Enacting social media success in local public administrations

Abstract

Purpose The diffusion of social media among public administrations has significantly grown in the last years. This phenomenon has created a field of research that seeks to understand the adoption and impact of social media in the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that make social media successful in Spanish local governments. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on an adapted version of a neo-institutional model: Enacting Electronic Government Success (EEGS). The data have been collected through three main sources: primary data from a questionnaire designed and conducted by the authors, secondary data of statistical sources, and tertiary data collected through Klout Score. Findings The results from a survey and statistical analysis provide preliminary validation of the model and show a direct relationship between organizational, institutional, and environmental factors with the successful use of social media in local public administrations. The data analysis shows that ten variables jointly explain 54.6 percent (adjusted R2=0.546) of the variability observed in the dependent variable. Research limitations/implications First, the analysis model used represents a limited sample size to carry out a complex quantitative analysis. Second, the use of Klout Scores can offer some bias. Finally, certain variables complicate the comparative potential of the study. Originality/value This study provides original primary data and contributes to the growing field of study related to social technologies in public administrations. This research also confirms in an exploratory way the validity of the EEGS model.

Creating public value through smart technologies and strategies

“…More recently, the last stage of this process of technological diffusion displays disruptive features with the potential of real transformations in economic sectors, organizational models and also in public sector management. From the 2010s onwards, these disruptive capabilities of smart technologies and strategies in the public sector derive, among others, from factors such as (Clark et al, 2013;Criado et al, 2013Criado et al, , 2017Linders, 2012;Luna-Reyes and Gil-García, 2014;Mergel, 2015;Mergel and Desouza, 2013;Picazo-Vela et al, 2012): inclusion of external agents to the decision-making processes in public organizations; collaborative dynamics requiring to launch certain projects in distributed work groups (holacracy); radical transparency of organizational processes; transformation of the intermediation dynamics; cost reduction of making information accessible; and continuous evaluation linked to the traceability of actions in these new digital cooperative spaces. Although the empirical evidence is still weak, the first available results state that open and collaborative innovation processes developed under this technological wave are encouraging transformative practices in the public sector.…”

Social Media and Local Government in Indonesia: Adoption, Use and Stakeholder Engagement

“…Social media refers to web-based applications which support inter-user interaction (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), that emphasizes active participation, connectivity, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas (Moss et al, 2015). In the context of the public sector, social media is defined as a technology group which enables public organizations to create greater public involvement (Criado, Rojas-Martín & Gil-Garcia, 2017). Another characteristic of social media is its potential to allow the public to actively contribute to the production of content (Norris & Reddick, 2013;Reddick, Chatfield & Ojo, 2017).…”

Public employees in social media communities: Exploring factors for internal collaboration using social network analysis

“…The capabilities of those technologies have increased the possibilities of collaboration, offering two-way interactive platforms that offer crossboundary action, and networking possibilities for citizen co-production (Mergel, 2013), but also for interaction and co-production between public employees (Criado, et al, 2017;Mergel, 2015). In that sense, social media communities have made collaboration become "open" by enabling anyone to participate in the collaborative process regardless time and space, and to benefit from sharing profits (Forte and Lampe, 2013).…”

“…In a recent literature review, Medaglia and Zheng (2017) detected the need to increase and refine studies on user behavior and collaboration. This gap is even more brutal in papers that study collaboration among public employees (Criado, et al, 2017). Few studies are highlighting how public empoyees are gradually starting informal and inter-agency collaborations through social media.…”

“…The rapid diffusion of these innovations, coupled with their highly disruptive potential (Criado, et al, 2017;Bannister and Connolly, 2014;Chun, et al, 2010), have generated great expectations, based on their capacity to help improving areas of transparency, collaboration and participation (Mergel, 2015;Bertot, et al, 2010). This paper explores one of these areas, internal collaboration among public employees, focusing on analyzing their interactions through social media communities, and studying factors that influence those interactions.…”