E-government provides the opportunity to improve traditional government practices by better utilizing information technology to retrieve, store, and disseminate information or to offer services [8]. Knowledge diffusion is a key e-government initiative in spite of the fact that governments around the world have different e-government initiatives [9]. The importance of leaders who champion e-government and who play a crucial role in the development of e-government applications cannot be overstated [10]. Information resources and technology management must be guided by competent leadership. [11]. Thus, leadership has the potential to exert a positive impact by providing direction for e-government development and promoting knowledge sharing and transfer within e-government application development.

User satisfaction and user motivation to use online services represent research that has examined relevant issues related to e-government service delivery. Carter and Bélanger [2] examined how technology affects a citizen’s intention to use e-government. By applying the Technology Acceptance Model and diffusion theory within an e-government study they find that perceived ease of use, compatibility, and trustworthiness are significant predictors of a citizen’s intention to use an e-governmentservice [2].

The role of the local government leadership in the adoption of e-government was investigated by other researchers. Moon and Norris [12] find that adoption of municipal e-government is determined by managerial innovativeness and orientation. Additionally, Moon and Norris find that e-government outcomes are associated with the adoption of e-government, government capacity and institutional characteristics. In conclusion, their findings suggest that managerial innovativeness, managerial orientation, and city size are the most compelling determinants of municipal e-government adoption. Delivering services and information to citizens, government employees, and businesses are also cited by prior works on e-government in relation to the importance of technology. An unexplored area, however, is the role that knowledge management has on e-government success.

One of the most prestigious quality improvement awards is The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). Well recognized in industry, education, healthcare and government, it was established in 1988 by the United States Congress and has been consistently updated to better reflect new theory on quality control and business process improvement. The general theory underlying the MBNQA is that leadership drives the system that creates results [13]. The MBNQA assesses seven sets of criteria including: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management, and business results [13]. The validity of the MBNQA has been examined by several prior studies (e.g., [14,15]). According to one study, the effective management of an organization and the improvement of its performance and competitiveness are strongly related to information and analysis [12]. IS is also an important component of quality management, along with strategic systems, operational systems, and results according to Curkovic, Melnyk, Calantone, and Handfield [14]. Through the use of cross-validation of the validity of the MBNQA in the manufacturing and service sectors and Prajogo [16] suggests that the only difference between these two sectors is that the service sector has significantly higher scores in people management than the manufacturing sector. By performing cluster analysis based upon the MBNQA criteria and data derived from organizations within the trading, wholesaling and retailing industries, Zhao, Yeung, and Lee [17] found that the type of quality system adopted by an organization is highly associated with organizational factors.

Further studies in the healthcare industry provided additional evidence of the effect that leadership has on every variable in MBNQA model [19,20]. The analyses provided by these studies emphasized the philosophy in quality management—leadership drives systems that improve the results. Their works support the contention that proactive leadership enhances the success of an organization. Finally, Wilson and Collier (2000) find that the 1995 MBNQA model contains consistent predictors for organizational performance. Leadership results in impacting outcomes via the other categories: process management, human resources, strategic planning and information analysis. Furthermore, the studies show that information and analysis are the second most influential factors in MBNQA model.

Although the MBNQA has continued to evolve over the years, many published studies tested the MBNQA model published prior to 2002. The most recent version of MBNQA consists of a leadership triad, results triad, and measurement, analysis and knowledge management dimensions [18]. The Leadership triad consists of the leadership, strategic planning, and customer/market focus dimensions and emphasizes the importance of a leadership focus on strategy and customers. The Results triad includes the human resource focus, process management, and business results dimensions. Overall, the changes in the underlying MBNQA model are consistent with the philosophical change in quality management theory. The emergence of knowledge management in the MBNQA criteria signifies the importance of knowledge and information in an organization. KM has the potential to embody continuous improvement and the Total Quality Management (TQM) effort such that, in the future, they will not require separate delineation [21]. The performance management system is built upon a foundation of measurement, analysis and KM.

