The dissertation presents the effort of conceptualising and investigating the multifaceted organisational processes and phenomena related to the uses of technological artefacts within public boundaries. The nature of this exploration is interdisciplinary, and its contributions entail public management, organisation science, innovation management, social science, information system, museum and cultural management, with respect to the final aim of Public Sector Organisations (PSOs), the creation of values for several publics. Nevertheless, it took me time to realise that public values are just the final impressions of a bigger picture and, to shed light on them, a step back was required to find the missing piece of this puzzle, the connection between organisational structures and technologies. The dissertation – exploring how digital technologies are pushing organisational innovation, changing processes, activities, and practices – joins the academic debate about the relations occurring among technological artefacts and the context in which they are implemented, a conversation that is gaining increasing attention in the last years. As this focus is rather broad, the work is configured as a collection of four papers, each addressing a specific sub-objective to reach the overarching endeavour of this research. The first paper maps the extant literature regarding the use of digital technologies within PSOs, to produce an understanding and interpretation of the academic debate. What emerges from this investigation is that most of the current studies are focused on the (expected) benefits exerted by digital technologies on users’ needs, lacking to explore how they are entwined with organisational processes and dynamics. Informed by these findings, I decided to set aside the nexus of digital technologies and public values. Delving on these premises, and adopting abductive reasoning, the remaining studies empirically observe how technologies might become core agents of fundamental changes in organisational processes and practices. The second paper, sampling Italian museums as an exemplary case of (public) organisations, casts light on how these organisations cope with the challenges to transform themselves by leveraging on digital technologies. Results detect the existence of four main paradoxes that differently takes place along the macro, meso, and micro levels and how museums, as unstable and open systems, develop corrective rebalancing practices to navigate the innovation path, through the widening of their boundaries and the juxtaposition of various tensions. Once framed the boundaries of the innovation agency and disentangled the paradoxes that organisations face while developing digital transformation initiatives, the third paper presents Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a case of technological artefact that is shaping “human action and interaction […] carrying new opportunities and constraints for organising” (Bailey et al., 2022, p. 1). From these premises, the study narrows down the focus, scrutinising how PSOs might leverage the actions offered by the peculiar technological artefact. The answer comes by adopt-ing a double theoretical perspective: on the one hand, the research pinpoints the factors that are tied to AI and the others that, instead, are common to standard technologies; on the other hand, it provides a suggested formalisation of AI affordances and constraints within the given domain. With regard to the challenges brought out by AI, the fourth paper continues questioning the implications of a new technological agent – namely a chatbot – on the microstructure(s) of six PSOs across Europe. From a theoretical perspective, this study identifies a set of novel solutions that PSOs design to solve the four universal problems of organising that arise when AI is introduced. This set of solutions leads to the creation of a novel form of organising: the AI team. This novel microstructure, which is a multi-agent system (AI solution, AI trainers, public man-agers), demands a mutual human-machine interaction and interdependence, where each agent supports and complements the work of the other. Overall, this dissertation mainly contributes to organisational theory by advancing the understanding of the dynamics, tensions, relationships arising within organisational boundaries when embracing a digital transformation path. Moreover, by adopting an empirical approach, the work provides some novel insights to the recent debate concerning the need to deepen organisational functioning and phenomena as twisted together with technological artefacts. Finally, keeping in mind the initial focus on public value as defining theme, this dissertation sets the ground for some new interpretations. As far as PSOs are part of broader social systems, the notion of public value enabled by digital technologies brings the relations among technological artefacts and human agents not just within organisational boundaries, but within system realities. Explaining these relations can be beneficial to cast light on the scale of technologies’ implications for the constellation of individuals and organisations acting in the public arena.
