6 DISCUSSION
In this section, I discuss the findings of this study in relation to the existing e-government literature in the field of information systems and public administration, and show how the findings contribute to the existing literature on the understanding of governance, organizational form and social media in the context of e-government collaboration. I also present the implications of the findings for practice. At the end of this section, I present the limitations of this dissertation and highlight the avenues for future research.
adds more nuances to the relationship between learning and achieving the balance between the adaptiveness and stability of e-government collaboration in the current notion of adaptive governance.
In addition, the finding on the different social media enactments for knowledge sharing in e-government collaboration also adds more nuances to the view of social media in Margetts and Dunleavy (2013)’s notion of DEG 2.0. The findings have partially supported Margetts and Dunleavy (2013)’s argument that social media has altered the relationships between government and their stakeholders. For instance, in the case of SODA, social media adoption for knowledge sharing has brought even deeper interactions between government and their stakeholders, in comparison to the governments’ one-way information sharing with citizens. Meanwhile, this dissertation also adds more nuances by showing that the existing organizational arrangements also enact social media, and make social media more adaptive to accommodate the co-existence of different relationships among the stakeholders.
Second, the findings of this dissertation demonstrated that the distribution of decision-making power and accountability can be decoupled and distributed differently across government and non-government stakeholders in the governance arrangement of e-government collaboration. This finding contributes to the current conceptualization of adaptive governance, by identifying the distribution of decision-making power and accountability as the key dimensions for e-government collaboration to balance between adaptiveness and stability.
In Janssen and van der Voort (2016)’s conceptualization of adaptive governance in the context of e-government, they highlight the importance of ensuring the stability of e-government collaboration, as governments absorb knowledge and resources, as well as share decision-making with external stakeholders.
Janssen and van der Voort (2016) have suggested a series of strategies to achieve the balance between adaptiveness and stability of e-government collaboration, nevertheless, the idea of balancing between adaptiveness and stability remained an abstract one in their account.
Drawing on the four empirical case studies, this dissertation contributes to the conceptualization of adaptive governance by identifying the distribution of decision-making power and accountability across government and non-government stakeholders as the key to maintain the balance between adaptiveness and stability of e-government collaboration. By identifying the different combinations of the distributions, the case further shows that the balance between adaptiveness and stability is not a singular status that applies to all the e-government collaboration. Rather, given the different environmental conditions (e.g., time pressure, budget cut), there can be variations of balance between adaptiveness and stability that are based on the distributions of decision-making power and accountability between government and non-government stakeholders.
Third, based on the combination of the distribution of decision-making power and accountability across government and non-government stakeholders, I have identified a typology that consists of three types of adaptive governance: agile, polycentric and organic governance. The typology sets to establish a common
fashion. Although existing studies on the concept of adaptive governance have so far addressed various aspects of adaptive governance (Chatfield and Reddick, 2018; Hong and Lee, 2017, 2018), the conception of adaptive governance in these studies remain an ambiguous one, and may risk resulting in ‘theoretical multiplicity’ (Karpouzoglou et al., 2016) in the future adaptive governance research. By putting forward the typology based on identified dimensions, this dissertation also contributes to reducing the ambiguity of the notion of adaptive governance, and advances the conceptualization in a structured manner.
Along this line, the findings contribute to the conceptualization of governance, in particular adaptive governance, in the context of e-government. As the findings of this dissertation have unfolded the occurrence of governance in e-government collaboration through the mediation of social media, the findings have also provided insight into the organizational form of e-government collaboration, which I will discuss in the following.
6.1.2 Advancing the Understanding of Organizational Form in E-government Collaboration This dissertation also contributes to the understanding of the organizational form of e-government collaboration and its transformation over time, by providing insights on 1) a social media mediated hybridization process that results in different organizational forms of e-government collaboration, 2) the characteristics of the organizational form of social media based collaboration, and 3) the institutional logics that are at play in the field of e-government collaboration.
First, the findings of this dissertation show that the organizational form of e-government collaboration is a series of organizational settlements that result from a hybridization process amongst competing institutional logics. The findings of this dissertation have also foregrounded the role of social media in the hybridization process, as a virtual sandbox for experimenting with organizational structure and a repository for shared knowledge and experiences. These findings add to the current understanding of organizational form of e-government collaboration among e-government research.
Previous e-government research on governance has implied changes in the organizational form of public-private collaboration in the era of e-government, especially after the advent of social media. For instance, Dunleavy and Margetts (2006; 2013) have suggested a shift away from bureaucracy in the era of e-government. Janssen and van der Voort (2016) proposed the need of ambidextrous organizational forms of public-private collaboration in order to answer disruptive innovations. Literature on collective governance, or new public governance, especially have focused on network as the organizational form, and its close connection with networked technologies (Ansell and Gash, 2008; Jarvenpaa and Majchrzak, 2010; Jarvenpaa and Välikangas, 2016; Pardo et al., 2010). Nevertheless, current discussions on the appropriate organizational form of e-government collaboration is still largely based on established project
social media mediated hybridization process contributes to this line of literature by filling in this research gap.
