The Structuration of Information and Communication Technologies and Work–Life Interrelationships: Shared Organizational and Family Rules and Resources and Implications for Work in a High-Technology Organization

Research is equivocal about whether, in the context of work–life interrelationships, newer information and communication technologies (ICTs) primarily increase individuals' control over work and mitigate work–life conflict or help organizations extend the work-day and their control over employees. Informed by social theory and empirical research that views employees and their families as dynamic shapers of technological practices, this study presents empirical evidence of these practices in relation to ICT-mediated work–life management. Using a structurationally informed technologies-in-practice perspective as a boundary spanning framework, the study approaches ICTs as emergent from the interconnected practices and values of employing organizations, employees, and their families. Five forms of recursive structuring are identified that describe ways in which technologically mediated work-at-home and home-at-work (re)produce and transform rules and resources from both home and work at both home and work. Implications for employing organizations, employees, and family members are discussed.     

Determinants of digital innovation in the public sector

This study explores the determinants of digital innovation in the public sector. Focusing specifically on new digital technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, and augmented reality, we explained the wide variation in how Korean local governments used these technologies to transform their services. We found support for four theoretical mechanisms. First, our findings support the existence of demand-pull innovation in the public sector: public organizations respond to citizen demands or needs for innovation. Second, we also find support for an electoral incentive hypothesis, which posits that local governments' motivation for digital innovation is influenced by local politicians' electoral incentives. Third, our results show the existence of isomorphic pressure as a driver for public sector innovation: public organizations emulate their neighbors in adopting innovative practices. Fourth, the results support the upper echelons theory, as younger policymakers are more active innovators.     

Understanding risks,benefits, and strategic alternatives of social media applications in the public sector

Social media such as blogs, microblogs or electronic social networks can transform the ways in which we relate to other people and organizations. Government organizations are experimenting with social media to communicate with their constituents, and many analysts see in these media a powerful set of tools to reinvent government–citizen relationships. In this paper, we present the perceptions of risks, benefits and strategic guidelines about social media applications gathered from 250 public servants from Central Mexico, most of them working in information technology, as web masters or responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. The conclusions of the analysis are 1) that governments' participation in social media may result in improved communication and citizen participation, more transparency, and transfer of best practices among government agencies; 2) that a good implementation strategy is necessary to realize these benefits and to avoid risks; and 3) that the implementation of social media highlights the importance of updating laws and regulations, and of promoting changes in government culture and organizational practices.     

IT portfolio decision-making in local governments: Rationality,politics, intuition and coincidences

IT project portfolio management (IT PPM) has evolved into a significant area of research interest, but we know little about IT PPM practices in public sector organizations. Therefore this article investigates decision-making processes in the IT PPM practices of local governments, and discusses how these practices match the normative advice proposed by the IT PPM literature. We rely on decision-making theories together with case-studies of four Danish local governments. We find that politics, intuition and coincidence play a crucial role in IT PPM decision-making, while technical rationality (as proposed by the IT PPM literature) plays a minor role. Our account also reveals how the decision-making practices create IT portfolio problems and in some aspects is considered to have a negative impact on the outcome of e-government investments. Our analysis and previous research into decision-making allows us to argue that implementing textbook-IT PPM is difficult because it relies on decision-making ideals that are incompatible with organizational contexts and individual behavior in these organizations. Instead of radically changing decision-making styles, the organizations might be better off improving IT PPM practice within the boundaries of their existing decision-making styles, and the IT PPM literature might improve support for practitioners by incorporating other decision-making styles besides technical rationality.     

Networking or Not Working?

