The adoption of municipal web sites: on efficiency, power, and legitimacy
Pages 272 - 281
Abstract
This article examines the organizational factors underlying the rapid adoption of e-government Web sites and e-government services. Three strands of organizational theory -- 1) contingency theory, 2) resource dependence theory, and 3) institutionalization theory -- offer dramatically different accounts of the organizational dynamics that lead municipal governments to create and develop a web presence. The first emphasizes the need to attain technical efficiency within a complex environment, the second emphasizes the importance of internal power relationships, and the third emphasizes an organization's need to develop legitimacy vis-à-vis peer organizations. We develop hypotheses based on each of these accounts and test them by analyzing the pattern of Web site adoption among municipal governments using event history analysis. The results most strongly support a contingency perspective which argues that Web sites are developed to better manage information flows and uncertainty. We find that municipalities facing more complex external environments and internal organizational structure are more likely to be early adopters. The resource dependence and institutionalization perspectives receive at best weak support from the analysis.
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Index Terms
- The adoption of municipal web sites: on efficiency, power, and legitimacy
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Published In
May 2008
488 pages
ISBN:9781605580999
- Conference Chairs:
- Monique Charbonneau,
- Lester Diamond,
- Stuart Shulman,
- Program Chairs:
- Soon Ae Chun,
- Marijn Janssen,
- J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
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- Routledge
- Springer
- Elsevier
- Cefrio
- NCDG: National Center for Digital Government
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Digital Government Society of North America
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Published: 18 May 2008
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dg.o '08
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