A Multivocal and Multilevel Institutionalist Perspective to Analyze Information Technology-Enabled Change in the Public Service in Africa

Abstract:

The research adopts a multivocal and multilevel institutionalist perspective to analyze information technology-enabled change into the structures of the public service in Africa as reflected in changes of practices around information processing. Information systems scripts and guidelines are considered as vocal to new logics of public service (e.g., new public management) imported into the local setting through international public sector reforms. The research will focus on the micro or agent level as the locus of institutional change. Here, formal structures planned at the policy (macro) and organizational level (meso) are modified through sensemaking as users change there is and information processing practices in order to seek realignment between competing logics embedded in new and old public administration models. The analysis will be undertaken based on a case study of the Ministry of Health in Kenya. The research will provide new insights into the implications of institutional mechanisms for the integration of new IT-enabled service models in the public sector of developing countries.