This paper examines journalists' changing sourcing practices in the context of an emerging media ecology initiated by processes of globalization, digitization, commercialism and concentration. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube provide the means to access a more diverse range of sources, including civil society organizations and ordinary citizens. We developed a quantitative content analysis to examine to what extent Belgian news coverage showed signs of diverse sourcing practices during the 2011 uprisings in three Arab countries. We analysed a total sample of 1121 news items about the street protests in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, in four Belgian newspapers (two popular and two quality dailies) and two Belgian broadcasters (the public broadcaster VRT and the commercial channel VTM). The analysis shows that ordinary citizens and non-mainstream groups are important news sources and that social media platforms are consulted relatively often compared to everyday foreign news coverage. In terms of inter-media differences, the findings show that broadcasters' dependency on video footage and eyewitness accounts is reflected in their use of ordinary citizen sources and amateur footage. Moreover, the analysis confirms that quality newspapers display more diverse and more innovative sourcing practices than popular newspapers.     

Sensemaking and Emotions in Organizations: Accounting for Emotions in a Rational(ized) Context

Organizations tend to be guided by a rationality/emotionality duality in which rational behavior is privileged over emotional behavior. Consequently, emotions in organizations have historically been undervalued in favor of rationality. Despite the privileging of rationality, however, organizations are emotion-laden environments. The present study uses sensemaking theory to explore how employees manage the rationality/emotionality duality in the workplace. Using a qualitative analysis of 38 emotional experiences derived from 19 interviews, it was found that participants accept the duality by orienting toward emotions that are associated with the disruption or enhancement of “rational” business practices. Further, participants tended to reinforce the dichotomy by carefully controlling their emotions in organizations through denial of emotions, reframing their experiences, by rationally reciting their emotional experiences, or by relegating emotions at work to appropriate time and place.     

Complexity,Uncertainty and Change in News Organizations

ABSTRACT

Media managers and journalists have responded to digitalization over time by implementing online journalism and by converging and de-converging print and online newsrooms. Drawing on complexity and uncertainty theories, this article develops a cycle model, which furthers the understanding of why and how news organizations change. Qualitative and quantitative findings in two European legacy media companies indicate that managers are constantly striving to minimize their own complexity and uncertainty, which, in turn, drives change in news organizations through different stages that are characterized by economization and integration or investment and specialization. More specifically, under lower external and internal complexity and uncertainty, managers are pushing news organizations toward more economization and integration. However, they invest and specialize if either their external or their internal complexity and uncertainty increase. Moreover, the findings reveal the mechanism through which the internal complexity and uncertainty arise, and they show differences depending on the ownership structure of a news organization.     

Questioning as regulatory work practice: The communicative accomplishment of reliability and safety in the oversight of nuclear power plants

The safety of high hazard systems depends on the organizations that monitor and regulate them, but theorizing of these organizations tends to gloss over the specific communicative practices that comprise organizing for reliability and safety. This article investigates nuclear power plant inspectors’ communicative work practices by studying how asking and answering questions organizes their work. The data include interviews (N?=?29) and shadowing of resident inspectors at six nuclear power plants and a regional office of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The analysis of communicative work practices central to inspection work (e.g., interrogating, coordinating interaction, and keeping track) contribute to normative theory of questioning in safety organizing with implications for the communicative study of questioning, work practice, and high hazard systems.     

Transnational public sector knowledge networks: A comparative study of contextual distances

As governments work to prevent, mitigate, or solve problems of global concern, they increasingly need to exchange knowledge and information among the expert organizations responsible for policies and programs that address them. We call these working arrangements transnational public sector knowledge networks (TPSKNs). The actors in these networks exist within their own informational, organizational, and national contexts and they need to find ways to interact effectively with counterparts who are embedded in different contexts. In this research, we show how understanding these differences, or contextual distances, can help assess, design, and manage TPSKNs. The paper compares two such networks, in environmental quality and public health, across nine contextual distances. All distances were present in both cases despite differences in focus, participants, and time frame. A variety of strategies and tools served to narrow, bridge, or capitalize on these distances thus helping the networks achieve desirable results.     

