Search results

Many countries today, especially in Europe, provide publicly funded public services in quasi-markets. As these markets commercialize, agencies of various types are providing technologies that support citizens’ choice of services. Citizens’ use of technologies for service provision is studied as e-government under labels of channel management, e-service uptake or adoption. In contrast, by using actor–network theory (ANT), the purpose of this paper is to focus on the marketing devices that are used to enroll citizens to choose technologies in a context with large penetration of quasi-market arrangements.

Based on a Swedish case study, this paper uses qualitative data from 11 occurrences of technologies to support citizens’ choice (“market devices”) in education, healthcare and public pension in an analysis of the means taken (“marketing devices”) to increase their use. The study formulates a tentative typology of these devices.

The marketing devices are intended to attract citizens’ attention to the possibility of choice (e.g. catalogs, postcards and commercials), invite interaction (e.g. various social media platforms), improve the technological support in line with user needs (e.g. user participation in development), increase visibility of technological support (e.g. search optimization) or directly connect citizens to technological support (e.g. via links).

The paper contributes to e-government research through a typology of means taken to increase citizens’ technology use based on selected concepts from ANT, and to a discussion of technologies and humans.

The relationship between the state and the individual is, more than ever before, being mediated by public portals. The requirement specifications for public portals can be said to define the level of expectation among influential actors concerning the roles of the individual in this relationship at a certain point in time. At the same time, they are part of an emergent‐development process. The purpose of this paper is to test this perspective in the empirical context of healthcare.

This research proposes a framework for analysing the requirement specifications for public portals, making various roles possible, such as being a patient, a citizen, a consumer, and a customer. The framework is tested in a case study of a Swedish national healthcare portal.

It can be concluded that prominent actors in this particular context of design defined the requirement specification so that the patient and citizen roles were well supported, whereas the roles of the consumer and customer were supported in a less well‐developed manner. The case study also indicated the importance of reusing already existing functionality to attain quick and tangible results. Consequently, the individual is both enhanced and limited by the “travel of ideas” in the form of the reuse of existing functionality.

This paper puts forward the view that the requirement specifications for public portals are part of the emergent formation of an e‐governance relationship.

This paper aims to explore whether the key drivers identified in digitalization policies are being prioritized by practitioners in health and social care and to what degree the goals of the policies are being enacted.

The investigation comprised two stages. First, the key drivers of digitalization in the national policies were identified. Second, a survey was disseminated to practitioners within health and social care, asking them to indicate their stance on each key driver (using Likert scales).

The findings of this paper are twofold. First, they demonstrate that practitioners more readily enact the key drivers centered around their everyday operations, such as improving services and care and increasing efficiency. Second, it shows that key drivers of a more rhetorical nature, such as “becoming the best,” do not yield benefits for practitioners.

This paper shows that for policies to have an effect in practice and to contribute to change, they should be rooted in key drivers centered around practitioners’ everyday operations, promoting specificity over abstraction.

While previous studies have involved policy analysis, few studies investigate the enactment of policies, how they are implemented and whether they contribute to changes in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accreditation documents (ADs) in the competition based on provider quality in a quasi-market for primary healthcare.

The paper uses a mixed-method research methodology to analyse two primary healthcare ADs in two Swedish regions. In total, 19 interviews were conducted with actors involved in the creation and use of such documents.

This paper points to the crucial role of ADs in the identification of quality differences that influence the competition in primary healthcare. This finding contrasts with the commonly held laissez-faire idea that competition causes providers to develop their own service concepts and where the invisible hand creates quality differences. The paper adds to the discussion with its detailed description of how ADs create competition among primary healthcare providers through selection processes, quality differentiation, and ranking.

The paper does not explore quality differences in the medical treatment of patients in primary healthcare centres.

The paper provides insights for politicians on how to use ADs to control competition and regulate choice.

The paper takes an innovative approach to the examination of how ADs increase the competition in primary healthcare choice.

One prominent translation of patient‐centred care is public sector consumerism by which patients may influence the services provided by acting like consumers. The focus of this study is the extent to which technological devices in national public healthcare portals in the UK and three Nordic countries transform patients so that they can act as healthcare consumers.

The paper applies a comparative case study methodology.

As national healthcare portals, Norway's technological devices, to some extent, and the devices in the UK and Denmark, to a greater extent, equip patients to act as consumers. At present, Sweden's technological devices are much more limited. In Denmark and the UK, these devices that use quality indicators are in the forefront in the development of national healthcare portals.

A theoretical framework is applied that emphasizes the role of technological devices in the construction of calculating consumers as described by Michel Callon. This perspective, which promotes patient‐centred care, enhances the understanding of fundamental design issues related to the role of technology as the individual forms his/her relationship with healthcare systems.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

This study aims to examine the effects of the culture for innovation, work engagement and the use of interactive performance measurement systems (PMSs) in the interorganizational accounting processes automation at a shared services center (SSC).

A single-entity survey was carried out at an SSC provider of B2B accounting services of a multinational company in the electrical sector, and structural equation modeling was applied for data analysis.

The results show that the culture for innovation, the work engagement and the use of interactive PMS positively and significantly influence the accounting process automation in the investigated SSC. Moreover, the use of interactive PMS presents a mediating effect on the relationship between culture for innovation and work engagement.

The research findings contribute by revealing that the culture of innovation, work engagement and the interactive PMS support the use of robotic process automation and artificial intelligence in the interorganizational automation of accounting processes in an SSC-type service ecosystem. This highlights the importance of the culture of innovation and the positive feeling toward work being reinforced by the organization and the role of the interactive PMS as a formal instrument to transmit the organizational objectives and provide a common vision.

The study reveals that the use of interactive PMS seems to be an important conductor of the behavior of employees toward the accounting process automation strategy at the SSC, reinforced, in this case, by the culture of innovation and work engagement.

After several years of political emancipation from colonial rule, it is time for African nations to do the same economically. Our analysis indicates that the current political leadership environment is VUCA laden and complicated, leading to grand challenges on the continent. Therefore, the old political leadership models are inadequate for addressing the African VUCA and leadership landscape, hence, the inability to achieve the needed economic advancement. We propose a paradigm shift in political leadership for the continent to bring the decades-long desire for economic freedom to fruition by adopting the relevant organizational science and corporate leadership models for political leadership effectiveness in this complex and dynamic environment. We accomplish this by integrating three frameworks to derive nascent management and leadership capabilities relevant to the new African political leadership context and to ensure current and future leadership readiness for this new environment.

This paper reviews existing research to understand when, how and with what results robotic process automation (RPA) is implemented by organizations.

The authors have identified 84 sources across eight databases and have analyzed them through the lens of a context–intervention–mechanism–outcomes framework (CIMO). The CIMO analysis maps the contextual drivers, intervention approaches and value related outcomes associated with RPA implementation.

The result of the analysis is the identification of four mechanisms explaining the approach organizations take to implement RPA: digitizing business processes, performing knowledge work together with humans, replacing outsourcing with RPA robots and developing a new business model. Therefore, in this paper, in order to reduce RPA literature fragmentation, the authors take into account the digital transformation (DT) perspective, by considering RPA as one example of digital technology.

This study sensitize organizational adopters to the different mechanisms they can deploy to conduct RPA implementations to achieve different desired outcomes in response to different drivers. Moreover, having a clear picture of the key enablers and associated barriers to the realization of these alternative paths serve as a useful map to guide the implementation process.

The findings contribute to DT research by conceptualizing these mechanisms through which organizations deploy automation tools—such as RPA.