Page 271 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

M04_CHAF9601_04_SE_C04.QXD:D01_CHAF7409_04_SE_C01.QXD 16/4/09 11:11 Page 238

238 Part 1 Introduction

Political factors

The political environment is shaped by the interplay of government agencies, public opinion,
consumer pressure groups such as CAUCE (the Coalition against Unsolicited E-mail),
www.cauce.org, and industry-backed organizations such as TRUSTe (www.truste.org) that pro-
mote best practice amongst companies. The political environment is one of the drivers for
establishing the laws to ensure privacy and to achieve taxation, as described in previous sections.
Political action enacted through government agencies to control the adoption of the
Internet can include:
promoting the benefits of adopting the Internet for consumers and business to improve a
country’s economic prosperity;
enacting legislation to protect privacy or control taxation, as described in previous
sections;
providing organizations with guidelines and assistance for compliance with legislation
setting up international bodies to coordinate the Internet such as ICANN (the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, www.icann.com) and other independent
organizations controlling Internet technology described in Chapter 3.

Political involvement in many of these activities is intended to improve the economic compet-
itiveness of countries or groups of countries. Quayle (2002) summarizes six strands of the UK
government strategy for e-commerce which are intended to increase industry competitiveness:
1 Establish a brand in e-commerce both domestically and internationally.
2 Transform existing businesses.
3 Foster e-commerce creation and growth.
4 Expand the e-commerce talent pool (skills).
5 Provide leadership in international e-commerce policy development.
6 Government online should be a priority.
These goals are typical for many countries and specific targets are set for the proportion of
people and businesses that have access, including public access points for those who cannot
currently afford the technology. Managers who are aware of these initiatives can tap into
sources of funding for development or free training to support their online initiatives.
Alternatively, there may be incentives such as tax breaks for business or consumer adoption
of the Internet and technology companies can also take advantage of these.

Some other examples of the role of government organizations in promoting and regulat-
ing e-commerce are given by these examples from the European Commission (EC):
The EC Information Society initiative (http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_
Information society
en.htm) was launched in 1998 with the aims of increasing public awareness of the impact
A society with wide-
spread access and of the information society and stimulating people’s motivation and ability to participate
transfer of digital (reducing social exclusion); increasing socio-economic benefits and enhancing the role of
information within
business and the Europe in influencing the global Information Society. Information Society was defined by
community. the UK INSINC working party on social inclusion in the information society in 1997 as:
A society characterized by a high level of information intensity in the everyday life of
most citizens, in most organizations and workplaces; by the use of common or compat-
ible technology for a wide range of personal, social, educational and business activities;
and by the ability to transmit and receive digital data rapidly between places irrespec-
tive of distance.
UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has
also been active in advancing the Information Society in less developed countries
(http://portal.unesco.org/ci).