The Emperor with No Clothes – Inter-Organizational ICT Cooperation within Municipal Regions
: Tomi Dahlberg, Ari Helin
: Hongxiu Li, Pirkko Nykänen, Reima Suomi, Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Gunilla Widen, Ming Zhan
: International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society
: 2016
: Building Sustainable Health Ecosystems: 6th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2016, Tampere, Finland, September 16-18, 2016, Proceedings
: Communications in Computer and Information Science
: 636
: 636
: 179
: 192
: 14
: 978-3-319-44671-4
: 978-3-319-44672-1
: 1865-0929
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44672-1_15(external)
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/18252125(external)
ICT has a significant
role in the development and production of municipal services, and in the daily
work of municipal civil servants. Yet, municipalities typically develop and
operate their ICT activities independently with limited ICT resources, both money
and people. Limited resources are the key incentive for inter-municipal ICT
cooperation. This article investigates how ICT cooperation is carried out
within 20 municipal regions. As the theoretical basis we review transaction
cost economics (TCE), resource based view (RBV) and the constructs of
Granovetter’s social network theory. They are used to outline potential economic
and social benefits emerging from ICT cooperation and to describe social mechanisms
that influence the realization of such benefits. Our empirical data reveals that
there are distinct differences in the effectiveness of ICT activities, in the
amount of ICT cooperation and in the governance of ICT cooperation. Our
analysis reveals that the emperor will not have clothes – ICT cooperation
benefits – unless the cooperation is properly organized and governed.