Understanding E

1
Introduction
Key points
After reading this chapter, you will be able to
●
describe technological determinism as a perspective on the relation between
technology and society
●
explain how ICT applications result in dilemmas when applied in the real
world of public administration
●
describe a social shaping of technology perspective as a view on the relation
between technology and society
●
explain the differences in perspective of the academic disciplines of public
administration, information systems and organization theory with respect to
ICT applications in public administration.
A puzzling but faulty question ... how do 
‘ICTs’ affect public administration?
Many articles, books and policy documents on information and communication
technologies (ICTs) begin with mantra-like sketches of ubiquitous, revolutionary
effects of microelectronics-based, digital ‘smart machines’ (Zuboff, 1988).
Apparently, they offer unlimited benefits to individuals, functional units, organi-
zations, governments or even the fabric of our society. For example, Burstein and
Klein (1995: 254) enthusiastically claim that ‘[t]here is no disagreement on the
essentially revolutionary nature of the forces unleashed by the new technology’.
Similarly, Tapscott (1995) has heralded the information revolution in glowing
terms:
Today, we are witnessing the early turbulent days of a revolution as signifi-
cant as any other in human history. A new medium of human communication
is emerging, one that may prove to surpass all previous revolutions – the
printing press, the telephone, the television, the computer – in its impact on
our economic and social life.
(Tapscott, 1995: xiii)

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Academic commentators have also speculated about the advantages of ICT.
They see the potential for increased levels of social interaction among ‘empow-
ered’ individuals (Katz et al., 2001) or of new hourglass-shaped organizational
structures enabling the elimination of middle management and drastically
increasing levels of productivity (Leavitt and Whisler, 1958; Scott-Morton,
1991). Not to mention the emergence of virtual organizations (Groth, 1999) or
interpretations of ICT representing even greater historical change for the fabric of
society than the discrete, mechanical technologies of the industrial revolution
(Castells, 2000). Even more than in previous eras, information and communica-
tion technologies, in the form of all kinds of smart machines, would appear to
have infused our daily lives, organizations and societal structures (Bekkers and
Homburg, 2005; Lips et al., 2004).
Above-mentioned claims are consistent with a line of reasoning known as
‘technological determinism’ (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985). Technological
determinism depicts technology as a cause of social (or sometimes even histori-
cal) change. It views development of technology as a process that occurs inde-
pendently and autonomously, separate from politics, economics and power.
Technological progress is, in this view, inevitable, and is limited only by scarcity
of material resources. Note that although many technological determinists stress
progress, more efficient and effective operations, increased democratic value in
the way governments function, and in general, more open, transparent societies,
such ‘utopian’ visions are not necessarily a part of technological determinism.
Beside these techno-optimists, there are also techno-pessimists who talk about
the end of privacy and individual freedoms, increased potentials for surveillance
and control by governments (and large corporations) and decreases in well-being
(or inequalities in distribution of wealth among various groups in societies, the
emergence of a digital divide that widens existing gaps in society).
For the public sphere, the above rhetorical sublime of technological progress
(Mosco, 2004) has led to equivalent speculations about the nature and challenges
of so-called electronic governments and electronic governance. For instance, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) quite ener-
getically promotes the use of ICTs in order to enable governments to reorganize
their internal structures, focus more on citizens’ demands and in general, increase
their performance (OECD, 2003). Referring to ICTs’ potential role in community
development, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has stated
that ICTs are powerful tools with diverse applications, and the challenge is to put
that power at the service of all humankind.
1
In various countries, national policies
have been drafted in which a ‘wired’ government takes shape (Minister for the
Cabinet Office, 1999, 2000; National Audit Office, 2002; OECD, 2003). In
Australian, Canadian and British policy documents, for example, information and
communication technologies are portrayed as enablers of a less fragmented, more
responsive, joined-up government. In Danish national e-government policy docu-
ments, the emphasis is on goals of free access to information, individual freedom
for citizens to exercise influence, openness in the public sector and rationalization
of service delivery. The picture that emerges from these policies is that smart
2
Introduction

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technology is transforming, or is about to transform, the fabric of our society,
including the machinery of public administration and governance. This picture is
somewhat overstated and overly simplistic.
The claim that smart machines transform public administration is certainly an
interesting one and – at first sight – it raises the question what the exact effects
are and will be for public administration and government. As stated above,
however, such a claim is unsatisfactory since it cannot be proven or disproven,
and in general is not either plausible or questionable. There are at least two
reasons why the claim is unsatisfactory.
First, it uses a very abstract notion of technology. It is not immediately 
clear what kind of technology is being reasoned about, what properties of 
technologies are important and how the technology is applied and implemented
in specific contexts. Rhetorically, keeping technology abstract in the claim
enables the focus to remain primarily upon desirable effects. In order to reason
about the consequences of ICTs, it is necessary to open the ICT ‘black box’
implicit to many of the claims that try to envisage the future of smart machinery
in public administration.
Second, the effects, impacts or consequences of ICTs are depicted in a rather
exogenous way. Authors talk about increased efficiency (Gurbaxani and Wang,
1991), increased speed of operations and government transparency, without spec-
ifying how these eventual effects are accomplished, in what contexts the effects
are likely to occur, and the kinds of effects that interfere with existing political,
socio-organizational and institutional settings.