To address sub research question 2 - how does the organizational form of e-government collaboration occur through the mediation of social media, I draw on the findings from paper 3 (Wang, 2018) and paper 4 (Wang and Medaglia, 2017).
Conceptually, I took an institutional logics approach to understand the organizational form of e-government collaboration as a result of hybridization process between institutional logics. In addition, I also engage with the concept of temporary organization to characterize the emergent organizational form of e-government collaboration through the mediation of social media. The findings presented here are based on the longitudinal data of SODA (i.e., case 3), which I followed from the beginning of the project formation (i.e., from 2015 to 2017).
The findings have revealed that in a turbulent environment where the range and dynamics of stakeholders change frequently, the organizational form of e-government collaboration can be a development of
organizational form of SODA has undergone a transition over the project course, changing from a social media supported temporary project network (identified in the findings of paper 4), to a permanent private organization with different share distributions (identified in the findings of paper 3).
Initially, SODA was established as a pilot project among a network of open data advocates from both government and non-government stakeholders in Shanghai without a clear contractual agreement and a loose goal to “organize something like BigApps”. Considering the project is inter-organizational by nature, and does not have a physical presence, the communication and coordination is primarily done within and across WeChat groups. The social media based temporary project network is characterized by four characteristics along the dimension of time, task, team and transition (identified in the findings of paper 4).
First, the project is developed simultaneously and virtually by different stakeholders in order to meet the deadline as agreed by the stakeholders, thus the project timeline is managed in an ad-hoc and non-linear manner. Second, the tasks are created, assigned and engaged with among the stakeholders based on the stakeholders’ availability and their self-identified capabilities. Third, the selection of project team members is continuous, and is based on the accessibility and expertise of the person rather than their formal organizational affiliations. Fourth, the project is in general organized informally among the stakeholders without following hierarchical relations. Nonetheless, due to the public nature of the project, the project collaboration is at times characterized with formal organizing practices in the interaction with high-ranking government officials. A summary of the characteristics of social media supported temporary project organization can be found in table 11.
As SODA developed, another organizational form of the collaboration - a permanent organization, a private company with a physical presence - emerged in 2016, in parallel to the project network. By contrast, this private company was established to exist in the long run, with a clear aim to operate SODA-related affairs and a clear structure of CEO, shareholders, and manager(s); each having their own official responsibilities and tasks. The shareholders and CEOs were selected based on their previous engagement with SODA. The shareholders, including the CEO, are the core stakeholders of SODA and were involved from the beginning of the project. The manager in the organization was hired through a formal recruitment procedure. At a later stage (in 2017), the private company changed its share distribution, and has also started to develop new business areas (identified in the finding of paper 3).
A further examination of the data shows that the emergence and transition of organizational forms is, in fact, a hybridization process that is mediated through social media, and embedded in the institutional environment of the collaboration. The changes in the organizational form of e-government collaboration
Table 11. Characteristics of social media based temporary project organization (Wang and Medaglia, 2017)
Dimensions of temporary organization
Sub-dimensions Emergent organizing practices through the mediation of social media
Time Project duration Fixed duration of project based on agreement among stakeholders
Project pacing Ad-hoc, non-linear management of time through virtual co-presence of team members
Task Project goal Following top-down, centralized e-government strategy Team member
responsibilities
Discursive task creation, assignment and engagement among team members (stakeholders)
Team Individual to
team
Serendipitous recruitment of stakeholders based on expertise;
The team members are not necessarily affiliated with known organizations
Team to team environment
Legitimization of the team through shared reference to social media
Transition Post goal Achievement
Termination or another iteration of the project;
Shifting ways of organizing
Shifting formal and informal organizing practices
For instance, in the case of SODA, I have identified three institutional logics (i.e., community, local government and corporate) that are at play based on the different sources of legitimacy, authority, and identity in the collaboration (See table 12). In particular, the logic of community underlines the unity of will as a source of legitimacy, commitment to community value as a source of authority, and voluntary and cooperative engagement as a source of identity. The logic of local bureaucracy underlines the top-down authority across levels of government as a source of legitimacy, upward accountability from local government to national government as well as rules and procedures as a source of authority, and bureaucratic roles as a source of identity. The logic of corporate is concerned with consolidating and advancing the market position as a source of legitimacy, board of directors as a source of authority and organizational roles as a source of identity.
