Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change
Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change
Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System
Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System
Event History Modeling: A Guide for Social Scientists
Event History Modeling: A Guide for Social Scientists
Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance
Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance
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This article examines the organizational factors underlying the rapid adoption of e-government Web sites and e-government services. Three strands of organizational theory -- 1) contingency theory, 2) resource dependence theory, and 3) institutionalization theory -- offer dramatically different accounts of the organizational dynamics that lead municipal governments to create and develop a web presence. The first emphasizes the need to attain technical efficiency within a complex environment, the second emphasizes the importance of internal power relationships, and the third emphasizes an organization's need to develop legitimacy vis-à-vis peer organizations. We develop hypotheses based on each of these accounts and test them by analyzing the pattern of Web site adoption among municipal governments using event history analysis. The results most strongly support a contingency perspective which argues that Web sites are developed to better manage information flows and uncertainty. We find that municipalities facing more complex external environments and internal organizational structure are more likely to be early adopters. The resource dependence and institutionalization perspectives receive at best weak support from the analysis.