weight on the ex post institutions of contract, with special emphasis on private ordering, and (7) works out of a combined law, economics, and organization perspective. Friction, the economic counterpart for which is transaction costs, is pervasive in both physical and economic systems.
Assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Part IV: Legal and socio-ethical perspectives
European Parliament. (2018). Assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Part IV: Legal and socio-ethical perspectives. Retrieved August
09, 2021, from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/
IDAN/2018/603218/EPRS_IDA(2018)603218(ANN4)_EN.pdf
Institutional entrepreneurship and change in fields
- C Hardy
- S Maguire
Hardy, C., & Maguire, S. (2017). Institutional entrepreneurship and
change in fields. In The Sage Handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 261-280). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Priority assistive products list
World Health Organisation. (2016). Priority assistive products list.
Retreived August 09, 2021, from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/
handle/10665/207694/WHO_EMP_PHI_2016.01_eng.pdf