Second, the findings have identified two different organizational forms of e-government collaboration as a result of the hybridization process. Both are divergent from the bureaucratic form of government organization, with one being social media based network, another being permanent private organization.
These findings are partly in agreement with previous e-government studies that suggest the potential decentralizing effects of social media use in public-private collaboration (Chun et al., 2010). In this sense the findings also add to the debate in public administration on the organizational form of government in the information society (Meijer, 2008; Osborne and Plastrik, 1997), by providing evidence of how the mediation of social media may undermine the foundation of government as a bureaucratic organization.
Nonetheless, the transition of the organizational forms of social media mediated e-government collaboration (i.e., from network to permanent private organization) also add nuances to this understanding, as the organizational form is temporary and may change as the institutional and organizational environments change.
Third, the findings of this dissertation identify a rising presence of community logic in the field of e-government collaboration, in addition to the logics of state and corporate. This finding adds a more complex picture to the current institutional understanding on IT public-private collaboration in information systems and management, which suggest IT public-private collaboration are subject to the competing logics of public good (state) and market (Ashraf et al., 2017; Beck et al., 2015; Mars and Lounsbury, 2009).
The logic of community could also be understood as a source of new organizational form that combines elements of network in the field of e-government collaboration.
The identified hybridization process also indicates that the existence of competing logics in the field of e-government collaboration do not necessarily result in one logic dominating to another, but a negotiation process that is constantly in flux. This finding opposes studies in management and organizational science that suggest the inevitable dominance of one logic over the others in a field (Reay and Hinings, 2005; Swan et al., 2010), and supports the argument that competing logics may co-exist in the long term (Battilana and Dorado, 2010; Dunn and Jones, 2010; Lounsbury, 2007; Reay and Hinings, 2009).
6.1.3 Advancing the Understanding of Social Media Adoption in E-government Collaboration This dissertation also contributes to the understanding of social media adoption in the context of e-government collaboration, by showing the embeddedness of social media adoption in both organizational and institutional arrangements, and the changes in social media enactment as the organizational and institutional arrangement of e-government collaboration develops over time.
First, on the organizational enactment of social media, the findings of this dissertation suggest different organizational experiences shape stakeholders’ perceptions and use of social media differently in order to
their roles and capabilities in the collaboration, the stakeholders’ frames of the nature, strategy and use of social media strategically for knowledge sharing change accordingly. This finding supports the stream of information systems research, which takes a critical stance on social media and its organizational impacts (Gibbs et al., 2013; Hwang et al., 2015; Majchrzak et al., 2013).
The findings on the relationships between the ambiguous frames of social media and the occurrence of adaptive governance arrangements demonstrate the incongruent technology frames can also be generative of governance. This finding opposes the previous TFR studies that suggest incongruent technology frames may cause conflicts among the stakeholders and lead to the collapse of collaborative project (Azad and Faraj, 2008; Barrett, 1999; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994). Rather, the findings suggest generative effects of a mix of congruent and incongruent frames to the occurrence of governance, which is in line with the TFR studies that focus on the roles of partial congruence (Hsu, 2009; Mazmanian, 2013; Van Burg et al., 2013;
Young et al., 2016).
Second, on the institutional enactment of social media, the findings indicate that as stakeholders make sense of the existent institutional demands around the organizational form of e-government collaboration, the stakeholders configure the features of social media differently in order to accommodate competing institutional demands. Meanwhile, these configurations are also inscribed in social media, and reproduce different combinations of institutional demands.
Along this line, the findings on the institutional enactment of social media over time provides a more nuanced picture on the link between social media and government transformation than the technology deterministic tone featured in some of the e-government research on social media (Bertot et al., 2010;
Criado et al., 2013; Margetts and Dunleavy, 2013). The findings of this dissertation also reject the skepticism among e-government researchers, such as Norris (2010) and Bryer and Zavattaro (2011), regarding whether the adoption of ICT can generate genuine government transformation. Our finding on the relation between institutional logics and social media enactment shows ICT are not necessarily institutionalized and routinized by government, especially in a collaborative context. Rather, the views and uses of technologies are shaped in the negotiation between multiple logics, and by engaging with these configurations of technologies, different combinations of institutional logics are reproduced. In this sense, the government transformation induced by communication technologies does not necessarily take place in a radical manner, but manifests in a hybrid form that accommodates different institutional logics.