Table 12. The three identified institutional logics in SODA (Wang, 2018) Logic of Community Logic of Local Bureaucracy Logic of Corporate Source of
Legitimacy
Unity of will;
Belief in trust and reciprocity
Top-down authorities Market position
Source of Authority
Commitment to community values and ideology
Upward accountability; Rules and procedures
Board of directors/top management
Source of Identity
Emotional connection;
Ego‐satisfaction and reputation
Bureaucratic roles Organizational roles
The findings indicate a strong presence of community logic among the stakeholders during the initial phase of SODA (in 2015). As new stakeholders join the collaboration in 2016 and 2017, following the success of SODA 2015, the presence of the logics of local bureaucracy and corporate has strengthened. The stakeholders thus found themselves caught up in the conflicts of the demands of different logics during the development of SODA, which resolve around three aspects. The first conflict concerns the different perceptions of ownership. The second conflict concerns the differences in the perceptions of leadership.
And the third conflict concerns the divergence in working norms, boundaries of membership, and the perceptions of responsibilities.
The findings indicate that in order to cope with these conflicts, the stakeholders undergo a three-step hybridization process to shape the organizational form by hybridizing the existent demands of different institutional logics (See figure 7), starting with stakeholders’ evaluation of the existent demands. The evaluation phase is triggered by confusion or pressures to respond to conflicting demands, and can take forms such as official evaluations or group discussions. Following the evaluation, there comes the actual coping phase, where I have identified three coping strategies in response to different institutional logics:
prototyping, selective coupling and mitigating internal tensions.
In particular, prototyping concerns assembling preliminary organizational arrangements, and is a response to the logic dynamics in a domain that is not yet mature enough to impose demands over another on the form and ways of project organizing. Selective coupling concerns the combination of structural elements of different logics at play, and is a response to the competition between these logics. While the stakeholders
stakeholders use WeChat groups to segregate different working norms, create different levels of membership, and accommodate different decision-making processes.
Figure 7. Social media mediated hybridization process (Adapted from (Wang, 2018))
* SoMe = social media
More importantly, the finding indicates two important roles of social media in the hybridization process:
one as a virtual sandbox with a suite of tools, and the other as a repository of knowledge and experiences.
As a virtual sandbox, social media allows the stakeholders to experiment with different organizational structures that accord to different combination of logics, by using different features. For instance, in the collaboration of SODA, the stakeholders have experimented with different kinds of grouping configurations in order to figure out what would be a more appropriate configuration of the relationships between the stakeholders. In addition, the very virtual presence of social media also creates a sense of segregation for the stakeholders, and shields the stakeholders from the organizational manifestations of other institutional logics.
An important note here is that the features of social media do not necessarily determine how the stakeholders use them. For instance, in the collaboration of SODA, the stakeholders engage the group feature in opposing ways. While the stakeholders use certain WeChat groups to be inclusive of other stakeholders and enable joint decision-making, they also create paralleled groups to exclude some other stakeholders, and create exclusive groups with higher-ranking government officials to accommodate bureaucratic decision-making.
In this sense, the resulting content (i.e., chat history) and structure (i.e., combination of memberships and groups) on social media becomes a repository of knowledge and experiences associated with the negotiation of institutional logics, hence the inscription of multiple institutional logics. And by engaging with the group structures, as well as attending to the previous content created on social media, the enacted social media also reproduces these inscribed institutional logics and their temporary combinations. The
media, once the organizational structure and practices becomes settled, hence the combination of institutional logics stabilized, social media may no longer be of use for the collaboration as a primary communication platform.
In sum, the findings show in a highly turbulent environment where the range and dynamics of stakeholders change frequently, the organizational form of e-government collaboration can be a series of organizational settlements that are largely different from each other. The findings indicate the changes in organizational form are partly driven by the changing dynamics of the institutional logics at play, and the settlements are the results of a hybridization process of the institutional logics. In particular, the findings point to the two roles of social media in the occurrence of the organizational form, as a virtual sandbox for the stakeholders to experiment with different organizational structures, and a repository of knowledge and experiences that reproduce the temporary combinations of institutional logics.