Impacts of the spirit of initiative and identification with the organization on IT governance effectiveness perception in public organizations.
| Autor | Costa Wiedenhoft, Guilherme |
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Introduction
Connections between government and citizens are changing (Cunha and Miranda, 2013), and this process creates new demands for fast and reliable data, information and services whose implementation depends on, involves or is enabled by IT solutions (Luciano et al., 2016). These initiatives are implemented through a complex network of public and private actors (who work in commissioned public services), which aim to improve public services to citizens, increase effectiveness and extend transparency in public management. Considering that these goals are very distinct and complex, although complementary, it is important to establish a governance structure to orchestrate all actors and efforts, which contributes to reduce risks in service delivery. Decision making on ICT outside a governance process can more easily increase ad hoc solutions (Nfuka and Rusu, 2011), which, in turn, unnecessarily raise complexity and transaction costs, undermining future investments and hampering the planning of new initiatives, as well as the management of current ones. Gradually, key IT issues are no longer about the organization's software and hardware but have moved to the strategic level, dealing with definitions and policies on how technology and its resources should be used to create a competitive advantage for organizations (Bartenschlager and Goeken, 2010), or public value, in the case of public organizations. This shows that IT governance (ITG) does not address the IT department, but it is about IT adoption and its use throughout the organization.
Governance in public organizations involves processes and structures for decision making on public policies and their management, to engage people from different government levels and other public and private agents in order to achieve a public purpose that, otherwise, could not be attained (Peters, 1998). It also concerns the decision on how much coordination and control are appropriate in each situation and context (Grandori, 1997). When applied to IT decisions, governance can be understood as a set of authority arrangements and standards for IT strategic activities (Sambamurthy and Zmud, 1999), composed of a group of structure, process and relationship mechanisms that implement high-level definitions. A governance process applied to IT regards the decision-making framework and the establishment of rights and responsibilities to encourage desirable behaviors related to IT (Weill and Ross, 2004).
ITG studies suggest the existence of two main paths of action for adopting its mechanisms (Sambamurthy and Zmud, 1999; Peterson, 2004; Van Grembergen et al, 2004; Weill and Ross, 2004; Huang et al, 2010). One of the pillars focuses on legal and regulatory aspects and the other one focuses on the behavioral factor inherent to individuals that deal with IT, in its different expressions - IT artifacts (equipment, tools and applications), information and usage policies. ITG mechanisms should be able to encourage the desired behavior of individuals regarding IT aspects (Weill and Ross, 2004). The incentive for the desirable behavior complements the normative side of governance, contributing to a consistent and aligned relationship between business and IT. This behavioral expression of ITG is the focus of this research.
In public organizations, the adoption of normative and control mechanisms is not sufficient to achieve ITG effectiveness, since they cannot handle all situations related to the use of IT resources in such organizations; thus, each individual should interpret the situation and position himself/herself in order to contribute the most to attain the organization's goals. Therefore, non-prescribed behaviors (in laws, decrees, ordinances and policies) are necessary to solve the individual's predicament in the organization, created by non-standard and non-regulated situations. A non-regulated situation that can paralize the activities demands an extra-role behavior.
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) describes the voluntary commitment of a person to an organization, with attitudes that are not part of his/her contractual functions (Rego et al, 2010). It consists of protection actions taken by the employees, which aim to safeguard an organization and everything that belongs to it, contributing to a favorable environment. For example, even if the norm for a particular acquisition is a monocratic and individual decision, a civil servant with a high OCB can suggest that a collegiate decision would be more appropriate for the situation, due to its potential implications, thus protecting the institution from future issues.
The objective of this study was to identify the dimensions of OCB that contribute to increase the effectiveness of ITG through the perception of IT individuals who work in public organizations. It is important to understand the behavioral effects on ITG perceived effectiveness, since the simple adoption of ITG mechanisms does not ensure that they will be effective in meeting governmental demands. This situation happens because the adoption of such mechanisms can be done through phenomena such as mimetic, normative and coercive isomorphism, hindering the alignment with public organizations' objectives or being considered illegitimate by their employees.
In addition to this Introduction, the paper has four more sections. The theoretical framework that supports the research is presented in Section 2. Section 3 presents the methodological procedures adopted, followed by the results and main findings (Section 4). Section 5 discusses the final remarks and suggestions for future research.
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Theoretical framework
This section addresses the conceptual aspects that are part of this study, such as ITG and OCB.
2.1 Governance of IT resources in public organizations
Public management reform has three ways to ensure transparency: social control; control through management contracts and results; and controlled competition. The principles that guided public management reform were oriented to results, efficiency, governance and market practices (Diniz et al., 2009). Accordingly, the complexity of government's modern problems requires more efficient managers, and also the need to consider the relevance of organizations' behavioral and cultural aspects, which are key factors for solving these problems (Bresser-Pereira, 2002).
IT use enabled the change in the public management model, with the emergence of electronic government (e-Gov) and citizen-oriented services (Diniz et al, 2009). IT can be a solution for governments, with regard to the growing demand for transparency and accountability (Joia, 2009). The internet arrival has brought greater visibility to public organizations by disseminating their e-Gov applications worldwide, which led to the increase in the number of organizations that use ICTs (Heeks, 2005).
In Brazil, several authors have focused on the topic of IT use in public organizations, such as Cunha etal. (2009), Diniz etal. (2009), Medeiros and Guimaraes (2006), Joia (2009) and Laia et al. (2011). They mainly address e-government and IT use in public services, IT use for governance and democracy, and the strategic use of technology in governments, which involves government services and sociocultural impacts of ICT.
Barrett (2001) highlights the differences between public and private organizations, regarding ITG. In the former, there is a greater influence of the political environment and value systems, which emphasize compliance with legal provisions. ITG models in the public and private sectors are similar in their basic pillars (principles, objectives and mechanisms), but the sectors are very different in terms of environmental aspects that involve external and internal institutional pressures. Moreover, institutional pressures are an important source of demands for IT areas in public organizations, and the financial and market pressures, inherent to the private sector, are driving forces of demand in companies (Rodrigues and Souza, 2012). For the authors, the biggest divergence between public and private sectors is how agents responsible for governance react to these pressures.
ITG in public organizations can be understood as the financial and administrative capacity to implement public policies that aim to make the State stronger, by overcoming the fiscal crisis, delimiting its area of activity, distinguishing between the strategic core and decentralized units, establishing a political elite able to make the necessary decisions and allocating a motivated and skilled bureaucracy (Cunha, 2000). Diniz et al. (2009) provide a broad view of electronic governance that considers the internal elements of public administration, such as processes, relationships and structures, and external aspects such as public services, participation and control.
According to Rocheleau and Wu (2002), the main difference between ITG in the public and private sectors lies in the fact that the public sector provides public goods and services, rather than services or products for sale. However, ITG in the public sector does not show significant conceptual differences from ITG in the private sector. Therefore, the IT complex environment and IGT weaknesses in the Brazilian public sector are mainly caused by the absence of a good public governance, due to institutional and behavioral aspects.
ITG can be understood through the synergy of mechanisms arranged in three main pillars: structure, processes and relationships. Structural arrangements are formed by business units and their roles and responsibilities, for the correct decision making on IT (Weill and Ross, 2004). Process arrangements and practices are directed toward the implementation of management and definition of procedures according to the strategies and policies defined for IT. The relationship ensures that defined arrangements and ITG processes are conducted to guarantee the effectiveness of use of IT...
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