Adoption of high impact governmental eServices: Seduce or enforce?

Abstract

The adoption of high impact governmental e-services is not obvious. Especially small and medium sized companies hesitate to invest and adopt. Non-adoption endangers the realization of the 25% reduction objective within the EU's Lisbon Agenda of the administrative burden of businesses by 2012. On the other hand governmental organisations gain from the use of these e-services. In several cases this is the underlying argument behind the legal enforcement of the use of governmental e-services. In the study reported in this paper we answer the question which factors influence the adoption of these high impact governmental e-services. The designed research model has been tested in an empirical business-to-government context. In contrast to several business-to-business studies we found that especially organisational readiness is a hampering factor for the adoption of these governmental high impact e-services. These findings question the effectiveness of governmental enforcement strategies. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.