Public Sector Innovation and Diffusion Processes – Preliminary Results of a Qualitative Study in Japan

Electronic Government (eGovernment) and New Public Management (NPM) have been subject to numerous innovation studies. However, the question of how such singe-organisational innovations diffuse throughout the public sector still remains unanswered. Here, we analyse public sector innovations and identify politico-administrative system dynamics shaping the processes of their emergence and diffusion. By means of expert interviews in Japan, we seek to elaborate our argument that system dynamics, such as recent efforts to decentralise and localise governance, have significant impact on how innovations and the diffusion of innovations take place. This research-in-progress paper contains preliminary results

Demographic Awareness and E-Government – A Quantitative Analysis of Germany and Japan

Innovating public administrations, for instance by means of E-Government, becomes an increasingly important issue in order to satisfy growing demands of citizens and to reduce costs of public service provision. Demographic change in industrialized countries, namely societal aging and depopulation, has various influences on the development of E-Government strategies. On the one hand, elderly citizens use services of their local government more often than people of younger age-groups. On the other hand, they are less likely to use complex electronic services in general and E-Government in specific. In addition, municipalities have to deal with increased cost pressure and the aging of the workforce within their local administrations as a result of the demographic change. Our quantitative analysis focuses on identifying the perceived importance of problems related to the demographic change in German and Japanese public administrations, addresses what areas of reform are related to these problems and points out implications for the development of innovation strategies by means of E-Government. We contrast the developments in both countries with respect to both demographic situation and public innovation in order to derive possible implications for the future

Epistemological Perspectives on Multi-Method Information Systems Research

There is a continuing discussion on methodological pluralism in IS research. Several claims have been made both for and against methodological pluralism. The debate focuses mainly on discussing the relationship between research methods and IS research paradigms, especially positivism and interpretivism. Also, the literature analyzes the epistemological assumptions of research paradigms, but pays little attention to a direct association of research methods with epistemology. We argue that the potential for methodological pluralism depends heavily on the epistemological characteristics of the research methods themselves. After analyzing various arguments pro and contra methodological pluralism, we then provide an epistemological framework addressing the relevant aspects in this context

Open Innovation and Public Sector Business Process Management – A Multi-Method Study

Open Process Innovation provides a framework for studying how to systematically make use of knowledge that lies outside of an organization’s boundaries for process innovation initiatives. Here, we seek to investigate into variables that impact on the qualities of Open Process Innovation taking the example of the public sector domain. This paper examines how a lack of resources impacts on BPM. Specifically in investigates how personnel resource scarcity exerts influence on the involvement of i) customers (here citizens and local companies) and ii) consultants (here management and software consultants) in public sector BPM. Our multi-method analysis shows that personnel resource scarcity has consequences for BPM-related collaboration schema as it restricts the involvement of customers. Based on our findings, implications for theory and practice are discussed, including implications for studies on BPM maturity or on business process design. We call for a governancetheory perspective on process innovation as a fundamental basis for understanding and designing the institutions that shape collaboration in open process innovation

Identity in information systems

Open Process Innovation – drawing from the literature on Open Innovation and Business Process Management (BPM) – promotes the study of how to systematically make use of knowledge that lies outside of an organization’s boundaries for process innovation initiatives. Open Innovation has been heavily studied for product innovation, however, process innovation has not yet been researched from such perspective. Against this background, we seek to investigate into variables that impact on the qualities of Open Process Innovation taking the example of the public sector domain. This paper examines how personnel resource scarcity exerts influence on the involvement of i) customers (here citizens and local companies) and ii) consultants (here management and software consultants) in public sector BPM. Our multi-method analysis shows that personnel resource scarcity has consequences for BPM-related collaboration schema as it restricts the involvement of customers. Based on our findings, implications for theory and practice are discussed, including implications for studies on BPM maturity or on business process design. We call for a governance-theory perspective on process innovation as a fundamental basis for understanding and designing the institutions that shape collaboration in open process innovation

