The 'Iron Cage' strengthened? Discretion and digital discipline

Research on changes in public administration associated with the adoption and use of information and communication technologies ('informatization'), almost univocally supports the conclusion that shop floor discretion disappears under their influence. We, however, are ill at ease with this direction in thought about discretion. Our unease is based on the scholarly work about practices, organizational learning and responsiveness. In this article, we test the thesis on the relation between informatization and operational discretion in an empirical research of operational discretion and informatization in two Dutch public agencies, both large and both automated. Our findings show that informatization does not destroy operational discretion, but rather obscures discretion. Based on the work of Argyris, we show that the phenomenon at work is 'participatory boundary practices', the direct personal ties that keep an organization together. ICTs destroy such links and thereby affect organizational learning. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007

Assessing Value-Based Plans in Public R&D Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Part 11: e-GovernanceInternational audienceThere is a need for research regarding how to manage public research and development (R&D) to create societal values. The paper focuses on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in a case study, the microelectronics research center. Twenty-four factors (e.g. mission, internal R&D, collaboration and management-related factors) were constructed in a hierarchy model for assessing three innovation plans: knowledge, societal and commercial orientation. The AHP analysis reveals that commercial orientation has the highest impact score on innovation factors. However, given that the selected case study is a taxpayer-funded public R&D organisation, societal expectations have to be factored into their innovation plans. Hence, the paper provides a sensitivity analysis as a result of which a suggestion is made to increase the priority of collaboration-related factors to improve the impact of societal orientation