Assimilating newcomers into an organization: A cultural perspective

This study investigates the differences and similarities in communication practices between the public and private sectors. Through a survey of 976 government and corporate communicators, 12 organizational attributes previously identified in research on the government communication decision wheel (Liu & Horsley, 2007; Liu & Levenshus, 2008) were tested. The results indicated differences between the two groups in budgets, political influence, communication frequency, public pressure, interaction with other organizations, media coverage frequency, media coverage evaluation, and impact of legal frameworks as they relate to communication practices. No significant differences in diversity of publics, opportunities for professional development, participation in organizational leadership, or management support for communication between the two groups were found. The findings allowed for refinement of this developing model of government communication.     

A consumer's view of crisis communication: Can an organization benefit from having a response plan?

Crisis communication research establishes the importance of relationships between organizations and their publics. While theoretical treatments and case studies support this relationship, limited empirical investigations have examined how organizational responses to crisis influence public responses. This study sought to determine if grocery shoppers responded differently to organizations engaging in crisis communication practices and those that do not. Results indicate that respondents express stronger intention to continue purchasing from an organization and see the organization as concerned and respectful of the consumer when it engages in crisis communication practices. The discussion section addresses implications of these findings for future research and public relations practice.     

Recordkeeping professionals’ understanding of and justification for functional classification: Finnish public sector organizational context

Today functional classification is the predominant approach to records organization. It is, however, apparent that the functional approach to records classification often involves methodological and conceptual confusion as well as usability issues. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how recordkeeping professionals perceive functional classification, what are the purposes the classification serves and how they justify this method in Finnish public sector organizations. The article presents the results of the study in which 22 recordkeeping professionals in three Finnish public sector organizations were interviewed. The data were analyzed with qualitative methods. The results show the integration of the functional approach in Finnish recordkeeping practices and records management tools. The results also describe various purposes served by functional classification in organizations. They illustrate various justifications for this method and the recordkeeping professionals’ lack of methodological alternatives.     

#SocialJournalism: Local News Media on Twitter

A content analysis of 4,507 tweets from 60 local news organizations in the United States was conducted to examine Twitter strategies used by the local news industry. Results indicate that local news organizations in the United States mainly used Twitter as an additional platform for news dissemination. While local TV stations and newspapers differed significantly in their use of tweet structures, content, and strategies, both followed the similar practices of their traditional media portals. In addition, the number of followers and total tweets of a news organization’s Twitter account, use of photos, hashtags, usernames, and tweet content predicted audience engagement with the site. Overall, local news organizations in the United States did not appear to use Twitter to cross-promote and/or supplement their traditional business practices. This research calls for more systematic, multi-dimensional social media management in local newsrooms.     

Revising Legacy Media Practices to Serve Hyperlocal Information Needs of Marginalized Populations

ABSTRACT

This study explores how two nonprofit media organizations–PublicSource and Philadelphia Community Access Media (PhillyCAM)–have transformed their legacy practices to better connect within and serve marginalized populations in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, PA. As traditional newsrooms have been depleted by dire financial realities, new journalism outcroppings have heeded the Knight Commission’s Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age (2009) report and, consequently, revised their approaches to community engagement. Adjacent to these reformed legacy newsrooms are community media organizations that operate a municipality’s public, educational, or government (PEG) access media production facilities. Although PEG access media’s legacy has no clear genealogical ties with traditional journalism, an increasing amount of PEG operations over the past ten years have started to intentionally test editorialized forms of community news reporting. The data collected and assessed in this study has indicated that news organizations like PublicSource have an explicit need to do more relational community engagement work that will enable it to fill hyperlocal information gaps and better serve marginalized populations. Community media organizations like PhillyCAM have extensive experience engaging diverse publics; however, as this study reveals, they could benefit from employing formalized news production methods that are guided by journalistic standards.     

