Implementing e-Services in Lagos State, Nigeria: the interplay of Cultural Perceptions and Working Practices during an automation initiative : Nigeria e-government culture and working practices

Accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Government Information Quarterly.The public sector’s adoption of Information and Communication Technologies is often seen as a way of increasing efficiency. However, developing public e-Services involves a series of organisational and social complexities. In this paper, we examine the organisational issues of implementing an ERP system, which was designed and developed within the context of Lagos State’s e-Services project. By doing so, we showcase the impact of organisational cultural perceptions and working practices of individuals. Our findings illustrate the strong role of cultural dimensions, particularly those pertaining to religion and multi-ethnicity. Our study provides insights to international organisations and governments alike toward project policy formulation within the context of ICT-based initiatives and reforms that aim to bring forward developmental progress.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Diffusion of E-Government in Nigeria: a Qualitative study of Culture and Gender

E-government failure is prevalent in developing countries, and of the varying reasons for this, adoption of online products and services by citizens is one strong factor. Using this reasoning, this research-in-progress paper explains how a qualitative approach involving interviews and observations as well as referring to archival documents was used to investigate the aim: to investigate the relationships between culture and e-Government awareness channels within subcultures (ethnic groups) of Nigeria, a developing country striving to adopt e-Government. This research will also aim to examine gender influences within the subcultures when considering an e-Government awareness channel in Nigeria. The conceptual analysis is framed by Rogers‟ (2003) diffusion theory, Hofstede‟s and Hofstede‟s (2005) cultural theory and the Association for Progressive Communications‟ (APC) Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) model as presented by Morgan et al (2004). This research offers a rich and deep understanding of the impact of culture and gender upon the diffusion of e-government within Nigeria‟s indigenous ethnic groups. Further, this research applies aspects of diffusion, culture and gender in the context of a developing country. For industry, this research offers an understanding of the various cultural and gender aspects that can affect the diffusion of an innovation within ethnic groups of Nigeria. For policymakers, this research suggests a snapshot of some contexts in Nigeria where e-government initiatives need to be better considered

Developing e-Services for Lagos State: Understanding the impact of Cultural Perceptions and Working Practices

The development of e-services is not only a technological phenomenon, but involves organizational and social complexities. In this paper, we build upon an interpretive case study, and examine Lagos State\u27s initiative, in order to showcase how the implementation of public sector e-services have been affected by organizational and cultural perceptions and the working practices of individuals in a developing country. This research provides insights for international organizations that determine the status of countries by providing online access, products and services to their citizens, and to Internet Service Providers who pursue new territories for the provision of new products and services. It also informs governments around the globe about cultural perceptions and working practices, thereby helping them determine their developmental progress and decide their future endeavors

Diffusion of e-government in Nigeria : a qualitative study of culture and gender

E-government failure is prevalent in developing countries, and of the varying reasons for this, adoption of online products and services by citizens is one strong factor. Using this reasoning, this research-in-progress paper explains how a qualitative approach involving interviews and observations as well as referring to archival documents was used to investigate the aim: to investigate the relationships between culture and e-Government awareness channels within subcultures (ethnic groups) of Nigeria, a developing country striving to adopt e-Government. This research will also aim to examine gender influences within the subcultures when considering an e-Government awareness channel in Nigeria. The conceptual analysis is framed by Rogers’ (2003) diffusion theory, Hofstede’s and Hofstede’s (2005) cultural theory and Morgan et al’s (2004) gender analysis framework. This research offers a rich and deep understanding of the impact of culture and gender upon the diffusion of e-government within Nigeria’s indigenous ethnic groups. Further, this research applies aspects of diffusion, culture and gender in the context of a developing country. For industry, this research offers an understanding of the various cultural and gender aspects that can affect the diffusion of an innovation within ethnic groups of Nigeria. For policymakers, this research offers a snapshot of some contexts in Nigeria and offers insights unique to e-government.Final Published versio

The Impact of Culture and Gender on E-Government Diffusion in a Developing Country: the Case of Nigeria

Due to the high rate of e-government projects failures occurring in developing countries and the researcher being from a developing country, an impetus to undertake this research was provided. In IS research, diffusion of e-government products and services was noted to be slow within developing countries, and most developing countries striving to adopt e-government have undertaken it under the heavy burden of gender inequalities and strong multicultural beliefs. However, these social factors were shown to liberally influence users’ perception, which in turn influences users’ intentions and usage behaviour. Although there has been much research to explain users’ perceptions, few have been conducted on e-government diffusion using developing country experiences. The identified gap prompted this research to investigate how the citizens of a country ‘Nigeria’ receive information about the egovernment products and services and how this information has influenced the way they feel, form opinions and make judgments on egovernment products and services. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the implication of culture and gender upon e-government diffusion within Nigeria. For this purpose, a conceptual model was formed combining social interaction, trust of egovernment delivery personnel and constructs from Roger’s theory of diffusion and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to study e-government diffusion from the citizens’ perspective. Additionally, the culture and gender elements were considered. In turn, these elements were expected to determine and explain predictor constructs that would be used to explain, determine and predict citizen’s acceptance of e-government products and services. To acquire the data to this research, a qualitative research approach involving the case study method was employed. The data collection techniques used included interviews, personal observations, and examination of archival documents. The three main indigenous communities of Nigeria Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa were used and cross case analysis employed. This led to the findings identifying social interaction and the trust of personnel providing egovernment as the novel parts of the framework for this research. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that culture and gender were observed to have strong influences on social interaction as an e-government awareness channel; but significantly low influence on the other means of e-government awareness channels. Further, social interaction was noted to be a very strong determinant of communication within the indigenous societies. From the research findings it was learnt that for e-government to spread extensively, social interaction should be employed to improve the diffusion of e-government products and services. Future directions of this research include using a quantitative research approach to improve research findings and also investigating the relationships of trust of egovernment personnel and other forms of trust identified by previous research, i.e. the trust of government and trust in e-government. However, the view of this research is that since few studies of this kind are emphasized within IS research evaluating e-government diffusion, developing countries, culture and gender, other researchers interested in a topic similar to this research will learn of the importance of this research and these factors for other developing countries in the world. Due to the limitations of time and distance and financial constraints all the indigenous communities could not be represented. Hence, this was also considered to be a limitation to this research

Diffusion of e-government in Nigeria : an exploratory study of culture and gender

Peer reviewe

Implementing E-government in Lagos State: Understanding the impact of cultural perceptions and working practices

The public sector's adoption of Information and Communication Technologies is often seen as a way of increasing efficiency. However, developing public e-Services involves a series of organisational and social complexities. In this paper, we examine the organisational issues of implementing an ERP system, which was designed and developed within the context of Lagos State's e-Services project. By doing so, we showcase the impact of organisational cultural perceptions and working practices of individuals. Our findings illustrate the strong role of cultural dimensions, particularly those pertaining to religion and multi-ethnicity. Our study provides insights to international organisations and governments alike towards project policy formulation within the context of ICT-based initiatives and reforms that aim to bring forward developmental progress