Impact of e-commerce on corporate governance and ethics: a case of corporates in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The business environment is impacted by technology both negatively and positively. To this extent, therefore, it is only prudent that the business environment adopts technological platforms, such as e-commerce, but there is a need to ascertain the risks involved, in order to optimize the benefits. This study set out to determine the impact of e-commerce on corporate governance in the retail sector in Zimbabwe. The corporates under investigation were Total Zimbabwe, Complete Solutions Architects, Venturecom and Kenac. The study included gathering the views of suppliers, customers, employees, government, and trade as well as investors. It employed a quantitative research design which involved the ultimate determination of the regression equation and a qualitative design which used interviews from stakeholder respondents. Some of the notable results from the questionnaire indicated poor customer relationship management on e-commerce platforms, a more stringent control than regulatory requirements and inadequate monitoring of the behaviour and activity of clients on e-commerce platforms. The investors also felt that the impact of electronic commerce impact on shareholder activity was not satisfactory especially with regards to meetings, but they indicated satisfaction with the enhancement of resources with regards to the generation of organizational profits. The regression equation finally revealed that for overall satisfaction, as a proxy for good corporate governance, as the dependent factor the statistically independent factors were investors and government as a trade, which could imply that these are the definitive stakeholders. From the interviews, there was indication some of the salient issues about e-commerce that were indicated included the untrustworthiness of intermediaries, the difficulty in describing physical goods and the difficulty of eliminating unethical practices on electronic commerce platforms. Inter-organizational compliance between the organizations and their stakeholders was also revealed as being a major factor that was needed in order to reduce the contagion effect. This action was followed by the view that the boards’ responsibilities and roles of the corporate boards needed had to change to manage risk on e-commerce platforms. The study concluded by suggesting a longitudinal study of the same topic incorporating more stakeholders and including more hypotheses to test all the possible and proposed relationships. More time is also recommended to cater for the fast development of ecommerce and IT in general