The Age-Divide in Private Internet Usage: A Quantitative Study of Technology Acceptance

In today’s information society internet usage and e-literacy become more and more important. However, inequalities in internet usage of different social groups become and stay observable. Here, especially elderly citizens, with an increasing share of population in western societies, are often included from benefits related to information technology and internet usage. One important aspect of local governments’ policy is to bridge this so-called digital divide. However, up to now a thorough understanding of potential factors influencing private internet usage is not provided by the literature. Hence, this paper aims at identifying important influencing factors in order to explain senior citizens’ private internet use. Thus, we develop a model based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and digital divide research which is tested against comprehensive survey data (n=192). The combined model is able to explain more than 70% of the variation of private internet use. Major implications for future research and e-Inclusion practice are discussed

The MATH of Internet Adoption: Comparing Different Age-Groups

Modern societies share two common trends: First, elderly peopleform a strongly growing group in the population (societal aging)and, second, the importance of information and communicationtechnology is growing rapidly. However, the elderly are oftenexcluded from benefiting from IT-enabled service delivery: Anage-related digital divide exists. Current research lacksunderstanding what reasons prevent elderly to use the internet.Therefore, this paper examines the intention to use the internet ina private manner among the elderly. For higher explanatory powerwe also included two other age-groups (G1: \u3c40; G2: 40-59;G3: \u3e59). Here, we build a survey instrument based on the Modelof Acceptance of Technology in Households (MATH) and test themodel against comprehensive survey data (n=501). We find outthat MATH is able to explain between 42% and 81% of thevariance in private internet usage intention. Moreover, severaldifferences in driver for usage intention exist, e.g. was theimportance of applications for fun much higher in the first agegroup than among the other. Potentially fruitful avenues for futureresearch are discussed

Participative enterprise modelling for balanced scorecard implementation

Balanced Scorecards (BSC) have been established as a valuable and practicable instrument addressing major management problems in organisations. BSC are commonly IT-supported and found a conceptual basis for management information systems. They are often applied to IT-Controlling, and they are also repeatedly applied to specify requirements towards the corporate IT architecture. However, BSC implementation often struggles when it comes to discovering and documenting organisational knowledge that is not easily accessible or not of sufficient quality. On the other hand, Enterprise modelling (EM) seeks to solve organisational design problems in, for instance, business process reengineering, strategy planning, enterprise integration, and information systems development. Here, participative EM methods lead to improved quality as well as to consensus and to increased acceptance of the business decisions. At this juncture, participative EM can support BSC implementation projects that comprise activities requiring the discovery and documentation of organisational knowledge that is not easily accessible or not of sufficient quality. For that reason, the aim of this paper is to integrate participative EM approaches, taking Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) as an example, and BSC implementation. In order to operationalise this conceptual improvement, we will perform a stepwise analysis of BSC implementation processes and identify shortcomings that are able to be addressed with the help of participative enterprise modelling

When Routine Work Becomes Social: How Virtual Social Facilitation Increases Performance on Simple IT-Based Tasks

With the advent of social applications, the question arises of how organizations can utilize such technology for improving task performance. While social applications certainly bear the potential to trigger the development of radically new business models and business processes, we seek to study how the enrichment of IT-based routine work (simple tasks) by complementing social features (audience condition) may advance performance. In 280 experiments with altogether 40 participants, we investigate the impact of a) monitoring, b) measurement, and c) feedback dialogs on performance of simple IT-based tasks. We compare the effects of these three treatments in a setting of physical presence and in a setting of virtual presence. The results show that monitoring has the strongest effect in the physical presence setting while, in the virtual presence setting, both monitoring and feedback dialogs can improve task performance significantly. Theory-wise, we draw on social psychology and develop a (design) theory of virtual social facilitation that bears major implications for designing routine work information systems and technology