Calls for papers

 

Electronic Government, an International Journal

 

Special Issue on: "E-Leadership: Sustainability of E-Government and E-Business Innovations"

Guest Editors:
Dr. Nixon Muganda Ochara, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Prof. Wallace Chigona, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

E-leadership, a concept described by Avolio, Kahaia and Dodge (2000) as a process of influence operating within or enabled by information and communications technology (ICT) environments has been gaining traction over the past decade within the disciplines and the practitioner communities of information systems (IS) and organisational/management studies. The origins of the term can be linked to the commercial spread of the Internet since the mid-1990s, and the increasing pervasiveness of advanced information and communications technologies leading to a globalised knowledge economy.

The rise in ICT investments in both the public and the commercial sectors has also meant that organisations (public and private) are either wholly and/or partially dependent on ICT, which has resulted in extensive virtual networks as a basis for not only inter-personal relationships, but also intra- and inter-organisational networks. Therefore, when e-leadership is considered within the context of the increasingly knowledge-based society, the need to focus on developing capabilities to integrate critical knowledge resources, of which ICT forms a critical component, must be emphasised in order to enhance provision of value in service delivery in both public and private sector organisations.

This call for papers is motivated by a number of trends: the first is related to increasing demand for ICT services, which has resulted in huge global ICT investments. For instance, HIS Global (www.ihsglobalinsight.com) predicted that 2010-2013 would be a recovery period in which emerging markets in Africa , the Middle East and elsewhere will experience faster growth rates than the advanced economies of North America and in parts of Europe . The result has seen increased ICT demand not only in the emerging markets but also in the developed nations as well. News ICT sectors and changes in industry can also be linked to the pervasiveness of the Internet.

However, despite increased ICT investments, failure in ICT projects is also common. The second trend is linked to the continued transformation of organsational structures by ICT, which requires that management and leadership of organisational units develop new competencies at both the organisational and individual level. New leadership competencies are required since the organisational leader and manager now grapples with greater dispersion of units, customers, suppliers and stakeholders as well as a greater need for frequent communication enabled by ICT (Zaccaro and Bader, 2003). As a reaction to these trends and changes, information systems and organisational scientists have begun to talk about e-leadership as an emerging field (Dasgupta, 2011) that can respond to leadership and management opportunities and challenges in the digital age.

This special issue recognises that e-leadership will become routine in practice and in thinking about public and private sector leadership, especially as ICT continues to play a dominant role in innovations that shape the knowledge economy. ICT and leadership are known to enjoy a recursive relationship which impacts on various innovations, but challenges remain as to the nature of the impact, nature of trust in new innovations, and how information ecology impacts the relationship process and the nature of impact on performance (Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber, 2009).

Therefore, the objective is to provide an outlet for publishing original research highlighting current issues related to technical, organisational, managerial and socio-economic aspects of e-leadership and its impact on e-government and e-business innovations. We invite theoretical, conceptual and empirical papers that address how e-leadership influences digital strategy (e-government and e-business strategies); management in the digital era (e-management); how ict enables organisational transformation (e-transformation) and the sustainability of digital innovations from the perspective of ICT4D (e-sustainability).

REFERENCES

Avolio, B. J., Kahai, S., & Dodge, G. E. (2000). E-leadership: Implications for theory, research, and practice. The Leadership Quarterly, 11 (4), 615-668

DasGupta, D. (2011). Literature Review: e-Leadership. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 4(1), pp. 1- 36

Zaccaro, S. J., & Bader, P. (2003). E-leadership and the challenges of leading e-teams: Minimizing the bad and maximizing the good. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4).

Subject Coverage
Contributed papers may deal with topics which include but are not limited to:
I. DIGITAL STRATEGY

• Models of e-leadership
• E-education strategy and management
• Social, political and legal frameworks for transformational government
• Social, political and legal frameworks for e-business
• Case studies on development e-business and e-government strategies
• Change management in ICT-enabled environments

II. E-MANAGEMENT

• Virtual project leadership
• E-management models
• Adapting business process for e-management
• IT governance for e-commerce
• E-business risk management
• Managing the transition to digital broadcasting
• Performance management in e-business and e-government

III. E-TRANSFORMATION

• E-commerce trends and issues
• Social networking in organisations
• Business intelligence and web analytics
• E-business and e-government infrastructure development
• Technology solutions for integrating inter-firm and inter-governmental processes
• E-tendering
• E-procurement
• IT diffusion in developing regions
• Mobile applications in developing regions
• Mobile money
• Cloud computing
• ICT4D

IV. E-SUSTAINABILITY

• Sustainability frameworks for e-business and e-government
• E-business sustainability in small and medium-sized enterprises
• Realising e-participation for e-governance
• Value chain management for e-business and e-government innovations
• Modelling online user behaviour
• Sustaining transformational government

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.

Important Dates

Proposal deadline (optional): 15 August, 2012

Submission deadline: 31 October, 2012

Notification of status & acceptance of paper: 31 December, 2012

Final version of paper: 15 March, 2013