E-Government Innovations and Work Transformations

Abstract

In this article the authors address the question of how IT innovations affects public organizations concretely exploring the emerging attitudes of public government employees towards new forms of work with electronic tools. The authors bring our analysis and theoretical discussion beyond the widely applied technology acceptance models to examine the introduction of electronic tools too focused on technology functionality and short time analysis sights. Organizational and socioeconomic aspects together with the functionality of new concrete technological tools influence the innovation processes including work transformations. Based on the model of innovation proposed by Ebbers and Van Dijk (2007) the article focuses on the analysis of employees' resistance and support in innovation processes of the introduction of public government electronic tools. The authors apply the model to the case of the introduction of the Electronic Records System (ERS) (an electronic tool for the document management of unemployed persons) in a public organization in Germany. The analysis reveals that technology driven innovation ignoring work habits and transformations leads to employees` resistance to change. A conceptual redefinition of Ebbers and Van Dick's model based on the analysis results of the ERS including an extension of the resistance and support concepts as well as indicators is proposed.