Integrating the balanced scorecard into e-strategies : applied to the e-government strategic plan in Palestine

Other Title(s)

استخدام نتائج البطاقات المتوازنة في تطبيق الاستراتيجيات الإلكترونية : تطبيق على تنفيذ استراتيجيات الحكومة الإلكترونية في فلسطين

Dissertant

Ayad, Majid

University

Birzeit University

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Economics

Department

Department of Business Administration

University Country

Palestine (West Bank)

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2008

English Abstract

In ever changing environment, bringing harmony and cohesiveness to e-Government is still a challenging task to most e-Government implementation projects.

A better approach to implement and manage e-Government is needed in a situation where, there are multiple strategies pursued at once and there is a need to monitor strategic and operational performance at both central government and line agencies (Ministries or Municipalities).

Moreover, e-Government parties need a standard process or methodology to realize the real values and contribution of their e-initiatives and better understand the foundation blocks needed to start executing these initiatives. This thesis suggests a framework derived from the Balanced Scorecard to execute and manage e Government strategies.

This research main problem statement is to find out to what extent the Balanced Scorecard could be used to formulate and execute e-Government strategic plans.

Based on this the following questions were addressed : Q1.

Is Balanced Scorecard a solution to e-Strategy execution? Q2 : Can the Balanced Scorecard be used to harmonize and control many sub-strategies if pursued at once while executing the main e-Government strategy? Q3 : What perspectives and measures should be used to insure that e-Government strategies are creating value for different stakeholders? Q4.

Is it possible to start implementing BSC in Palestinian public organizations? Several tasks corresponding to the research questions shown above were executed.

The unit of analysis for this study was at the level of public-organizations and for this purpose, four Palestinian ministries were selected.

This research used qualitative methods to evaluate e-services programs or initiatives that have been implemented in different ministries in Palestine.

Qualitative research is used for evaluations of programmers, services, or interventions ; these include identifying the factors that contribute to successful or unsuccessful delivery of e-services.

This combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in addition to the personal observation and experience of the researcher as a consultant in this field, (a triangulation approach) was necessary to test the consistency of findings and to increase the overall control of the multiple threats influencing the results.

The major contribution of this research was the design of a new framework to execute e-Government strategies.

This framework, which was derived from the strategy linkage model or the strategy map of the Balanced Scorecard, enables e-Government stakeholders to build a complete performance management system, which is yet a simple tool to articulate the vision between different e-Government agencies.

In addition to the new general framework of e-Government that was suggested, a new model was also designed to evaluate each e-initiative strength and weakness for each perspective and builds quantitative balanced measures to find out the values of e-Government services.

The framework was used to prove that Balanced Scorecard could be used as a potential solution to Strategy execution.

However and as suggested in the Implications for further research section th framework needs to be tested.

In addition, the framework designed was used to prove that Balanced Scorecard could be used to harmonize and control many sub-strategies if pursued at once while executing the main e-Government strategy.

The four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard illustrate the different inputs that are used to leverage the organization capability and capacity and optimize the internal processes to create social, economic, and financial gains for different stakeholders.

For many reasons illustrated in this research, it was not possible to measure the effect of implementing a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a strategic management tool in the Palestinian ministries.

Therefore, the research focus has been on exploring the current environment and gauge the readiness of these ministries to implement Balanced Scorecard or any other similar strategic management tool.

The findings of the survey and the case study support the preposition, which states that the readiness of the Palestinian Ministries, who participated in the survey, to use BSC for strategic management is not high.

Main Subjects

Business Administration
Information Technology and Computer Science

Topics

• Public administration
• Palestine

No. of Pages

113

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-301817