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1 – 10 of over 7000The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
Case study methodology involving semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observations, and archival records was utilized in the study. Interview subjects include management staff, general employees, and information technology (IT) specialists to provide rich descriptions of their work practice.
Findings
Three distinct contexts contribute to cross-boundary work practice in relation to IT use and non-use, namely, standardization (complete IT use), hybridization (partial IT use), and conventionalization (zero IT use). Technology enactment strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, adaptation, and configuration are employed depending on actors’ interpretation of technology complexity and task interdependency.
Practical implications
Early interventions could involve examining how and why employees accept or avoid technology as part of their work practice and how they switch between enactment strategies. Organizations could ensure better team support to capitalize on the robust social interaction in cross-boundary work contexts to develop greater synergy in technology improvisations.
Originality/value
The study extends the technology enactment perspective as it offers new meanings to structures of action by understanding the temporal agentic orientations and how these are constructed by cross-boundary work contexts. It also offers insight into how enactment strategies are developed according to the productive tensions that arise from the interplay of cognitive orientations.
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Benjamin Faro, Babak Abedin and Dilek Cetindamar
The purpose of this paper is to examine how public sector organizations become nimbler while retaining their resilience during digital transformation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how public sector organizations become nimbler while retaining their resilience during digital transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a hermeneutic approach in conducting deep expert interviews with 22 senior executives and managers of multiple organizations. The method blends theory and expert views to study digital transformation in the context of enterprise information management.
Findings
Drawing on technology enactment framework (TEF), this research poses that organizational form is critical in the enactment of technologies in digital transformation. By extending the TEF, the authors claim that organizations are not in pure bureaucratic or network organizational form during digital transformation; instead, they need a hybrid combination in order to support competing strategic needs for nimbleness and resilience simultaneously. The four hybrid organizational forms presented in this model (4R) allow for networks and bureaucracy to coexist, though at different levels depending on the level of resiliency and nimbleness required at each point in the continuous digital transformation journey.
Research limitations/implications
The main theoretical contribution of this research is to extend the TEF to illustrate that the need for coexistence of nimbleness with stability in a digital transformation results in a hybrid of networks and bureaucratic organization forms. This research aims to guide public sector organizations' digital transformation with extended the TEF as a tool for building the required organizational forms to influence the technology enactment to best meet their strategic needs in the digital era.
Practical implications
The results from expert interviews point to the fact that the hybrid organizational forms create a multi-modal organization, extending the understanding of enterprise information management. Depending on the department or business needs, a hybrid organizational form mode would be dominant. This dominance creates a paradox in organizations to handle both resilience and nimbleness. Therefore, the 4R model is provided as a guide to public sector managers and consultants to guide strutting their organization for digital transformation.
Originality/value
The model (4R), the extended TEF, shows that organizations still work towards networks and bureaucracy; however, they are not two distinct concepts anymore; they coexist at different levels in hybrid forms depending on the needs of the organization.
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Roland K. Yeo and Michael J. Marquardt
The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of technology on organizational change during an electronic government implementation in a public organization in East…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of technology on organizational change during an electronic government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia. It also examines the interpretation and enactment of technology as affecting organizational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The research utilized a case study approach involving semi-structured interviewing with 18 employees representing department heads, middle managers, and technical officers. The data were triangulated by unobtrusive observations of meetings and work processes as well as archival records.
Findings
Technology could either constrain or enable change based on the interplay of intended and unintended use. The way actors interpret the role of technology during change also affects their enactment of technology, leading to both innovation and disruption in work practices. In turn, their enactment patterns shape organizational structure, strategy, and performance.
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to the organizational change literature by exploring how individual-level change has led to organizational outcomes as a result of technology. It extends the technology enactment and sociomateriality literature by considering technology use as an organizing process to facilitate change in order to understand the interplay of the social and material aspect of technology.
Practical implications
Employees should be made aware of and accountable for the consequences of unintended use or avoidance of technology in order to enable positive change. Collective sensemaking of technology-induced change should be encouraged to transform work practices so as to shape organizational structure, strategy, and performance.
Originality/value
Unlike similar research, this study extends the structuration perspective of technology in work organizations by exploring how technology enables and constrains organizational change through intended and unintended use. It further illuminates the power of human agency to innovate and organize structures of action that modify social relations and organizational strategy influencing organizational performance.
