In a growing number of economic branches, citizens are becoming more active, as part-time producers, service providers, suppliers or even entrepreneurs. They compete with traditional companies, but often operate through new business models.
MULTIFILE
Metastructuration actions (overarching activities from (top)- management that shape and align users’ activities of IS/IT use) are often advocated to improve the success of IS/IT implementation. But is the potential of these actions situational to the interactions between different stakeholders; and if so, how can this context be taken into account? This key question is addressed in this paper. Building upon Orlikowski et al., the situational effect of metastructuration interplay concerning four key stakeholders; (top) management, users, IT department, and external service providers or consultants is explored. The empirical case context is a Dutch public healthcare organization that deployed three departmental information systems. Based on 26 qualitative stakeholder interviews, it was found that three types of metastructuration actions were critical, which are particular related to two types of stakeholder context. It is concluded that the stakeholder context is indeed conditional to metastructuration actions, and also to the success of IS/IT implementation in terms of perceived system quality and acceptance of the systems.
By way of a case study on the regulatory role of owners and managers of brothels and rented rooms for prostitution, this study focuses on the strategies deployed by a municipality to govern these intermediaries. The analysis is based on a typology of responsibilization distinguishing between who the responsible should govern (themselves or others) and forms of power (repressive or facilitative). The regulator concomitantly renders these entrepreneurs responsible for their own possible criminal conduct (self-governing) and empowers them to keep out traffickers and pimps and to control sex-workers (others-governing). Moreover, the municipality applies both repressive and facilitative power. Although the responsibilization strategy succeeds in having entrepreneurs govern themselves, it also unintentionally undermines sex-workers’ independence and favors the largest entrepreneurs. Our study enriches the R(egulator)I(ntermediary)T(arget) model by showing how varied and contentious the interactions between regulators and involuntary intermediaries are and by demonstrating the power game that the responsibilization strategy entails
