Webbed structures in government and social capital
From Cyberlaw
Essentially networks enable accruing and making use of distributed knowledge. The knowledge allow for faster, more informed decisions, enhancing efficiency and adaptability of the system.
Yet, exactly because of their advantages, prolifering webbed structures of the state (as Laurence J. O’Toole Jr. points in his article expressing normative view on conditions upon which networks are created: public management “increasingly takes place in settings of networked actors”: Laurence J. O’Toole Jr., “Treating Networks Seriously: Practical and Research-Based Agendas in Public Administration,” Public Administration Review, 57 (1997): 45) are vulnerable to impairment.
Formal institutional and budgetary patterns act as very strong disincentives for cooperation across the state. As Jane Fountain describes it, “institutional design of the bureaucratic state overwhelmingly structures behavior within agencies rather than between agencies. Incentives in government floe from this institutional structure, which includes oversight and the budget processes that assume and reinforce agency autonomy and competition. It is difficult to develop cross-program initiatives because of these processes”.(Jane E. Fountain, Building the Virtual State. Information Technology and Institutional Change (Brooking Institution Press), 2001, p. 196). Her investigation into US national ICT projects brought the following conclusion:
“in contrast to the economic firms in the market, government agencies face strong institutional constraints on network formation in the form of oversight relationships, the budget process, and a long tradition of adversarial bureaucratic politics. The incentive of profits and economic success that accrues to firms that form wise strategic alliances in the private sector is not available in government. On the contrary, efficiency gains from networking across agencies are likely to result in the loss of budget, staff, and even agency jurisdiction. These disincentives to the development of cross-agency networks contrast sharply with the networking logic of the Internet or the logic of networks of organizations that benefit from cooperation” (Fountain: 2001, 101).
Web structures establishment in the public field is further impaired by consequences of IT enabled standardization. (Fountain: 2001, 27) raises four ways in which standardization rationalizes agency processes. It: 1. renders interagency redundancies transparent; 2. weakens the rationale for collecting the same data by different agencies; 3. makes new forms of analyzing the data possible; 4. ensues structural change in order to eliminate the redundancies.
As a result of points 1 and 2, institutional integration—reduction of the interagency coordination costs—should follow (point 4), in which the winning agency is equipped with the new analyzing tasks (point 3). Yet, this is a zero sum game. If one wins, someone else losses equally. Logically point 5 may be established: standardization counteraction by means of loosing agency resistance. The strategy would be simple—impair the web-structure in order to eliminate standardization it ensues.
There are several consequences of the situation. On a theoretical level, the findings dampen applicability of the rational actor theories, which enthusiastically proclaim that:
“over time and through some degree of trial and error, organizations will choose the “best” technological offerings and learn to use information technologies in better and better ways” (Fountain: 2001, 84)
and enabling theories:
“technologies are … viewed as occasions that trigger social dynamics which, in turn, modify or maintain an organization’s contours” (Stephen Barley, Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from observations of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 21 (1986): 81, after Fountain: 2001, 87).
The above features also strike down claims of technological determinism, according to which “technology acts autonomously upon individuals, social arrangements and institutions”, which implies that IT “by itself, would somehow lead to greater productivity without organizations having to make structural adjustments to fully integrate and use new technologies” (Fountain: 2001, 84).
A more practical consequence is that interorganizational networks require a clear system of responsibilities, dispute settlement and sanctions for their proper operation (see also: Robert Putman, “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life,” American Prospect (March 21, 1993): 35-42)). Yet, does it mean that they require an efficient system of control and hold against feasibility of 'internal' institutional motivation for establishing interorganizational networks or strategic alliances for the sake of enhancing operational efficiency?
An affirmative answer tentatively seems irreconcilable with the notion of social capital, a consequence but also an important prerequisite of technologically conditioned modification in any complex organization. Social capital is defined as “’stock’ created when a group of organizations develop the ability to work together for mutual productive gain”, with trust, norms and networks as central elements (Fountain: 2001, 71, 72). Trust, and therefore social capital, is uneasily (if at all) reconcilable with control. And the fear that cooperation, in a longer term, will deteriorate of a cooperating party, eliminates trust and impairs creation of network schemes. But also broader manifestation of lacking trust (tantamount to the fear that the new technology will impair existing organizational contours or will change the routines) inhibits ICT deployment in the public field. Questionable, however, is the very role of trust (as a intrainstitutional motive) in institutional pattern rearrangement. One of the ways to overcome the tension between externally imposed modernization and social capital is to consult blueprinted ICT enabled structural modifications with all the stakeholders. But if externally imposed reconstruction ensues change routines, greater accountability of the system, extended transparency and inevitability of some loosing power, then strong mechanism to overcome the inevitable institutional resistance are unavoidable. Some opt for more moderate alternatives: "mandating the development of social capital is not likely to be successful executive strategy. Executive orders cannot replace the more gradual development of norms, incentives, and trust that motivate employees and facilitate interagency network formation” (Fountain: 2001, 81). Naturally “institutions enter the technology enactment framework in the form of cognitive, cultural, sociostructural, and formal embeddedness” (Fountain: 2001, 98) and will defend it. Yet, too conservative attitude towards the finding that “technological logic must be connected to, and integrated with, the logics of the institutions and social relations that constitute interorganizational networks” (Fountain: 2001, 101) engenders a crucial dilemma. As “organizations tend to patch information systems onto existing structures in ways that may enhance efficiency and capacity but that otherwise maintain the status quo” (Fountain: 2001, 19), then the question is why to undertake heavy investments in enhancing efficiency if it is not to ensue reallocating saved capacities to the posts where it is more needed? If therefore social structure of public institutions resists rearrangement of the existing status quo, reinvention should make the work from outside (after all, competition, the main driving restructuring force of markets, is also a factor external to any of the companies it influences), to possibly highest extent availing itself of the tools dismantling structural resistance. Otherwise management of public matters, lacking appropriate motivation, might be excluded from the trend according to which “networked computing leads to a set of predictable changes, including flattened hierarchies, greater use of cross-functional teams, and more collaborative cultures; and more permeable organizational boundaries lead to greater use of interorganizational networks” (Fountain: 2001, 13).