Knowledge as applied to business includes various definitions. Some define knowledge as actionable information or data [22] whereas others define knowledge as authenticated information [23] and a justified belief to increase one’s capacity for effective action [24,25]). Knowledge has different perspectives: a state of mind, object, a process, a condition of accessing to information, and a capability [21]. Tacit and explicit knowledge represent two specific categories. Tacit knowledge includes intuitions, hunches. Explicit knowledge refers to facts, numbers, and symbols.

According to von Krogh and Kleine (1998), knowledge management (KM) refers to identifying and leveraging the collective organizational knowledge to enhance competitive position. Creation, storage, transfer, and application processes make up an organization’s knowledge management framework. Common applications of knowledge management fall into three areas: coding and sharing organization’s best practices, the creation of knowledge directories, and the creation of knowledge networks [26].

The knowledge-based theory [28] of an organization posits that organizations improve their efficiency by economizing on knowledge exchange. The existing hierarchies in an organization facilitate knowledge transfer [29]. Cooperative social contexts that are conducive to the creation, coordination, transfer, and integration of knowledge distributed among its employees, business units, and business partners contribute to organizational gain [30].

Technology is an enabler for the process of delivering information and services via e-government and serves to enhance the delivery mechanism [7]. Irani, Sharif, and Love [31] show that mapping and identifying knowledge is useful in the IS evaluation and implementation lifecycle. KM allows acquiring, organizing, and communicating both tacit and explicit knowledge of employees in a systematic manner to improve productivity and effectiveness [26].

The management of knowledge within the context of e-government can not only add value internally, but also externally to business partners or constituents. According to Koh, Ryan, and Prybutok [32] this is an evolutionary path on which government agencies embark as they manage knowledge and provide e-government services to their citizenry. The path is delineated into five stages: (1) informational—the main function of e-government is to distribute information to citizens and employees using uncomplicated Web sites; (2) interactional—e-government begins to interact with citizens and employees through Email and online forms; (3) transactional—citizens can perform transactions such as paying their water bill via e-government websites; (4) integrated—characterized by a seamless interface that integrates all aspects of e-government processes; and (5) collaborative—knowledge is captured from both internal and external sources. Additionally, some research has suggested that user-centric marketing approaches are keys to moving down this evolutionary path which involves engaging citizens in knowledge creation and collaboration [36]. Other studies have proposed that e-government initiatives can help governmental agencies improve knowledge sharing with the public, but they must be implemented carefully to ensure the quality of processes and services delivered [33,34]. These prior works recognize the knowledge and information technology requirements for e-government.

The organization studied in this research is a municipal government in the southwestern United States. The City, which employs 1,110 individuals, is classified as a small-to-medium sized municipality with a population of approximately 115,000. It was ranked in the top twenty-five of the fastest growing cities in the nation with populations over 100,000 in 2008 and 2009. The City is home to two major universities and thus, the average age is lower than the national average (33.8 years versus 37.8 years). The City requested that the research team help them to evaluate its e-government initiatives in order to enhance the quality and effectiveness of its operations

The research team worked with city government managers in developing and reviewing a survey capturing the MBNQA 2002 framework criteria to test our proposed model. The research team modified Prybutok and Spink’s [20] MBNQA instrument, updating the instrument to reflect the 2002 MBNQA criteria from the earlier version used in the Prybutok and Spink study. The instrument was also modified to fit the government sector context of this study. To ensure the appropriateness and content validity of the revisions, first, a group of ten experts with extensive experience in both survey research and quality management reviewed the modified instrument. These experts consisted of five faculty members and five Ph.D. students from MIS, Management Science, and Psychology.

During the instrument development, the research team had lengthy discussions and correspondence with city managers and employees regarding the substance and format of the survey as well as the survey delivery mechanics. Because of their expertise in quality control, a pilot test of the instrument was conducted at a meeting of the Dallas chapter of the American Society for Quality to assess the instrument for content and clarity. The instrument was modified based upon the comments received and the analysis of the pilot study data.

