Delivering Distinctive Value in Emerging Economies

Prof. Richard Boateng
Richard Boateng is an associate professor in Information Systems at the University of Ghana Business School. He is a technology researcher who focuses on developing, communicating, protecting, promoting ideas and concepts into sustainable projects of commercial value and development impact. He serves as the Head of the Department of Operations and Management Information Systems at the Business School of the University of Ghana. He is also the associate editor of the Information Technologies & International Development Journal and serves on the editorial board of the Information Development Journal. He is also a member of the Association of Information Systems. His research experience covers the digital economy, cloud computing, e-learning, information and communication technologies (ICT) for development, electronic governance, social media, electronic business, gender and technology, mobile commerce, and mobile health at the national, industrial, organisational and community levels. Since 2006, Richard has published 44 refereed journal articles, six books, seven book chapters, 38 published conference paper proceedings, one international technical report, and two journal editorials. His Scopus report features 65 publications spanning journal articles, a book, book chapters and conference paper proceedings.

Since joining the University of Ghana in 2010, he has collaborated with other faculty to obtain not less than 2 million USD in research and project funds. These research and project funds have been obtained from organisations including GIZ (German Development Agency, Ghana), World Wide Web Foundation (USA), Vodafone Group (Global/UK), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), International Development Research Centre (Canada), and the World Bank. He has also consulted for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Ghana, and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Accra Cluster Office on technology and communication development projects.

Richard holds a doctorate in Development Informatics and a master's degree in Management and Information Systems from the University of Manchester, UK. He is a British Chevening Award Scholar and a Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award Scholar. After his PhD, he undertook a post-doctoral programme at the International Centre for IT and Development, Southern University and A&M College, USA under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, USA. In May 2010, Richard received a Best Paper Award for a lead-authored paper published in the Journal of African Business "E-Commerce in the least Developing Countries: Summary Evidence and Implications." On 26th March 2011, Richard received the Southern University (USA) Research Leadership Award, for his contribution to ICT Research in Africa, awarded at the 4th International Conference on ICT for Africa, held at Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria.

On two occasions, Richard has been invited to contribute to global reports on information systems access and usage. First, by the Renowned Economist, Diane Coyle for the Vodafone Global PLC.'s Socio-economic Impact of Mobiles (SIM) Report; and second, by the World Wide Web Foundation for the 2019 Women's Rights Online Survey. Richard has been listed among the Top twenty Highly cited Scholars in University of Ghana by Google Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/y89o59se

Dr. Sheena Lovia Boateng
Sheena Lovia Boateng is a lecturer at the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the University of Ghana Business School. She is the first female to complete a PhD in Marketing from the University of Ghana and is also the founder of the Women in Tertiary Education (WITE) Network, which seeks to provide support for women pursuing tertiary education in their academic research, family life and career balance. She is a fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science. She is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Emerald Emerging Markets Case Study Journal, Emerald Publishing Limited, UK. She has six refereed journal publications, three books, four book chapters, five published conference papers, one working paper, and one industry report. Her academic work has been published in the International Journal of Bank Marketing, Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Smart Learning Environments and the Journal of Educational Technology Systems. Her research interests include online relationship marketing, fashion and beauty marketing, digital business strategy, electronic learning adoption, entrepreneurship, online branding and advertising, social media marketing and structural equational modelling in marketing. Dr. Sheena's paper on signalling theory published in the International Journal of Bank Marketing (2019) was listed among the most popular papers in the journal for the first quarter of 2019. She has completed the supervision of two doctoral research students who graduated in December 2019. Since beginning her doctoral career, she has collaborated with other faculty from different universities to obtain not less than the US $200,000 in research and project funds. These research and project funds have been obtained from organisations including Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), World Bank and the United States International Development Agency (USAID) and the African Development Bank (AFDB).

Dr. Thomas Anning-Dorson
Thomas Anning-Dorson is a Senior Lecturer at Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and a Research Associate at the School of Consumer Intelligence and Information Systems, University of Johannesburg. Thomas is a Research Fellow at McGill University, Montreal, Canada through the Queen Elizabeth Scholars Program. Thomas is a member of the American Marketing Association, fellow at the Academy of Marketing Science and Academy of International Business. He serves as the Track Chair - (International Business Theory) for the Academy of International Business - Sub-Saharan Africa Chapter (AIB Africa).

Thomas is an enthusiastic scholar and management consultant with a keen interest in the issues of Innovation, Strategy, Digitalization, Enterprise Growth, and Marketing in Emerging Markets.
Dr. Thomas' current research focuses on Competitive Strategy, Brands, Innovation, Services Management, Emerging Markets, Customer Experience Management, 4IR and Enterprise Development. His research has been published in top tier international journals including Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, Computer in Human Behavior, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, European Journal of Innovation Management, and International Journal of Bank Marketing.