Process mining applied on library information systems: A case study

Process mining techniques have already been studied in a wide range of sectors, revealing useful information on the processes. In this study, a five-step methodology is applied to an integrated library system (ILS) for the first time. Given two event logs from two different organizations the ILS, a process mining tool is used for process discovery and data analysis. The findings reveal that although both of the organizations were using the same system, there were differences in the activities, sequences, and approaches followed by each one in daily tasks. The results of this kind of analysis can be used to highlight best practices and improve processes. In addition process model comparisons can then be made across various systems and organizations.     

Toward best practices for strategic information technology management

Federal agencies are under pressure to do more with less—to improve the services they provide to the public, with greater accountability for achieving results, more quickly and at lower cost. In a 1994 study of leading organizations, the General Accounting Office (GAO) identified 11 strategic information management (SIM) practices, which became the foundation of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996. In 1997, the Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council and the Industry Advisory Council prepared 20 case studies demonstrating the use of information technology to achieve a positive return on investment within the federal government. Focusing on these 20 case studies, this research first looked for evidence that supported or refuted each of GAO’s SIM practices. Second, the research looked for best practices that may be unique to a federal environment. Third, the study identified other best practices.     

Radio as a Successful Local Storyteller in Los Angeles: A Case Study of KKBT and KPCC

This case study examines the local storytelling practices of two radio stations in Los Angeles: one a commercial hip-hop station, the other a public radio station managed by Minnesota Public Radio with a news-talk format. Interviews with station staff and direct observation of station practices provide data that reveal specific practices showing how stations can apply communication infrastructure theory in attempts to forge the connections between the media, community residents, and the local organizations that bind neighborhoods. Obstacles to sustaining these practices are noted, including commercial pressures and journalistic principles that may hinder advocacy.     

Social media strategies: Understanding the differences between North American police departments

Within a short timeframe, social media have become to be widely used in government organizations. Social media gurus assume that the transformational capacities of social media result in similar communication strategies in different organizations. According to them, government is transforming into a user-generated state. This paper investigates this claim empirically by testing the claim of convergence in social media practices in three North-American police departments (Boston, Washington DC and Toronto). The research shows that the social media strategies are widely different: the Boston Police Department has developed a ‘push strategy’ while the Metropolitan Police Department in DC has developed a ‘push and pull strategy and the Toronto Police Service a ‘networking strategy’. The paper concludes that a combination of contextual and path-dependency factors accounts for differences in the emerging social media strategies of government organizations. Social media have a logic of their own but this logic only manifests itself if it lands on fertile soil in a government bureaucracy.     

Integration of information professionals in the newsroom: Two organizational models for research services

Closings have led some to suggest that news libraries are in crisis and require significant changes. In an effort to provide better service, some news libraries assign news librarians, or researchers, to editorial teams, increasing their visibility among the reporters they serve. Other organizations maintain centralized research services, focusing instead on expanding their influence as a team. This article describes a study of four news organizations, two that have adopted the integrated team model and two that provide centralized information services exclusively. Although only minor differences are observed based upon the organizational model in place, there is some evidence that news researchers who are proactive and integrated within the organizational function are more valued by these journalists.     

Enabling customer relationship management: Multi‐channel content model and management for financial eservices

Abstract

This study examines convergence as both a concept and a process. It examines the current state of convergence, various definitions of convergence, convergence practices, and it identifies Seven Observations of Convergence to be used as a strategy for best practices for organizations to integrate new and old media. Everett Rogers (1995) diffusion of innovations and the five stages of the innovation process in organizations, coupled with innovation management research are theoretical foundations used to examine the infusion of technological changes into business practices in the media industry. The study is based on research conducted during the summer of 2002 that included in‐depth interviews, participation‐observation, and archival documents from three leading corporate media groups and convergence pioneers‐Tribune Company, Media‐General, and Belo Corp at their integrated business units in Chicago, Dallas, and Tampa, Florida. The three organizations were selected for field study because they are convergence pioneers that fell under the grandfather clause of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission 1975 cross‐ownership rule and were allowed to maintain ownership of their television broadcast and newspaper business units in the same market.