The KM items used in this survey capture the characteristics of the knowledge management process: knowledge creation, storage, and utilization. The development of these KM items is consistent with Holsapple and Joshi’s [44] and O’Dell et al.’s [22] conceptualization of KM. For example, Holsapple and Joshi [44] state that the nature and particular structure of knowledge influence the methods by which it is identified, captured, indexed, stored, disseminated, updated, and disposed of once it becomes obsolete. O'Dell et al. [22] emphasized that the focus of KM should be on getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Specifically, reflecting the knowledge management cycle, we use timely update of explicit knowledge to measure the knowledge creation process, consistency of and review of explicit knowledge to measure the knowledge storage process, and items capturing benchmarking, systematic analysis of performance data internally and externally to measure the knowledge utilization process. The Leadership Triad items measuring leadership, strategic planning, and customer and market focus were adapted from Prybutok and Spink [20] as stated above. The final items by construct are shown in Table 1. The range of responses on the Likert scale were from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Our model examines how the leadership triad components effect KM enabled e-government effectiveness. Because employees have an understanding about government operations, familiarity with organizational knowledge creation, storage, sharing, and utilization processes, screening complaints, and maintaining systems, their judgment about these issues are relevant and useful. Because citizens are unfamiliar with internal government operations and the knowledge creation cycle and, given the purpose of our study, we chose not to include them.

The target population of our survey was 1,110 employees of a city government. Via email, we requested that the employees participate in our on-line survey regarding e-government initiatives. Two weeks after the initial email, a follow up email was sent. The survey was available to employees for five weeks. A total of 339 responses were recorded, representing a 30.82% response rate. However, 20% of those responses contain incomplete data and were discarded from further analyses, leaving 178 useful responses. We examined nonresponse bias by comparing the demographics variables of age, gender, educational level, and years of experience of the respondents with those of the population. No significant differences were found.

The number of male and female respondents is split about evenly. The city’s workforce has a range of ages, but 67.3% of the respondents are between 30–49 years old. The city’s employees are relatively well educated, with about half having a four-year degree or higher and another 25.5% having some college. Seventy-two percent have been in their current position for less than five years and 43% have less than five years of experience in total. Details of the demographics are shown in Table 2.

We used Partial Least Squares analysis (PLS) to analyze our data. PLS is an extension of Ordinary Least Squares regression and seeks to determine a best fit relationship between multiple predictor variables and a result. In PLS, R² and substantial/significant structural paths are used to evaluate the model fit [45]. PLS is an appropriate method for testing the proposed model because of the minimal demands on measurement scales, sample size, and residual distributions [45,46]. Although the MBNQA model was validated by some studies, the revised version with a KM component is new, and was not tested in prior works. Consistent with the exploratory nature of the KM in the MBNQA model, it is appropriate to use PLS.

The MBNQA model is built upon a set of interrelated core values and concepts [21,18]. Consistent with previous theoretical and empirical work, we modeled the leadership triad as a second-order construct, consisting of three first-order reflective constructs: leadership, strategic planning, and customer and market focus. We first evaluate the measurement model and then validate the structural model.

The City has implemented a variety of e-government applications. Their initial foray into e-government entailed applications to disseminate knowledge about selected city services. Electronic knowledge directories were also made available online so that citizens that could easily determine how to contact experts in a variety of areas. Subsequently, transaction-based customer service applications were added to the e-government services available to citizens. For example, citizens can pay utility bills or court fines electronically. The City also created an interactive mapping system that maps local attractions, restaurants, and city service locations using a geographical information system (GIS).

In conclusion, this research is a valuable step in filling the void in which the relationship between leadership and KM is empirically assessed in an e-government context. Our study found that three aspects of the MBNQA leadership triad, leadership, strategic planning, and a customer/market focus, lead to effective knowledge management. While the implementation of technology helps governmental agencies in providing additional services to the public, the implementation of technology alone is insufficient. Governmental agencies are realizing that the combination of information technology and effective knowledge management practices are required to obtain superior results. As a result, many governmental organizations are placing greater emphasis on the development of knowledge management systems so that they can more effectively serve the citizenry. Our results highlight the key role that leadership plays in these efforts.