Cultural Barriers/ Enablers in Implementing E-Government Initiatives in Malaysia

In recent years, information and communication technology (ICT), particularly web based technologies, has created a more complex and challenging IT environment for governments throughout the world. As more and more activities are migrating from physical to virtual medium, users and employees have been faced with relentless pressure to use technology. Increasingly it has been acknowledged that one of the main determinants of IT success is organisational culture and consequently the purpose of this paper is to examine cultural barriers and enablers which have impeded or facilitated the implementation of e-government initiatives in Malaysia. In this paper, an anthropological framework based on the Grid and Group cultural theory of Mary Douglas is put forward as a more viable framework for understanding this issue in more depth. This framework identifies four cultural cosmologieshierarchism, egalitarianism, individualism and fatalism. We argue that cultural cosmologies can have both enabling and constraining characteristics and that cultural pluralism in the enabling forms of hierarchism, egalitarianism and individualism is essential for the successful implementation and operation of e-government services. We illustrate these points through two case studies in Malaysiaone displaying constraining characteristics, which impeded IT implementation/use and the other displaying enabling characteristics, which facilitated IT implementation/use.