SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ICT USE IN BRAZILIAN ENTERPRISES: AN ANALYSIS OF LABOR FORCE CONTRIBUTION

摘要

This paper explores the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and socioeconomic development from a business management perspective. ICTs undoubtedly influence the development of countries, especially those known as developing countries. Enterprises could be one of the main drivers of this shift as they create employment and produce direct income, and can indirectly improve education and quality of life. Business activities, however, have been affected in recent years by the rise of ICTs, in particular the Internet, which enable not only new ways of communicating and interacting with the general public, but also of conducting business globally, from a new perspective and at previously unknown speeds. In this sense, this article seeks to analyze the experience of Brazilian enterprises in ICT usage to discuss their level of adoption and impact on the country's development. The study will focus on the presence of an IT department within these enterprises as a factor for facilitating the adoption and use of ICT. The analysis relies on the dataset produced by the ICT Enterprise Survey, conducted annually since 2005 by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) through the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br). This nationwide survey has more than forty indicators for investigating ICT usage and dissemination by formally established Brazilian enterprises with 10 employees or more. A factor analysis will be conducted from a selection of some variables related to Internet usage for the purpose of identifying factors regarding web presence, social network presence, e-commerce, basic activities, and infrastructure. Subsequently, a test of association will be made between these variables and the 'presence of an IT department' and 'hiring of IT experts' in order to investigate the impact of skilled labor on the level of ICT adoption. Should any dependence be identified among the variables, a logistic regression model will be used to estimate the relationship between the conditional variables. Preliminary studies have shown that an IT department in enterprises can in some way affect technology infrastructure, but there is little relationship with activities carried out on the Internet. Due to the importance given to ICT and their contribution to the development and the role of enterprises to help achieve this goal, it is important to discuss the keys aspects and obstacles to ICT adoption which includes issues related to specialized labor and entrepreneurial initiatives.