Questa tesi, grazie a un approccio interdisciplinare alla ricerca, è incentrata sull’analisi delle implicazioni delle tecnologie digitali sulle strutture organizzative delle pubbliche amministrazioni. In quest’ottica, quindi, il presente elaborato si inserisce nel dibattito accademico sulle relazioni che intercorrono tra gli artefatti tecnologici e il contesto in cui questi vengono implementati. Tuttavia, vista la complessità dell’intento, questo lavoro è strutturato come una raccolta di quattro prodotti scientifici che, rispondendo a specifici sotto-obiettivi, contribuiscono alla risposta per la domanda principale. Le pubbliche amministrazioni, per le loro caratteristiche intrinseche, hanno come fine ultimo la creazione di public value, ovvero di un valore non economico per i diversi attori a cui si rivolgono. Il punto di partenza è stata quindi un’analisi della letteratura scientifica per comprende-re come l’uso delle tecnologie digitali all’interno delle organizzazioni pubbliche possa abilitare il raggiungimento di tale valore. I risultati di questa indagine preliminare evidenziano come, a oggi, la maggior parte degli studi si concentri sui potenziali benefici delle tecnologie digitali, senza però esplorare approfonditamente le modalità con cui esse si intrecciano con i processi e le pratiche organizzative. Partendo quindi da queste premesse, e adottando un ragionamento abduttivo, i restanti studi empirici si propongono di esaminare come tali tecnologie possano diventare attori centrali nelle dinamiche organizzative. Il secondo studio, esplorando il contesto empirico dei musei italiani, si interroga quindi sul-le modalità con cui queste organizzazioni governano le sfide portate dalle tecnologie digitali. I risultati mostrano l’esistenza di quattro tensioni organizzative, definite come paradossi, che i musei devono affrontare: tali tensioni si manifestano, in maniera differente, a livello macro, me-so e micro, definendo quindi i confini organizzativi come aperti e soggetti agli stimoli di diversi attori esterni. Una volta inquadrati i confini entro cui le organizzazioni pubbliche devono agire, il terzo saggio si focalizza su una tecnologia specifica, l’Intelligenza Artificiale (IA). Lo studio restringe quindi il campo d’indagine, esaminando come diverse organizzazioni pubbliche a livello inter-nazionale stiano affrontando lo sviluppo di progettualità basate su IA. Da un lato, la ricerca individua i fattori peculiari dell’IA e quelli che, invece, sono comuni alle altre tecnologie; dall’altro, partendo proprio da tali fattori, fornisce una formalizzazione delle possibili azioni abilitate dalla tecnologia, facendo luce anche sui vincoli che l’adozione di queste soluzioni pone nel contesto pubblico. Il quarto contributo, mantenendo la lente d’analisi sull’IA, indaga le implicazioni dell’introduzione di un assistente virtuale (chatbot) sulla microstruttura di sei enti pubblici operanti in Europa. Da una prospettiva teorica, questo studio identifica una serie di soluzioni attuate dagli enti pubblici per risolvere i problemi organizzativi. Questo insieme di soluzioni porta alla creazione di una nuova microstruttura, un sistema multi-agente dove uomo e macchina sono chiamati a relazionarsi costantemente per l’erogazione del servizio finale. Nel suo insieme, questa tesi fornisce in primis contributi alla teoria organizzativa, analizzando le dinamiche, le tensioni e le relazioni che emergono all’interno dei confini organizzativi quando si intraprende un percorso di trasformazione digitale. Inoltre, grazie all’approccio empirico adottato, il lavoro offre alcuni spunti al recente dibattito sulla necessità di approfondire i fenomeni organizzativi come interrelati alle tecnologie digitali. Infine, riprendendo il focus iniziale sul public value e tenendolo come tema definitorio, il presente elaborato pone le basi per alcune nuove interpretazioni. Le pubbliche amministrazioni sono infatti parte di sistemi sociali più am-pi: in quest’ottica, la nozione di public value abilitato dalle tecnologie digitali comporta che la lente d’indagine sia sulle organizzazioni, intese però come sistemi aperti e facenti parte di un sistema sociale più ampio. Spiegare quindi le relazioni tra tecnologie digitali e sistemi organizzati-vi è il punto di osservazione necessario, sul piano teorico e metodologico, per lo sviluppo di analisi incentrate sulle implicazioni tecnologiche per la creazione di public value.
