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Top1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the economies of both developed and developing countries and disrupted the daily lives of billions of people across the globe (Cruz & de Oliveira Dias, 2020; Sharfuddin, 2020). This has led many governments to scramble for digital solutions not only to curb the spread of the pandemic but also to mitigate its damaging effect on the economy (Ashraf & Goodell, 2022; Taddeo, 2020). This ‘new phenomenon’ has partly triggered the adoption of e-government services the world over (Alalwan, Dwivedi, & Rana, 2017; Alryalat, Rana, Sahu, Dwivedi, & Tajvidi, 2017; Dwivedi, Rana, Janssen, et al., 2017; Rana, Dwivedi, Lal, Williams, & Clement, 2017). Governments are compelled to design a digital solution that will suit the needs of their countries, giving momentum to e-government adoption (Alryalat, Rana, & Dwivedi, 2020; Ceesay & Bojang, 2020; Rana & Dwivedi, 2015; Rana, Dwivedi, Williams, & Weerakkody, 2016; Taddeo, 2020). E-government plays a crucial role in bridging the socio-economic and financial gap as it tends to promote inclusiveness and broader citizen participation (Rana, Dwivedi, & Williams, 2013c, 2015; Schou & Hjelholt, 2019; Simintiras, Dwivedi, & Rana, 2014; Yap, Ahmad, Newaz, & Mason, 2021).
Leadership is the ability to help improve subordinates’ performance such that the performance becomes a function of the subordinates’ system of belief, values, skills, and knowledge in their working condition (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2020). Leithwood et al. (2020) assert that the leadership effect is crucial to the success of most organizational improvement drives. The study and practice of leadership are no less critical especially at this age when the state, societies, and market are in profound transformative change with its associated challenges towards leadership (Hartley, 2018). Hartley (2018) differentiated between public leadership and public service leadership and indicated that public leadership is the type that mobilizes resources to formulate aims that create valued outcomes in public life while public service leadership is the term exclusively reserved for leadership in government and public services. For this article, the scope of public leadership is political leadership (either elected or appointed) and professional leadership in the public sector (public managers in local and central government) (Apriliyanti, Kusumasari, Pramusinto, & Setianto, 2020; Choi & Chandler, 2020; Hartley, 2018).