Socioeconomic Foundations Enabling E-Business and E-Government

Abstract

We hypothesize that four key national factors of e-readiness are associated with e-business and e-government development: national economic prosperity, technological innovativeness, institutional maturity, and Internet service provider competition. Using hierarchical regression with cross-sectional data on 122 countries, we show that these hypothesized factors are independently associated with nations' reported developmental success in the areas of e-government and e-business. These results are obtained using data for 2006 and are replicated using data for 2007. Between-groups analysis using regression provides evidence of the model's applicability to both developed and developing nations, where the four factors can serve as parsimonious indicators for e-readiness and as key areas for public policy. We then discuss implications and limitations of the present work. We conclude by highlighting the current outlook for progress in developing nations along the four dimensions investigated and suggest a targeted approach for public policy.

Keywords:

• e-readiness
• e-business
• e-government
• information technology

Notes

Mina Baliamoune is the accepting Associate Editor for this article.

1. Examples include CSPP's Readiness Guide for Living in the Networked World, CID's Readiness for the Networked World: A Guide for Developing Countries, APEC's E-Commerce Readiness Assessment, McConnell International's Risk E-Business: Seizing the Opportunity of Global E-Readiness, WEF's Network Readiness Index (NRI), UNDPEPA's E-Government Index, The Economist's Intelligence Unit E-Readiness Rankings, UNPAN's E-Readiness Index, and UNESCO's E-readiness Assessment Framework.

2. The World Bank's ease-of-doing-business measures include items such as the number of days needed to obtain permits and licenses, which are lessened through process reengineering, including the introduction of e-processes.

3. Looking at Table 2, it is evident that any of the four variables would explain approximately half of EBplusEG variance if entered first into the model.

4. A Google query conducted in early 2008 with the search criteria “national innovation strategy OR initiative OR policy” yielded approximately 12 million hits. The same query in early 2009 yielded more than 30 million hits.