The organisational implications of digital technologies within public sector organisations
GIULIA, MARAGNO
2023
Abstract
The dissertation presents the effort of conceptualising and investigating the multifaceted organisational processes and phenomena related to the uses of technological artefacts within public boundaries. The nature of this exploration is interdisciplinary, and its contributions entail public management, organisation science, innovation management, social science, information system, museum and cultural management, with respect to the final aim of Public Sector Organisations (PSOs), the creation of values for several publics. Nevertheless, it took me time to realise that public values are just the final impressions of a bigger picture and, to shed light on them, a step back was required to find the missing piece of this puzzle, the connection between organisational structures and technologies. The dissertation – exploring how digital technologies are pushing organisational innovation, changing processes, activities, and practices – joins the academic debate about the relations occurring among technological artefacts and the context in which they are implemented, a conversation that is gaining increasing attention in the last years. As this focus is rather broad, the work is configured as a collection of four papers, each addressing a specific sub-objective to reach the overarching endeavour of this research. The first paper maps the extant literature regarding the use of digital technologies within PSOs, to produce an understanding and interpretation of the academic debate. What emerges from this investigation is that most of the current studies are focused on the (expected) benefits exerted by digital technologies on users’ needs, lacking to explore how they are entwined with organisational processes and dynamics. Informed by these findings, I decided to set aside the nexus of digital technologies and public values. Delving on these premises, and adopting abductive reasoning, the remaining studies empirically observe how technologies might become core agents of fundamental changes in organisational processes and practices. The second paper, sampling Italian museums as an exemplary case of (public) organisations, casts light on how these organisations cope with the challenges to transform themselves by leveraging on digital technologies. Results detect the existence of four main paradoxes that differently takes place along the macro, meso, and micro levels and how museums, as unstable and open systems, develop corrective rebalancing practices to navigate the innovation path, through the widening of their boundaries and the juxtaposition of various tensions. Once framed the boundaries of the innovation agency and disentangled the paradoxes that organisations face while developing digital transformation initiatives, the third paper presents Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a case of technological artefact that is shaping “human action and interaction […] carrying new opportunities and constraints for organising” (Bailey et al., 2022, p. 1). From these premises, the study narrows down the focus, scrutinising how PSOs might leverage the actions offered by the peculiar technological artefact. The answer comes by adopt-ing a double theoretical perspective: on the one hand, the research pinpoints the factors that are tied to AI and the others that, instead, are common to standard technologies; on the other hand, it provides a suggested formalisation of AI affordances and constraints within the given domain. With regard to the challenges brought out by AI, the fourth paper continues questioning the implications of a new technological agent – namely a chatbot – on the microstructure(s) of six PSOs across Europe. From a theoretical perspective, this study identifies a set of novel solutions that PSOs design to solve the four universal problems of organising that arise when AI is introduced. This set of solutions leads to the creation of a novel form of organising: the AI team. This novel microstructure, which is a multi-agent system (AI solution, AI trainers, public man-agers), demands a mutual human-machine interaction and interdependence, where each agent supports and complements the work of the other. Overall, this dissertation mainly contributes to organisational theory by advancing the understanding of the dynamics, tensions, relationships arising within organisational boundaries when embracing a digital transformation path. Moreover, by adopting an empirical approach, the work provides some novel insights to the recent debate concerning the need to deepen organisational functioning and phenomena as twisted together with technological artefacts. Finally, keeping in mind the initial focus on public value as defining theme, this dissertation sets the ground for some new interpretations. As far as PSOs are part of broader social systems, the notion of public value enabled by digital technologies brings the relations among technological artefacts and human agents not just within organisational boundaries, but within system realities. Explaining these relations can be beneficial to cast light on the scale of technologies’ implications for the constellation of individuals and organisations acting in the public arena.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14242/203896
URN:NBN:IT:POLIMI-203896