Debating Digitally-Enabled Service Transformation in Public Sector

Abstract

Digitally-enabled service transformation (DEST) in the public sector (PS) offers a unique opportunity for public administration (PA) and information systems (IS) disciplines to interlace. Such uniqueness has enabled a deviance in the theoretical selection from the adoption of native PA/IS theories to imported social sciences theories including institutional and structuration. Institutional theory provides a way of viewing and explaining why and how institutions emerge in a certain way within a given context, but it falls under the criticism of structural bias as it avoids explanations situated at individual or same level of analysis. Such a gap is filled with structuration theory adoption, focusing on how institutional structures arise, or are maintained through the interplay process. The fusion of such concepts would potentially enrich the debates on DEST in PS by provoking new insights to keep the “research talking.”