Multichannel Management in the Public Sector: A Literature Review

Abstract

The multichannel management field (MCM) of e‑government focuses on how government organizations select, prioritize and integrate public service channels in a multichannel environment as well as migrate citizens and other stakeholders from one channel to another to increase efficiency and user satisfaction. MCM scholars collaborate with practitioners, conduct field experiments and study government‑to‑citizen interaction in real‑life settings. MCM studies have led to important empirical findings, theory building and field‑tested practical recommendations. Despite such valuable contributions to both scholars and practitioners, there are no up‑to‑date, comprehensive literature reviews which synthesize the knowledge from the MCM literature.We therefore present a systematic and comprehensive literature review of MCM in e‑government. Our review follows established guidelines and covers three main areas. (1) We identify lead scholars and outlets, concepts analyzed and the main methods and theoretical lenses applied. (2) We synthesize results and suggestions for future studies from the papers. (3) Finally, we identify knowledge gaps and propose research approaches to addressing these gaps.