Information technology innovation in the public sector: An interpretive investigation of World Wide Web initiatives in state agencies in Florida

The Internet has spun around the globe a World Wide Web that has transformed how people and organizations go about their daily business. This study is an interpretive investigation of how three state agencies in Florida initiated, developed, and managed projects to establish a presence on the Web.;The phenomenological stance and epistemological assumptions underlying this research followed from the notion of the subjective and largely unknowable nature of social reality. The theoretical framework for the study was built upon two pillars: an innovation stage process model and a set of organizational metaphors. Participants' interpretations of key events in the innovation process were analyzed from the perspective of organizations as political systems, as cultures, and as learning systems.;Results from an online survey contributed to the selection of three state government agencies where in-depth case studies were conducted. Data from the case studies included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, internal documents, and external publications. Transcribed interviews, which formed the bulk of the data generated, were analyzed using intentional analysis. A qualitative data analysis method, intentional analysis flows from description to extraction of themes to abstraction of essences. As transcendent, subjective gestalts, the essences represent the meaningful aspects of the innovation process in each of the organizations. The findings from the case studies yielded rich insights into Web initiatives as occasions for structuring reality in social systems.;Analysis within each case was followed by integration across the cases, after which the cycle of description to themes to essences was repeated. The results were presented as integrative essences of interest to practitioners and reflections aimed at IS researchers.;Three exploratory hypotheses were considered and broadly supported, each conjecturing on the relative explanatory power of the metaphors in specific stages of the innovation process. The political metaphor was found to have been most useful in explaining organizational dynamics associated with early stages of the innovation process. Middle innovation stages were best understood from the perspective of organizations as cultures. Finally, the metaphor of organizational learning was found to have been most relevant in illuminating dynamics associated with later stages of the IT innovation process.*.;Originally published in DAI Vol. 58, No. 10. Reprinted here with corrected advisor name.