CATCHING-UP AND LEADING IN E-GOVERNMENT: UNDERSTANDING KOREA’S EXPEREIENCE FROM THE COMPLEX PRODUCT SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In 2010, Korean e-government’s competitiveness finally took the first rank in the world and its leadership has been remained till today. Such Korea’s success in e- government is dealt in the study. Before finding out how Korea did catch up with frontiers in e-government, the study tried to confirm that e-government has considerably different characteristics from mass-produced goods, and thus it belongs to complex product and system(CoPS). In the end, the study verifies that e-government is a CoPS and presents three major findings. Firstly, leveraging of policy will and institutions, in particular, presidential leadership and commitment played the most important role than other roles. Secondly, Korean chaebols significantly contributed to internalize complicated knowledge and skills. Lastly, essential prerequisite for successfully implementing e-government is building strong ICT infrastructure

Keywords

• e-government, complex product system, Korea, and catch-up

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