DiSE
Leslie Budd
Open University Business School
Open University
UK
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
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Context of re-structuring of Public Domain and re-inventing
government discourses associated with New Public Management
(NPM);
Over-ambitious claims for utility of Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT) in transforming the public
domain and addressing the claimed inefficiencies of the public
sector under guise of Digital Era Governance;
Promise of Electronic Governance (eGovernance) and
eGovernment opens up possibility of eParticipation and
eDemocracy in combating social exclusion;
Explore challenges in context of EC-funded eGovernment for You
(EGOV4U) project
Create and apply concept of Multi-Channel Governance as central
to developing idea of a Digital Social Economy and its capacities.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
1. Apply research expertise on the role of eGovernment services in enabling social
inclusion for digitally excluded communities in order to develop new social economy
models based upon spillovers and externalities generated from these activities.
2. Develop a multi-channel network approach that combines ICT networks and eService
networks as the conceptual foundations of the technical means and the intermediary
organisations, respectively, to build and deliver these models based upon a identifying
and developing their capabilities.
3. Draw on the internationally comparative experience of eGovernment for You
(EGOV4U) projects in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Rijeka, Croatia, in levering new
economic activities from these projects, so as benchmark best practice for UK
contexts.
4. Identify and evaluate the scale and scope of transactional and transformational
economies generated from ICT-mediated social inclusion projects that form the basis
of new digital social economies.
5. Survey and evaluate the activities of UK-based social enterprises and other Third
Sector organisations engaged in eServices activities and their integration with new
economic activities.
6. Integrate research findings with work of other digital and social economy networks in
UK and the rest of Europe as part of impact and dissemination strategy.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Multi-channel ICT networks: These are the technical means by which
eGovernment services are enabled and include, inter alia, internet and webbased ICT; mobile telephony; call centres etc.
Multi-Channel Electronic Service (eService) and User Networks: These
types of networks are the means by which citizens and communities are able
to access public services that they may have been excluded from because of
different forms of social exclusion. This exclusion may be characterised by
lack of, or poor, access to ICT-based and mediated services. The different
channels may be accessed directly or through intermediary groups, including
inter alia, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), social enterprises and
community groups.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
• Combines one type of multi-level governance with concept of globalizing
webs:
“a system of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several
territorial tiers…. in which] “supranational, national, regional and local
governments are enmeshed in territorially overarching policy networks”
(Marks, 1993), of which there are two types:
1. Akin to federalism, this consists of limited and non-overlapping jurisdictions
within a restricted number of territorial levels. The focus is on specific
governmental purposes rather than a set of policies or issues;
2. Is a more complex and fluid type that consists of a larger number of
overlapping and flexible jurisdictions with a focus that is much more on
specific policy sectors and issues. Like most governance structures there is
a tendency to instability as the policy environment alters, but it is designed to
seek optimal decision-making (Hooge and Marks, 2004).
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
The concept of ‘ globalising webs' has been used to investigate the increasing
transnational narrative of eGovernment. In this regard it has been argued that
globalising webs:
“can be seen as one organisational instantiation of how social processes
are increasingly unhindered by territorial and jurisdictional barriers and
enhance the spread of trans-border practices in economic, political and
social domains.” and,
“Globalising webs challenge conventional distinctions between the inside
and outside of the nation-state … In fact, they connect state institutions
across this distinction, across local and national levels of the state and
relate them to a host of different actors, including non-state actors and
hybrids, indeterminable organizational forms that do not match conventional
distinctions between public and private.” (Hansen and Salskov-Iversen,
2005)
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
There are three approaches to governmental logic of ICT (Clarke, 2009)
1. As the inheritor of government logics: ICT provides governments with
enhanced information management capacity over services and about
citizens.
2. A paradigm shift from government to governance: the connectivity of
digital technologies enables the multi-ness of governance relationships
to be realised and conducted thus cross-cutting conventional
boundaries.
