فن آوری مدیریت ارتباط با مشتری (CRM) و تغییر سازمانی : مدارک و شواهد برای الگوهای بوروکراتیک و دولت الکترونیکی

This paper examines the impact of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology on organizational change in local governments in the United States. The bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms are examined with regards to this technology impacting organizational change. Survey evidence on the adoption of CRM is examined from the perceptions of Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) in cities and counties that have adopted this technology. Survey results indicate that both the e-Government and bureaucratic paradigms impacted organizational change from CRM adoption. Factor analysis shows that management change, efficiency change, and leadership and organizational change are the three most common factors in the models. Regression results indicate that local governments that score high on these factors are more likely to take an enterprise approach in the adoption of CRM for their local government. The results of this study imply that organizational change is not just influenced by the more recent e-Government paradigm, but traditional attributes of the bureaucratic model are present as well.

Most of the recent literature on IT and public administration has argued for the importance of the e-Government model to institute organizational change in government, while the bureaucratic model has received very little attention in the literature (Norris & Moon, 2005). [U1] This paper examines both the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms and their influence on the adoption of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology in local governments in the United States. CRM can be defined as a software application that is used to track interactions with residents in a local government on an ongoing basis and allows governments to manage this data. CRM for local governments incorporates, as part of the call center function, the ability to manage citizen non-emergency calls into one centralized system. CRM creates opportunities for citizens to participate in government (Schellong, 2008). Engaging citizens in government is one of the key visions of e-Government advancement (Thomas and Streib, 2003, Welch et al., 2004, Jones et al., 2007 and Caillier, 2009). The bureaucratic paradigm is found in the traditional literature on the impact of Information Technology (IT) adoption in public administration (Fountain, 2001 and Ho, 2002). In this literature, there is an emphasis on the improvement in the internal workings of government as a result of IT adoption. The e-Government paradigm, is more recent, and research in this area has proliferated with the rise of the internet in the mid-1990s. e-Government focuses on IT creating results in government, with its external and more transformative impact on public service delivery (Grant & Chau, 2005). Most of the recent literature on IT and public administration has argued for the importance of the e-Government model to institute organizational change in government, while the bureaucratic model has received very little attention in the literature (Norris & Moon, 2005). However, in this paper, there is an argument that one must understand both of these paradigms in order to realize the true potential of IT on organizational change (Heintze and Bretschneider, 2000 and Kraemer and King, 2006). This paper shows through survey evidence of Chief Administration Officers (CAO) the impact of CRM systems on local governments. The CAO is the top administrator for a local government and should have knowledge of the broad impact of CRM on organizational change. The research question of this paper is: What is the importance of the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms for explaining organizational change through CRM? This article argues that in order to understand e-Government in the present context, one must understand the importance of IT on bureaucratic change as well. Most of the existing research has examined CRM in private sector organizations (Fjermestad & Romano, 2003), with very little empirical research that examines this technology in the public sector organizations (King, 2007 and Schellong, 2008). There needs to be more research on CRM in public sector organizations because of key differences from the private sector such as the absence of market incentives, the need for high levels of accountability, and multiple and ambiguous goals of public organizations (Bozeman and Bretschneider, 1986 and Pan et al., 2006). In addition, citizens prefer to use different contact channels depending upon the problem they want to address. They prefer to use the internet more for research-oriented activities, but prefer the phone to solve problems (Pew Internet and American Life, 2007). Therefore, citizens prefer different channel choices when initiating contact with government, which makes understanding CRM adoption especially important (Ebbers, Pieterson and Noordman, 2008). This study is different from existing research in that it examines through survey evidence the impact of CRM on organizational change. There is very little survey research completed on this important and emerging area of e-Government research. This study also examines the perceptions of CAOs and their influence on shaping organizational change in the public sector. CAOs are critical stakeholders in shaping IT and organizational change in their governments. This paper is divided into several sections. The next section examines how CRM technology creates an enterprise approach in public sector organizations. This is followed by a discussion of the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms and what both theories say about organizational change through CRM. Survey evidence is then presented examining the views of local CAOs on the adoption of this technology for their government. Statistical evidence on the impact of CRM for local governments is discussed in the final sections of the paper. The conclusion to this paper stresses the importance of knowing both the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms in order to understand organizational change from IT.

This paper has examined the impact of CRM technology on organizational change in local governments. The survey results indicated the impact of both the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms on organizational change in local government. The survey results showed that both models had an influence on the use of CRM technology in local government. The influence of the e-Government paradigm had a slightly greater influence on organizational change than the bureaucratic paradigm for local governments' in the survey. The factors analysis indicates that all of the bureaucratic and e-Government principles impacted organizational change through the use of CRM. When examining the regression model, local governments that exhibited higher perceived organizational change from CRM, believed that CRM created an enterprise approach to governance. These results imply that organizational change in governments, as described by the current e-Government literature, is not driven only by e-Government, bureaucratic principles are important as well. The e-Government literature has often advocated for the importance of change focusing outwards from the organization, but internal change is also important. Current e-Government research could benefit by focusing more on some of the important past studies on IT adoption for public sector organizations as a way of understanding current organizational change in e-Government (Danziger and Anderson, 2002, Kraemer and King, 2006, Bekkers and Homburg, 2007 and Coursey and Norris, 2008). Many current studies in e-Government research pay little, or no, attention to the important past research on IT and organizational change in public administration. For e-Government research to develop, it should more thoroughly appreciate the many past studies on IT adoption in the public sector. Without understanding the development of IT and public administration, it is difficult to grasp the current changes that are taking place. There are some limitations of this study that should be noted. First, this paper is limited by a dataset with only 60 cases, and many of the respondents to the survey are from larger population centers. With the adoption of CRM one is limited by the fact that a small portion of local governments in the United States actually use this technology. In addition, there is no central database of governments that currently use CRM, making it difficult to get a truly representative sample. A second limitation of this study is that the principles indentified here in the bureaucratic and e-Government paradigms may omit some principles that are important. As a result, future research should examine the impact of CRM on organization change through case studies of several local governments that have adopted this technology. Case studies would provide another way of understanding the more subtle issues of CRM and its impact on organizational change.