The growth of digital innovation and the increasing expectations of citizens have prompted governments to engage in digital transformation. The hope is that the implementation of digital initiatives by governments will enhance the effectiveness of governmental operations and address public issues in these increasingly turbulent times (Yuan et al, 2023). Digital technologies have become an essential part of the governance toolkit. They not only ensure transparency and accountability, while providing a quick and effective government response to citizens' problems and suggestions, but also improve operational efficiency in tackling corruption and ensuring the efficient delivery of public goods and services (Srivastava, 2024).
Local governments are well-positioned to understand the challenges facing the public and can develop tools that contribute to more efficient and effective administration. The concept of "local e-government" builds on all the principles of e-government, including greater proximity to the public. Lagrandeur (2021) offers a model of virtual organization that organizes local government around four key dimensions that allow the measurement of an organization’s virtuality: citizen experience, leveraging knowledge, institutional competencies, and e-services, all connected to a central point showing their shared origin. Dias (2020) presents a relevant empirical model for the local implementation of e-government, organizing the determining factors into four main groups: internal factors (related to the intrinsic characteristics of local governments); local socioeconomic factors (linked to the socioeconomic characteristics of the jurisdiction); local political factors (connected to the local political context); and other environmental factors (external factors not directly related to the local scope).
In this context, the objectives of our research are, firstly, to measure the degree of virtuality of Portuguese municipalities and, secondly, to identify the factors that contribute to increasing the virtuality of these municipalities in Portugal. To achieve this, we address the following research questions:
Q1: Where do Portuguese municipalities stand within the model of virtual organization for local governments?
Q2: What factors contribute to increasing the virtuality of local governments in Portugal?
Our research aims to provide a significant contribution to the literature by offering a detailed characterization of the degree of virtuality of a representative sample of municipalities in Portugal, as well as the factors influencing this reality. A careful and thorough study of virtuality levels in these organizations is essential to understanding the current state of digital transformation in the country.
Our research is based on questionnaires sent to all 308 municipalities in Portugal to assess their openness to virtual organization. The general objective is to analyze the responses in terms of financial, political, social, geographical, and personal factors. A more specific objective is to select a representative number of municipalities for in-depth study.
The goal of adopting ICT by local governments, along with organizational changes and the development of new skills among employees, is to improve public service delivery, strengthen democracy, and support public management. This need can be analyzed using various theories that emphasize the strategic use of digital resources to provide excellent governmental services and promote more efficient and transparent governance. In our research model, we establish a virtuality level, where involving all stakeholders can contribute to a smoother adoption or increase in the degree of virtuality in local municipalities. DiMaggio & Powell (1983) use Institutional Theory to explain how institutions respond to isomorphic pressures and how isomorphism leads to greater homogeneity among those in the same environmental context. We use this theory to argue that the main isomorphic pressures are mimetic, as organizations often find it difficult to assess the exact value of digital processes and tend to copy practices from others. Local governments often adopt practices from geographically adjacent organizations (Hong et al., 2022) This leads to Hypothesis H1 of isomorphic pressure:
H1: The degree of virtuality of municipalities is positively associated with the degree of virtuality of neighboring municipalities.
Public organizations, especially local municipalities, face immense pressure to develop innovative solutions to improve public services with limited resources (Lambert, 2013; Shaw, 2019). The assumption is that innovation by employees implies their ability to create something new or do things differently, while innovation processes through highly participative management reflect the interaction between leaders and employees. This, in turn, enhances learning opportunities and knowledge sharing (Pyka & Hanusch, 2013) Therefore, the role of leadership in public organizations is crucial to motivate and inspire employees. As Khan, (2019) notes, we use Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Rogers, 2003) to explain the impact of leadership on employee innovation. This theory examines the adoption of innovation within organizations and society, leading to the following hypotheses:
H2: Leadership in digital transformation has a positive influence on the degree of virtuality in municipalities.
H3: Knowledge sharing and innovation among employees positively impact the degree of virtuality.
In addition to the theoretical perspectives mentioned above, we believe that the size of a municipality positively influences its virtual evolution. Larger populations imply a higher number of public service users and a greater number of procedures to manage. This creates stronger pressure for effective, transparent responses (Tejedo-Romero & Araújo, 2021). According to Dias (2020), organizational size is often correlated with innovation in many studies. For Rogers (2003), size is easily measurable and included in almost every study, serving as a substitute for various dimensions leading to innovation, such as total resources, idle resources, technical knowledge, and organizational structure. Given this, the size of local governments is a significant determinant of e-government implementation, making the multifaceted nature of organizational size relevant to our study. This leads to Hypothesis H4:
H4: The larger the size of the organization, the greater the degree of virtuality of the municipality.
As of now, we have received 338 questionnaire responses, 207 of which are valid. We are currently processing the data using STATA.
We expect our findings to provide new insights into local-level e-government. If the hypotheses are validated, they will help answer our research questions and identify the conditions fostering virtuality. Nonetheless, potential limitations must be acknowledged. Interpretation challenges, sample representativeness, or the measurement of certain variables may affect the strength and generalisability of our conclusions.