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Nicholas Berente and Stefan Seidel
Given widespread digital transformations in all sorts of organizations, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the role of digital technologies in institutional change. In this…
Abstract
Given widespread digital transformations in all sorts of organizations, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the role of digital technologies in institutional change. In this essay, we characterize existing scholarship in terms of whether it emphasizes how digital technologies are either “triggers” or “carriers” of institutional change. As triggers, digital technologies serve as catalysts that afford novel structuring as they are enacted in practice. As carriers, digital technologies can shape those practices in ways that are consistent with the structuring of other fields. We propose a view of institutionally embedded affordances, where digital technologies are both triggers and carriers that afford institutional change. We conclude with a reflection on how digital technologies are implicated in the convergence of previously distinct industrial fields.
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Francois Duhamel, Isis Gutiérrez-Martínez, Sergio Picazo-Vela and Luis Luna-Reyes
The purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical model explaining information technology outsourcing performance in the public sector as well as a set of empirically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical model explaining information technology outsourcing performance in the public sector as well as a set of empirically testable propositions to improve the understanding of key determinants of success.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on Fountain ' s technology enactment framework, the authors integrated inter-organizational factors, such as trust, knowledge sharing, and quality of outsourcing interfaces, in the model and added organizational culture alignment between service providers and public administration to enhance Fountain ' s original framework.
Findings
The authors proposed 17 empirically testable propositions to establish the relationships between key variables in IT outsourcing projects in the public sector.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed model provides guidance for future research aimed at advancing knowledge of IT outsourcing.
Originality/value
The contribution lies in the development of specific variables, such as trust, knowledge, and organizational culture, which are related to building an outsourcing relationship and are used as determinants of the quality of organizational interfaces between public bureaucracies and IT outsourcing providers.
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Tiwonge Davis Manda and Jo Herstad
The purpose of this paper is to discuss implications of human-technology interaction in organizational change, especially where mobile phones are introduced to replace paper-based…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss implications of human-technology interaction in organizational change, especially where mobile phones are introduced to replace paper-based reporting.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs a case study approach, focusing on implementation of mobile technology for health (mHealth) solutions to support remote data communication, between health facilities and a district health office (DHO), in Malawi.
Findings
The findings suggest that mobile phones are relevant to parts of multi-stage tasks such as data reporting, which comprise compilation, transportation, and digitization of data, and delivery of feedback. Consequently, innovation due to the introduction of mobile phones, is found in their interaction with other artefacts (paper, desktop computers, etc.), and existing paper-centric and emerging work practices.
Research limitations/implications
Although lessons from this study could be transported across contexts, practitioners, and researchers should pay particular attention to contextual differences.
Practical implications
In accounting for the mutual shaping between technology and context/work practices the paper demonstrates that mHealth innovation demands significant practical work.
Originality/value
mHealth research is often preoccupied with capabilities of mobile devices. First, the authors account for interaction between artefacts, existing, and emerging use contexts, and the use process, at multiple levels of organization. Through this, the authors argue for a need to seriously consider idiosyncrasies of artefacts and tasks at hand, as well as distributed affordances across artefacts, in mHealth implementations. Second, the authors argue that contrary to the general focus on mobile phones as tools for supporting people on the move, their relevance might actually be found in reducing people’s mobility.
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The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap in online information and service adoption by small public organizations. According to the US Census, small municipalities…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap in online information and service adoption by small public organizations. According to the US Census, small municipalities with populations of 5,000 or less constitute 76 percent of all municipalities. Moreover, although these governments can benefit most from e-government adoption, their e-government activities are rarely studied.
Design/methodology/approach
The primary data collection is a state-wide survey of small municipalities along with collecting data on websites and other government documents. The data analysis utilized logistic regression for adoption decisions.
Findings
The findings suggest a distinct set of factors influencing e-government adoption by small municipalities as opposed to large ones. Moreover, management support for open access to government is critical for both e-government information and transaction services while transaction services are also driven by administrative capacity and citizen demand.
Originality/value
This study is original in several ways. First, it is comprehensive in incorporating capacity and network factors along with motivation for management support. Second, it focuses on small municipalities that are important but less studied. At last, it provides a rich understanding of the distinction between information and transaction e-government services.
