Donald F. Norris

Does managerial orientation matter? The adoption of reinventing government and e‐government at the municipal level*

Abstract. This paper explores the effect of managerial innovativeness in municipal government on the adoption of e‐government, and it examines the association between the adoption of e‐government and its outcome. The authors posit an exploratory model: The first part of the model shows how adoption of municipal e‐government is determined by managerial innovativeness orientation, government capacity and institutional characteristics such as city size and government type. The second part suggests how e‐government outcomes are associated with the adoption of e‐government, government capacity and institutional characteristics. Analysing two different survey data sets of American municipal reinvention and e‐government, this study finds that managerial innovativeness orientation and city size are the most compelling determinants of municipal e‐government adoption. Different levels of e‐government adoption may yield different outcomes.

Electronic Government at the Local Level: Progress to Date and Future Issues

Much like businesses with electronic commerce, public organizations are beginning to embrace electronic government (e-government). This article defines the term e-government, discusses the literature oflocal-Ievel e-government, and documents the adoption and sophistication of e-government among U.S. local governments. It employs data from a survey conducted in 2000 to examine local adoption of e-government. E-government adoption among local governments generally tracks previously documented patterns of information technology adoption, which show a statistically significant relationship between adoption and such demographic variables as population size, form and type of government, region, and metro status. The article compares the results of that survey to a normative model of e-government maturity and finds that the emergence of e-government at the local level is still in its formative stages. The analysis also examines perceived impacts from e-govemment, sophistication of e-government offerings, barrier...

Prospects for Regional Governance Under the New Regionalism: Economic Imperatives Versus Political Impediments

Over the past two decades or more, advocates of the new regionalism have called for the creation of new forms of regional governance in America. These writers have shifted the rationale for regional governance from issues of efficiency and equity that characterized an earlier literature on regionalism (i.e., the metropolitan reform school) to that of regional economic competitiveness. In this article, I examine the diagnoses and prescriptions of the metropolitan reformers and the new regionalists. I offer a definition of regional governance more in keeping with the older tradition of political science and distinctly at odds with that of the new regionalist. Then I present what I believe are the principal factors that make the achievement of regional governance in American metropolitan areas very close to impossible. My argument, as indicated by the title of this article, is that political impediments overwhelm economic arguments for achieving meaningful regional governance.

The Scholarly Literature on E-Government: Characterizing a Nascent Field

The authors conducted a comprehensive review of articles on the subject of e-government that were published in refereed scholarly journals through the end of 2004 to serve as a baseline for future analysis of this emerging field. They found over 100 e-government articles, but only 57 with empirical content. The authors then examined the articles using 12 analytical categories. They conclude that the scholarship about e-government comes primarily from the United States, and from authors trained in the social sciences. Few e-government articles adequately used the literatures that were available (e.g., IT and government, e-government, or any specialized literatures), and few created or tested theory or hypotheses. Articles employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, but many contained conclusions that were not supported by their data or analyses. The authors conclude that e-government research is a young and growing field that has yet to achieve adequate scholarly rigor.

Social media adoption at the American grass roots: Web 2.0 or 1.5?

Abstract In this paper, we examine data from a 2011 survey of grassroots (or local) governments in the United States with respect to their adoption of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and Flickr) especially to ascertain the drivers of local government social media adoption and whether the drivers are similar to or different from the drivers of e-government adoption. We also address whether the adoption of social media portends a move by local governments from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. The findings of this research show that the principal drivers of local government adoption of e-information and services are highly consistent with those of previous research: size of government, type and form of government, region of the country, education, years of e-government experience, and the existence of a separate IT department are all related to adoption. The drivers of adoption of e-transactions are consistent, but somewhat less so, with prior research. And, the drivers of adoption of social media are closer to those of e-information and services than of e-transactions. Based on evidence from the survey (local governments use social media mainly for one-way communication) and prior studies of IT and government and e-government, we conclude that social media today do not appear to be moving local governments in the direction of Web 2.0, but perhaps in the direction of Web 1.5.

Whither Metropolitan Governance

The author examines the issue of metropolitan governance without metropolitan government through an in-depth case study of two English conurbations, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, 10 years after the abolition of their metropolitan governments. The author addresses whether metropolitan governance has occurred since the abolition of the metropolitan governments in these areas or whether any other mechanisms developed that substituted for metropolitan governance. Although the local governments in these conurbations cooperate with one another when they are required (by the British central government) to do so and in matters of joint convenience, the author found that true regional governance did not result. If metropolitan governance without metropolitan governments does not occur in a unitary state such as Great Britain, it is unlikely to occur in the United States, where there is greater governmental fragmentation and historically stronger local government autonomy.

Building the virtual state ... or not?: a critical appraisal

In this article, the author advances four arguments about Building the Virtual State. First, it is a historical and fails to take into account the rich and rewarding literature about information technology (IT) and government developed over the past 3 decades. Second, its theory of IT enactment is little more than a repackaging of the dominant extant theory in the field, sociotechnical systems theory. Third, evidence provided from the three case studies in the book is insufficient to test enactment (or any other) theory of IT and government. Finally, although the book claims to be about the virtual state, only one of the case studies addresses the movement of government services onto the Internet (the authors definition of the virtual state), and the other two cases do not address it at all. For these reasons, Building the Virtual State is a disappointment, and it delivers a good bit less than it promises.

Electronic Democracy at the American Grassroots

In this paper, I examine the delivery of electronic democracy (e-democracy) by U.S. local governments through their e-government activities. In particular, I examine three issues related to local e-democracy through data from focus groups with officials from 37 municipal and county governments across the U.S. The issues are: (1) why local governments decided to adopt e-government, and whether e-democracy was among the reasons for its adoption; (2) whether e-government has produced or affected local e-democracy; and (3) what plans, if any, local governments have with respect to e-democracy in coming years. My principal findings are that e-government at the local level was adopted principally to deliver governmental information and services and to provide citizen access to governmental officials; that e-government does not operate in a manner that either produces or impacts local e-democracy (at least as the term is broadly defined herein); and that e-democracy is not on the radar screens of most American local governments for future deployment.

High Tech in City Hall: Uses and Effects of Microcomputers in United States Local Governments

Local governments in the United States have rushed headlong to embrace a new technology, the microcomputer, in the absence of research on the effects of this technology. This paper reports the findings of case studies on the uses and effects of microcomputers in over 65 individual departments in 12 United States cities. These findings indicate that microcomputers have had generally positive effects on the organizations and people who use them. Despite indications that the adoption, implementation, and use of microcomputers in these cities were essentially unmanaged, there were few negative effects, and these were largely correctable. Keywords: computers, microcomputers, municipalities, cities, local governments, computer effects, computer uses, high technology, technology innovation, technology effects, training.

E-government research : policy and management

This title provides content on advances in theoretical and philosophical research on issues relating to the practice of e-government and applications of e-commerce and m-commerce.