Performance impacts of structure and volition in implementing policy through IT-enabled government-to-citizen and government-to-employee interactions

James S. Denford, Gregory S. Dawson and Kevin C. Desouza

Economic Analysis and Policy, 2019, vol. 64, issue C, 116-129

Abstract: Both citizens and public servants have both voluntary and mandatory interactions with government through technology and these interactions range from unstructured to highly structured based on the technology or business processes implemented. Using data on the 50 U.S. states, we develop taxonomies of IT-enabled innovation along two dimensions – volitional vs non-volitional and structured vs unstructured – for both internal (employee-facing) and external (citizen-facing) investments. Using configurational analysis, we link portfolios of IT-enabled innovation investments to internal and external performance outcomes and find that a broad-based approach to IT-enabled innovation leads to the best outcomes while lack of investment hinders performance. We also find that for internal-focused innovation, unstructured innovations – whether volitional or non-volitional – tend to lead to better outcomes than structured innovations, while for external-focused innovation the most successful innovations noted were structured or volitional or both. As such, our findings highlight the differences between employee- and citizen-facing IT-enabled innovation, helping to guide policy makers and future researchers.

Keywords: Public sector; Information technology; Innovation; Performance; Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA); Configurational approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:64:y:2019:i:c:p:116-129

DOI: 10.1016/j.eap.2019.08.005

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