Assessing Trust in Online Collaboration in E-government during the COVID-19 pandemic: An Employee Perspective

Abstract

Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, firms and institutions have to shift to work from home to prevent the spreading of the pandemic. As a public sector, employees in government institutions also collaborate online during the lockdown. Collaboration online has been identified as a challenge for employees. While our understanding of how employees’ perception and trust of the e-government is still limited. To address this research gap, this study intends to investigate the antecedents of employees’ trust in e-government during their work process in the new normal. By conducting a qualitative study with 14 in-depth interviews with employees with e-government experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, we extracted several key antecedents of employees’ trust in e-government. Based on the qualitative data analysis, a theoretical model of trust antecedents was proposed. Our study provides a deep understanding of the specific antecedents of employees’ trust in the e-government context.