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PublicationStrategies for Introducing Organizational Innovation to Public Service OrganizationsAs social systems, organizations need to ensure connectivity between established and deviant communication streams to accomplish organizational innovation. This article explores elements and systemic strategies of connectivity formation for the introduction of an organizational innovation such as the concept of crowd innovation in the public sector. For public administrations, crowd innovation represents an organizational innovation since it implies broad participation and the integration of external ideas, and thus often opposes prevalent organizational structures. Our findings contribute to the knowledge on systemic innovation management and suggest that public managers can enhance connectivity formation by addressing semantics, routines, practices, roles, and redundancies.Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
Scopus© Citations 23 -
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PublicationHERA: A Service-oriented Approach to Cross-organisational E-Government Processes(Berner Fachhochsch., E-Government-Inst., 2008-01-01)The key ideas underlying the HERA project are presented. HERA is developing a generic reference architecture for cross-organizational, end-to-end e-government processes. By adding application-specific aspects to the reference architecture via a model-driven approach specific application systems can be derived from it. We use the e-government process for the declaration of company taxes on profits as an application scenario to develop and validate the project results. The model-driven approach allows to introduce and maintain e-government applications with a comparatively small amount of effort, thus making a whole new kind of e-government applications economically practicable. To ensure its sustainability the HERA architecture is based on the concept of the future "Event Bus" Switzerland and complies with the relevant e-government standards of the standardization association eCH.
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PublicationSupporting the Formation of External Absorptive Capacity for ICT Cluster Development(International Public Management Network (IPMN), 2013-09-05)In times of economic crisis, innovative technology clusters are seen as less vulnerable and thus as a promising approach for sustainable development. Consequently, many European cities and regions have invested heavily in the development of local information and communication technology (ICT) clusters. However, the numerous cluster development paths in different local and national contexts led to different, sometimes negative, results. The question remains how cities and regions can support ICT clusters under short technology lifecycles and increasing global competition. This paper answers the question from an external absorptive capacity (EAC) perspective. EAC, the ability of an organization to identify and recognize the value of externally generated knowledge, to learn from and with partners, and to transfer knowledge back to the organization, has been regarded as substantial for the development of economic clusters. Based on EAC, companies can react faster to rising challenges, develop and test innovations earlier, and create additional benefits along the value chain. However, until now it has not been analyzed how cities and regions could support the formation of EAC in ICT companies. Using a case study of a Swiss ICT cluster, we analyze the potential of EAC in ICT companies and suggest opportunities for cities and regional authorities to support its development. Our results show several innovative approaches and describe new roles for cities and regional authorities to shape a beneficiary environment providing access, establishing contacts, and support companies and start-ups with cooperation attempts and patent rights. These activities would support the identification and learning of EAC metaroutines and thus the innovativeness of the established companies and start-ups as well as the ICT cluster as a whole.
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PublicationThe Formation of Connectivity for the Implementation of Crowd InnovationOpening up the public sector for implementing crowd innovation is a demanding task for public managers: Since the concept implies broad and equal participation and the integration of external ideas, it often opposes prevalent organizational culture and thus represents also an organizational innovation. According to systems theory, organizations have to ensure connectivity between established and deviant communications in order to accomplish organizational innovation and maintain legitimacy. This article explores the process of connectivity formation for the implementation of crowd innovation in a large Swiss municipality. Using an in-depth longitudinal case study, the article examines actions of the project management team and the development of decisions of a top management team during the implementation process. The findings indicate that connectivity evolves from (a) characterizing the innovation as positive and as the best solution compared to alternatives, (b) outlining the innovation as a reversible experiment, (c) linking new concepts and established ideas, as well as (d) creating objectivity based on repeating communications. In conclusion, the authors emphasize the challenge of connectivity formation and the need for furthe research regarding organizational innovation in the public sector from a systemic perspective.
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PublicationCrowd innovation : The role of uncertainty for opening up the innovation process in the public sector(IRSPM International Research Society for Public Management, 2011-04-11)
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PublicationInterorganizational attention network in the diffusion of innovative e-Government practices(IRSPM University of Berne, 2010-04-07)The diffusion of innovative e-Government practices in times of economic crisis and shrinking budgets is especially challenging on the local government level. Agencies are forced to accomplish more tasks with fewer resources and are therefore hesitant to innovate without knowing the consequences. Our assumption is that diffusion of innovative e-Government practices takes place incrementally through a complex network of formal and informal relationships across agencies. Public managers use a variety of information sources for decision-making (Kraemer and Danziger, 1993). This is especially true for the local level where many different actors have an impact on the decision to implement e-Government innovations (Gil-Garcia and Martinez-Moyano, 2007). As a result, studies have shown that the diffusion of e-Government practices in the public sector spreads incrementally on the local level (West, 2005). Individual municipal governments often lack the infrastructure and resources needed in order to realize e-Government innovations and our hypothesis is that they turn to their peers for informal advice. So far, there is little evidence on how ICT is diffusing from innovators to late adopters within the complex system of federal, state and local government. To understand how these diffusion processes occur, we are using a social network approach to understand the informal information-sharing network among municipal CIOs in Switzerland that might help public managers to learn about best practices of their neighboring municipalities. In our initial data collection, we included 85 municipalities of one Swiss canton. We administered an online questionnaire, asking the municipal CIOs to indicate their informal information sharing approaches when it comes to ICT and best practices of e-Government solutions. In addition, we also collected information about the inter-agency interactions between the municipalities and the cantonal (state) agencies, to understand how formal, top-down information is spread through the system and might effect the municipal decision making when it comes to e-Government practices. The first results show a tight-knit - although sporadically used - network of information sharing between municipal CIOs to exchange best practices information, as well as a hubspoke network highlighting a hierarchy of attention towards those agencies considered as high performers.
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PublicationTowards cross-organisational e-Government: an integrated approach(Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, 2009-02-25)One of the most challenging issues in current e-Government initiatives is the seamless exchange of information and the efficient collaboration between public administrations, companies and the private sector. Either from an intra- or cross-organisational point of view spanning processes across multiple authorities leads to a collaboration of autonomous units under consideration of law and regulations. Despite the organisational dimension current approaches are mainly technical solutions - e.g. interoperability frameworks. Within this paper we present an integrated approach which incorporates organisational aspects of the public sector and which supports the correspondent implementation of solutions for cross-organisational e-Government by adopting Model-Driven-Development practices
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PublicationStrategizing in the Public Sector: Roles within Top Management Teams in the IT Strategy Process(Erasmus Universität, 2008-09-05)The complexity of information technology (IT) used today is higher and it changes far more rapidly than two decades ago. As a consequence public administrations are anxious to develop explicit IT-strategies in order to reduce the complexity of innovative IT projects and make them manageable again. Likewise it can be seen that the number of Top Management Teams (TMT) is also increasing while in contrary the one-leader approach is decreasing. The importance of TMT rises as the demands on the top manager concerning IT exceed the capacity of single actors. Still, it remains unclear how IT-strategies are actually developing in the public sector and what impact top managers have in the IT strategy process. In order to contribute to a better understanding of top management teams (TMT) in the IT strategy process preliminary results of a longitudinal case study will be presented based on the new strategy as practice approach. Against the background of a literature review on top management team roles the preliminary results of the case study include the identification of team roles specified through strategizing activities.
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