INTERORGANIZATIONAL AND INTERDEPARTMENTAL RESOURCE DEPENDENCY OF E-GOVERNMENT APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The research on the relationship between environment and organizations has been an important issue in the management and organization theory literature. One of the important theories which brought new insights to the environment-organization interaction is resource dependency theory (Pffefer and Salancik, 1978). Organizations have to access resources from their environment to provide required input for their internal operations. Thus, organizational design for internal efficiency seems meaningless without reaching resources. The effectiveness of an organization is more related with the management of demands of various interest groups upon which organizations depend for resources and support according to the resource dependency paradigm (Pffefer and Salancik, 1978). So, organizations partially or completely depend on others to survive in their environment. The same resource dependency framework is also valid for the departments in organizations. Obtaining resources from other departments and managing/manipulating their demands can be crucial for the success of departmental activities. Resource dependency theory can be used to question the organizational effectiveness of egovernment and e-governance applications. Information system departments of some critical state institutions may depend on other departments and organizations to access required resources and support for their internal operations. Other departments and organizations may also have various dependency relationships to the focal organizations or departments. The objective of this study is to determine interorganizational and interdepartmental resource dependency relationships of a state institution’s information system department. Network analysis techniques were used to map the mutual resource dependency relationships.

Keywords

• Resource dependency theory, network theory, network analysis

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