ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the need for disciplines to participate more actively in the development conversation and to build a more inter-disciplinary approach for solving the mystery of growth. Countries are poor for a host of reasons that require different expertise to understand fully or to begin to address them. The chapter examines the specific institutions that help to mediate the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and economic growth. The manner in which the term 'institutions' is used in the ICT-growth and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)-growth literatures can give the impression that it serves as a repository into which those examining the relationship place factors of a political or social nature. The NIE, in turn, evolved out of the study of organizational economics and another of its off-shoots, organizational institutionalism. It was only in the 1970's that Oliver Williamson coined the term the 'New Institutional Economics' and identified it as a discrete branch of economic study.
