E-Government Implementation: Balancing Collaboration and Control in Stakeholder Management

Abstract

As e-government plays an increasingly dominant role in modern public administrative management, its pervasive influence on organizations and individuals is apparent. It is therefore timely and relevant to examine e-governance, the fundamental mission of e-government. By adopting a stakeholder perspective, this study approaches the topic of e-governance in e-government from the three critical aspects of stakeholder management: (1) identification of stakeholders; (2) recognition of differing interests among stakeholders; and (3) how an organization caters to and furthers these interests. Findings from the case study point to the importance of: (1) discarding the traditional preference for controls to develop instead a proactive attitude towards the identification of all relevant collaborators; (2) conducting cautious assessments of the technological restrictions underlying IT-transformed public services to map out the boundary for devising and implementing control and collaboration mechanisms in the system; and (3) developing strategies to align stakeholder interests such that participation in e-government can be self-governing.