Gopikrishna Vasista Tatapudi and Mohammed Ahmed Turki AlSudairi
effectiveness, efficiency and equity that are treated as principal aims of the quality from public management perspective.
Bhattacharya, Gulli and Gupta( 2012) conducted a research study and proposed a set of seven items for assessing the e‐service quality of government portals. These items can provide insight on users’ needs to government portal developers for the purpose of improving the design and implementation of online services. Like many research studies, this research study is no exception to those studies that lack to provide the basis or rationale in selecting service quality dimensions
4. Need of referential adequacy
Some electronic governance related research studies( for e. g. Bhattacharya 2012; Tan 2012) are found to provide insufficient rationale while constructing their theoretical framework. This is because an inviting research effort must not only be plausible but also needs to have coherence that carries intelligibility and explanatory power with it as a part of providing evidence to support the conclusions for explanatory narrative research. Technology based electronic governance research studies should have a capacity to direct and change human lives meeting their wants and needs( STEM Definition). To claim this power, what is required is the referential adequacy: the capability of expansion of perception and enlargement of understanding along with having a referencing capability to some established principles, theories or models( Yang 2011). Development of theoretical framework should reflect this kind of phenomenon and hence becomes heart of the research( Vasista, 2011).
For example, in case of Bhattacharya et al.( 2012) research study, the proposed model with selected list of e‐ service quality dimensions for e‐governance did not claim the link to any established underlying theories or models. In case of the Tan( 2012) research study on e‐government customer service, though framework is established supporting by the customer service life cycle( CSLC) model given by Ives and Mason( 1990), the‘ retirement’ component of the customer service life cycle model is however replaced with a set of IT‐mediated service delivery dimensions that in turn do not have a reference to any established service delivery model( 2012, p. 4). In the process of customizing the framework, researcher did not take enough care in synchronizing the lower replaced component i. e. web service delivery component to maintain such interrelationship among three abstraction levels that can be identified from the given service delivery model. This deficiency of lack of fit of the proposed component is identified by authors as a flaw of building theoretical framework from the research methodology perspective.
In order to cover such faults in the research study, authors at the initial phase have identified and assumed that Lovelock et al.( 1998) service quality gap model can be a more suitable strategic service quality model to be proposed for the adoption and to derive benchmarking factors for Internet Portal Service Quality based E‐ Governance Service.
5. Influence of e‐governance service quality on citizen satisfaction – proposition of Lovelock and Wright model adoption
In benchmarking studies of e‐governance with service quality approach of evaluation, careful consideration to the perception and expectation of its users is justified because perceived service quality is found a critical determinant of web site success. This is because web site service quality is defined as‘ consumers’ overall evaluation and judgment of the excellence of quality of e‐service offerings in the virtual market place’ and as‘ the extent to which a web site facilitates efficient and effective shopping, purchasing and delivery’( Connolly and Bannister 2008). Parasuraman and Grewal,( 2000, p. 168) emphasized that the cumulative insights from their conducted studies support the general notion of perceived quality enhancement through service quality, which in turn, contributes to customer loyalty. Further they found that there is a consistency in the research work studies between the quality‐value‐loyalty linkage and service‐profit chain. Citizen orientation influences e‐service quality of e‐government portals making it dynamic percept( Bhattacharya et al., 2012). This led researchers to identify the e‐service quality assessment to act as polymorphic way for the purpose of reflecting the needs of the citizens and other stakeholders using e‐service.
Managers in service sectors are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that their services are customerfocused and that continuous performance improvement is being taken through customer service delivery. It is essential for the service organisations to properly understand the customer expectations, perceptions, and
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