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Silvio Carlo Ripamonti and Laura Galuppo
The purpose of this study is to introduce the Human Resources (HR) module of the SAP suite in the Italian branch of a leading multinational pharmaceutical company. This study can…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to introduce the Human Resources (HR) module of the SAP suite in the Italian branch of a leading multinational pharmaceutical company. This study can be re-conducted within the interpretive tradition of information technology studies focusing on the attempt to understand and describe how software users in the HR department interpreted the enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology, how they changed their work practices and the changes that occurred in organizational discourses and meanings alongside the process.
Design/methodology/approach
The case study/intervention took start with the impulse of the Italian HR department manager, who was struck by the way that the ERP system technology implementation was affecting work life of the employees in the department. This research/intervention used interviews, focus groups and internal documents as sources of data. The authors conducted and analyzed 20 narrative interviews and 3 focus groups with middle managers, and they analyzed about 120 pages of internal memos.
Findings
The implementation of ERP systems is almost invariably accompanied by great expectations of increased process rationalization, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and upper managers’ discourses make large use of what Engeström et al., 2010 have called process efficiency rhetoric. But the ERP technology, most likely, will neither revolutionize management nor will it become a “complete calculation machine” that runs an entire work organization (Quattrone and Hopper, 2005, p. 731).
Originality/value
The implementation of the ERP system has caused conflicts and disturbances, aggravating contradictions that already existed between activity systems and introducing new types of contradictions. Pre-existent contradictions become clearer; there is a stronger interconnection between activity systems. The individual agents could experiment an expansion in their activities if only they will initiate a movement of expansive learning and if they are not prevented from doing so by coercive control. The natural expansion of the subjects’ scope of activity and horizons of possibilities could be sustained by the ERP technology if it is not used as a tool for domination and if the upper management does not try and separate what cannot in actuality be separated: The actors’ capabilities of improvised learning, which makes the institution of a new mode of the activity possible, and their capacity to assume collective control of the meaning and direction of the transformation of the activity. ERPs are technologies that can naturally bring transformations in the activity system and networks where they are introduced, but in some cases, they can easily and in a non reflective manner be intended as tools for oppression by the upper management.
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Virtual organizations present numerous challenges for managers, especially in regards to organizational identity formation. This paper aims to address this gap in the extant…
Abstract
Purpose
Virtual organizations present numerous challenges for managers, especially in regards to organizational identity formation. This paper aims to address this gap in the extant literature by exploring how organizational narratives can foster identification with the virtual organization. Moreover, information technology can further catalyze the positive effects of narratives on identity formation.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 18 members of a nonprofit, virtual organization – DiverseCS – were collected. Participants were asked about their roles in the organization, challenges and collaborative efforts. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyze the data.
Findings
Efforts to instill a sense of identity and community through the adoption of information technology was met with resistance. Rather, senior leaders encouraged and institutionalized the creation of organizational narratives. Novel use of information technology – social media and hyperlinks – became a means to amplify the positive effects of narrative creation and sharing by organizational members.
Originality/value
This study investigates how some members of a virtual organization use information technology in novel ways to further spread organizational narratives to other organizational members and also to external collaboration partners. This research contributes to the extant literature on virtual organizational identity and also proposes a research agenda.
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Joseph Njiku, Védaste Mutarutinya and Jean François Maniraho
This study aims to investigate the development of Mathematics teachers' attitudes towards technology integration through collaborative lesson design activities as part of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the development of Mathematics teachers' attitudes towards technology integration through collaborative lesson design activities as part of professional development.
Design/methodology/approach
The pre-and post-test for non-equivalent comparison groups quasi-experiment was adopted as the study design where 125 participants were distributed into three groups in Dar es Salaam – Tanzania. Data analysis was done using gain in scores, t-test, split-plot analysis of variance, and eta-squared.
Findings
Comparison across groups and between pre-intervention and post-intervention showed that collaborative lesson design activities have more potential to develop Mathematics teachers' attitudes than the isolated implementation of such activities. Relevant recommendations are provided.
Practical implications
The study offers valuable insights for teacher education especially in-service training focussing on effective ways of developing teachers' competencies especially attitudes towards technology integration.
Originality/value
Although lesson design studies are prevalent, majority have investigated the development of teachers' knowledge rather than attitude for integrating technology. Additionally, the study sheds light on attitude as a multidimensional construct thereby providing more insight into the subject.
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