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ABSTRACT
Research on e-participation has grown significantly in the last years. This review focuses on public administrations, which are central actors in the solicitation and organization of e-participation and in the process of diffusion of more democratic decision-making in government contexts. However, research indicates that public administrations often struggle with technological and organizational changes, which suggests that e-participation initiatives may fail due to barriers within public administrations. Although researchers have paid considerable attention to the diffusion of e-participation in public administrations, research so far is multi-disciplinary and fragmented. The aim of this literature review is to structure and systematize the literature regarding phases of e-participation diffusion (adoption, implementation and institutionalization) and levels of analysis (micro, meso, and macro) to map the extant field of e-participation diffusion research and to provide a starting point for future research. The analysis shows that research has concentrated on the phases of adoption and implementation, and on the external context of public administrations (macro) and the organizational (meso) level. Overall, the review identifies major research gaps and offers avenues for future research.
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Notes on contributors
Malte Steinbach
Malte Steinbach is a PhD candidate at the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Organization Studies and Human Resource Management at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Germany. He also is a member of the PhD-program “Online Participation”, supported by the North Rhine-Westphalian funding program “Fortschrittskollegs.” His research focuses on e-participation in public organizations, especially local governments, as well as institutional theory.
Jost Sieweke
Jost Sieweke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the School of Business and Economics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research focuses on antecedents and consequences of human errors in organizations, multi-level conceptualizations of legitimacy, and the microfoundations of institutions. Jost is particularly interested in natural experiments and uses designs, such as the difference-in-difference design and the regression discontinuity design, in his work. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Business and Psychology.
Stefan Süß
Stefan Süß is a Full Professor and holds the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Organization Studies and Human Resource Management, at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Germany. He has published several articles about organization, human resource management, and international management. Since April 2016, he has been speaker of the Manchot Graduate School “Competitiveness of Young Enterprises” (WEJU). His main research interests are human resource management, organizational theories, and empirical human resource and organization research.