Structuration of e-Government Systems Assimilation: A Comprehensive Framework Development and Case

Abstract

The multifarious array of benefits to the e-Government systems research, from evaluative frameworks and conceptual models to guidelines for initiatives, adoption, and assimilation, evidences the requirement, both from the researcher's and the practitioner's standpoint, of sound theoretical foundations that can be applied directly in practice. Grounded upon structuration theory, this paper proposes a framework for e-Government systems assimilation through the structuration of its organizational factors. Upon this proposition, we map the factors of e-Government systems assimilation with the organizational meta-structures of signification, domination and legitimization. The framework is then tested for the case of one particular e-Government systems of Korean government. The juxtaposition of the theoretical position and the practical findings leads us to isolate the organizational, technological, and inter-organizational factors that shape the meta-structures for the assimilation of e-Government systems. This framework offers interesting possibilities to researchers in exploring the relationships and insights into the complex interactions that shape the relationships among government, people and technology. Thus, the paper's contribution lies on three axes: first, the furthering of a theoretical perspective of e-Government systems assimilation; second, a detailed exposition of the structuration theory and an illustration of its application to the issues of e-Government systems assimilation in the organizational context; and finally, developed framework through the isolation of a usable set of theoretically grounded factors affecting e-Government systems assimilation that can be applied in future research and practice.