The Impact of National Culture on Worldwide eGovernment Readiness

Introduction In the last decade we have witnessed a rapid rate of Internet penetration worldwide. Although this Internet diffusion happened on a global scale there are significant differences between countries in terms of how far they went and how fast they have adopted new information and communication technology (hereafter labeled ICT) as was shown by Maitland & Bauer (2001). Since the adoption of a new technology varies between countries it is important to construct a composite measure of the country's overall readiness to adopt and use a new technology and also to measure factors that contribute to the adoption of ICT. Various factors influencing Internet adoption have been considered in several studies. It was confirmed that telecommunication infrastructure (Hargittai, 1999), socio-economic factors (Robinson & Crenshaw, 1999) and cultural values (Maitland & Bauer, 2001) have a significant influence on ICT adoption among countries. A country's overall readiness to adopt, use and benefit from using ICT is called country's eReadiness. A knowledge of the factors which make a significant contribution to eReadiness and the country's position on the eReadiness scale would help the country's leaders to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the country's current position and to concentrate on the areas where improvement and further integration of ICT could be made (Bridges.org, 2001). An important component of the country's overall eReadiness is its government readiness to operate and benefit from the new environment. The concepts of electronic government (hereafter labeled eGovernment) has not been uniquely defined and used in literature. For example, Turban, King, Lee, Warkentin, & Chung, (2002, p. 452) listed six different eGovernment definitions. However, we may say that the 'use of Internet technologies', 'access to information', 'service delivery' and 'participation' are the most common keywords used in eGovernment definitions. Simply, eGovernment could be defined as the government's use of ICT to serve both internally and externally through its organizational structures and activities. The label 'eGovernment readiness' is used to describe government readiness to adopt, use and benefit from ICT, and it also forms one of the main focuses of analysis. The concept of eGovernment readiness is important because of the opportunities it creates for each country in terms of benefiting from eCommerce activities, openness to globalization, potential to strengthen democracy and make governments more responsive to the needs of their citizens, increasing citizen wellbeing, etc. The second focus in analysis is on the role that culture has in the adoption of ICT. Cultural differences between countries in general and particularly in relation to information technology adoption is a highly researched subject. The concept of culture adopted and used in this paper is based on works of Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede who defines culture as "a system of collectively held values". The following authors identified cultural values as one of influential factors on adoption of ICT: Bagchi, Cerveny, Hart & Peterson (2003), Johns, Smith & Strand (2003), Maitland & Bauer (2001) and Sornes, Stephens, Saetre, & Browning (2004). Others also recognize the role culture could have in adopting ICT; for example, Bridges.org (2001) suggests that: ". unique cultural and historical environment of a region must be taken into account as part of a national ICT policy to truly gauge the country's eReadiness for the future. " In other words, each country should find its own way to the optimal eGovernment readiness which is consistent with the national culture. The main objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between national culture and eGovernment readiness. More specifically the purpose of this research is to provide a theoretical framework for the impact of national culture on eGovernment readiness and to test whether the national cultural dimensions have significant impact on the eGovernment readiness. …