Anastasia Papazafeiropoulou, BrunelUniversity, UK

The 'digital divide' between developed and non-developed countries in terms of the Internet and electronic commerce is a heavily debated issue. We examine its manifestation in the area of south eastern Europe which is in a less advanced position. We use data from 8 countries, collected from government agencies and professional bodies. We use a framework developed by King et al. (1994) and examine the institutional actions pursued by regional policy makers. The data are presented using SWOT analysis with the view to portray the situation of electronic commerce adoption in each country under investigation. A collective analysis extracts the “success factors” in government intervention in supporting electronic commerce diffusion and recommendations about good practices in policy making.