Managing information technology in modernizing 'against the odds': Lessons from an organization in a less-developed country

This case study of a Guatemalan sugar company focuses on management's role in implementing information technology (IT) in less-developed countries. It shows that even where the intellectual skills required to use IT are very scarce, in the long. run the company may gain more from 'informating' its environment than from merely 'automating' its production processes. But the study also shows that managers must consciously and actively develop these intellectual skills in workers. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.