Management utilization of computers in American local governments

Abstract

Traditional concepts of management informalion systems (MIS) bear little relation to the information systems currently in use by top management in most US local governments.What exists is managementoriented computing, involving tbe use of relatively unsophisticated applications. Despite the unsophisticated nature of these systems, management use of computing is surprisingly common, but also varied in its extent among local governments. Management computing is most prevalent in those governments with professional management practices where top management is supportive of computing and tends to control computing decisions and where department users have less control over design and implementation activities. Finally, management computing clearly has impacts for top managers, mostly involving improvements in decision information.

The Interests Served B Y Technological Reform

“…The nature of our sample and observations limits the generality of our findings to American cities. However, the consistency between the findings of other studies and the reinforcement politics hypothesis adds credibility to this hypothesis as a description of the nature of power shifts beyond the local government level (Dutton and Kraemer, 1978;Hoffman, 1977;Laudon, 1974;Westin, 1972aWestin, , 1972b).…”

A Glorious and Not-So-Short History of the Information Systems Field

“…As an alternative to the study of IS in the private sector, Kraemer and his colleagues produced a number of studies on IS use in the government sector (Kraemer et al, 1981;Danziger, Dutton, Kling, & Kraemer, 1982;Danziger & Kraemer, 1986;Dutton & Kraemer, 1978). Similar public sector research occurred in Europe and elsewhere (cf.…”

The Evolution of Internal IT Applications and e-Government Studies in Public Administration

“…Scholars have found that government computer use leads to efficient planning (Simon, 1973), budgeting (Danziger, 1977), law enforcement (Brown & Brudney, 2003;Danziger & Kraemer, 1985;Nunn, 2001), and operational activities such as Geographic Information System (GIS) (M. M. Brown, O'Toole, & Brudney, 1998;Ventura, 1995). The use of IT in public organizations is also believed to be an improvement in the quality of managerial and operational decision making because IT applications such as database systems (Tien & McClure, 1986), decision support systems (McGowan & Lombardo, 1986;Teasley & Harrell, 1996), and executive support systems (Berry, Berry, & Foster, 1998;Watson & Carte, 2000) allow accurate data filing as well as speedy data processing, retrieval, and transmission (Dutton & Kraemer, 1978;Simon, 1973). In addition to internal performance, students in public administration have found that IT has contributed to the external performance improvement of public organizations by effectively serving the public in cities (Danziger, 1979) and by increasing the economic productivity of the state (G. Lee & Perry, 2002).…”

“…Other studies (Bellamy, 2000; Kraemer & Dedrick, 1997; Kraemer & King, 1986) have found that rather than promoting a wider representation of collective interests, computerization reinforces current power structures in local governments because IT-savvy personnel and senior managers tend to take advantage of IT adoption and utilization as an opportunity to increase their control over organizational functions. Empirical studies (Dutton & Kraemer, 1978; Kraemer & King, 1986; Perry & Kraemer, 1979) demonstrated that the shift of power to senior management has been accelerated by the adoption of computers in government. Based on the analysis of the reengineering of the British criminal justice system, Bellamy (2000) showed that information systems embedded in electronic networks have revealed that the domains of powerful groups take advantage of important political resources to control its form, specification, and interpretation.…”