The Relationship between E-Government and National Competitiveness: The Moderating Influence of Environmental Factors

Using secondary data from 113 countries and the literature on Resource Based View [RBV] and Information Technology [IT] impact as the guiding theoretical lenses, we examine the relationships of e-government development and e-participation with national business competitiveness. E-government development represents the level of functional sophistication of e-government Web sites in a nation whereas e-participation is the level of country's willingness to engage citizens in e-government processes. In addition, we analyze the moderating role of country environment on the relationships between e-government development and business competitiveness and also between e-participation and business competitiveness. Our results highlight strong association of e-government development as well as e-participation with national business competitiveness. Further, our results also show the moderating role of human capital, public institutions and macro-economic conditions on the relationship between e-government development and business competitiveness of a nation. Human capital and public institutions positively moderate this relationship whereas macro-economic environment marginally moderates the relationship in the negative direction. In contrast to this, the relationship between e-participation and business competitiveness is positively moderated only by national human capital. Further, we also analyze the combined relationship of e-government development and e-participation (e-government maturity) with national business competitiveness and observe that e-government maturity is also significantly related to national business competitiveness. Through this research, we make some important contributions that have implications for research and practice.

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