Search results

This study aims to examine the transaction costs (TCs) involved in searching for a business case to adopt specific walling innovations by housing developers and the influence of these TCs on their adoption outcomes. This is against the backdrop that innovation adoption, like any new venture, is failure-prone but necessary for countries to reap the full benefits of technological innovation in residential developments, especially when these innovations are also green. Moreover, this issue is understudied.

The study uses a qualitative design and focuses on the early adopting developers in Ghana. The original theoretical framework integrates theories on entrepreneurial opportunity discovery and TC economics. The authors interviewed 12 developers and 13 industry stakeholders purposively identified. The authors analysed and triangulated the resulting transcripts using thematic analysis techniques.

The authors identified two types of early adopters who attempted eight types of walling innovations. Most efforts (71%) were partially successful or failed. The range of TCs identified differed by the adopter type, technology and knowledge coordination strategy. Although the common TCs that were consequential were associated with monitoring and supervision, construction, additional learning, acquiring specialised skills, design change and dispute resolutions, their influence on adoption outcomes is very nuanced.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the first to link TCs with innovation adoption outcomes by housing developers in discovering profitable opportunities to adopt specific walling innovations. The findings and theoretical framework lay a foundation for in-depth analyses of the entrepreneurship of innovation adoption in residential real estate. The exploratory work will generate further interest in this area.

The land sector in Ghana, particularly skin lands acquisition and title registration are fraught with several issues including unreliable record-keeping systems and land encroachments. The paper explores the potential of blockchain application in skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana with the aim of developing a blockchain-enabled framework for land acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to use the framework as a tool towards solving some of the loopholes in the process that leads to numerous issues bedeviling the current system.

The paper adopts a systematic literature review approach fused with informal discussions with key informants and leverages on the researchers’ own experiences to conceptualize blockchain application in skin lands acquisition in Ghana.

Problems bedeviling skin lands acquisition and title registration emanated from the issuance of allocation notes, payment of kola money and use of a physical ledger to document land transactions. As a result, the developed framework was designed to respond to these issues and deal with the problems. As the proposed blockchain framework would be a public register, it was argued that information on all transactions on a specific parcel of land could be available to the public in real-time. This enhances transparency and possibly resolves the issue of encroachments and indeterminate land boundaries because stakeholders can determine rightful owners of land parcels before initiating transactions.

Practically, blockchain technology has the potential to deal with the numerous issues affecting the smooth operation of skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana. Once the enumerated issues are resolved, there will be certainty of title to and ownership of land and property to drive investments because lenders could more easily ascertain owners of land parcels that could be used as collateral for securing loans. Similarly, property developers and land purchasers could easily identify rightful owners for land transactions. The government would be able to identify owners for land and property taxation.

This paper contributes to the literature on blockchain and application to land acquisition and title registration with a focus on a specific customary land ownership system.