3. The re-configuration of managing multiple centres of power: it is
increasingly averred that ICT enables greater interaction between the
citizen and government and governance agencies thereby increasing
empowerment.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Rest on Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action combined with Bourdieu’s
theory of practice rooted in his different forms of capital in regard to his concepts
of field and habitus to overcome lack of theory of power in Habermas’s theory
“a theory in which actors in society seek to reach common understanding
and to coordinate actions by reasoned argument, consensus, and
cooperation rather than strategic action strictly in pursuit of their own
goals’
(Habermas, 1984)
Two societal spheres:
1. the system: material production and reproduction.
2. The lifeworld’: symbolic space in which shared cultural traditions, values and
norms are reproduced through an ongoing process of communicative action
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DiSE
Capitals: the resources that comprise a field.
Field: “…a relatively autonomous structured domain or space, which
has been socially instituted, thus having a definable but contingent
history of development. One condition of the emergence of a field is
that agents recognise and refer to its history. Some fields have more
autonomy than others and some parts of fields more than other parts”.
(Warde, 2004).
Habitus: a set of acquired patterns of thought, behaviour, and taste to
constitute the link between social structures and social practice (or
social action). In this sense, habitus relates to both social and
geographical spaces that can be virtual and real.
Practice = (habitus * capital) + field
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DiSE
1. Financial capital (actual or potential): Direct or indirect control of financial
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
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resources through access to banks.
Cultural capital: Not human capital but capital drawn from cultural “habits and
dispositions” comprise a resource capable of generating “profits”; they are
potentially subject to monopolization by individuals and groups; and, under
appropriate conditions, they can be transmitted from one generation to the next
Technological capital: Portfolio of technological and technical resources.
Juridical and organisational capital: Access to regulation and rules
conditioning the management of resources.
Commercial capital: sales power related to distribution networks; after-sales
services
Social capital: Total resources including financial capital and information goods
activated through relatively mobile and extended networks to achieve some form
of competitive advantage (higher returns on economic and social returns on
investments)
Symbolic capital: Control of symbolic resources in the form of knowledge and
recognition which bestow power through the medium of trust relations;
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Habitus
Dispositions
Principles of action
and classification
Capital
Economic, social,
cultural. etc
Field
Positions,
Forces (relations
between)
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Habitus
Dispositions
Principles of action
and classification
Habermas
Bourdieu
Multi-channel ICT
Multi-channel
eService and user
networks
networks
System
Lifeworld
Field
Field
Habitus
Positions,
Forces (relations
between)
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
Multi-ness of
Governance
Communicative
Action
Practice
DiSE
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Transactional economies are associated with aligning internal
operational decisions of multi-channel eService providers with
service transactions. These economies relate to current or
backward-looking perspectives of the organisations they occur
in. They are set in relation to the costs of administering or
running a provider organisation and are thus closely related to
transactions costs.
Transformational economies are associated with strategic
decisions over the outputs of the multi-channel eService and
responding to and influencing the (democratic) governance and
regulatory environment. They tend to be associated with
forward-looking perspectives and are set in relation to external
goals and transforming the performance and future of the
community or society.
DiSE
A transaction space is defined as:
‘an abstract n-dimensional space defining the institutional,
legal, cultural and language differences that must be
accommodated if a given transaction between two or more
agents is to take place’
(Wood & Parr, 2005; 4).
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The idea of a transaction space is one that is developed from the
relationship between transactions costs and agglomeration
economies.
In more homogeneous transaction spaces, transaction costs are
lower;
In localities (real or virtual) with excluded eGovernmental
communities the transaction costs of overcoming digital
exclusion will be higher because of the heterodox nature of
their transactions spaces.
DiSE
• Each EGOV4U locale has its own Socio-Economic
Capacities and Capabilities (SECC) which will increase
as a result of the development of eGovernment
services;
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The EGOV4U programme creates a field of transactions
in which the on-line public services generates
Transactional Economies in the form of increased
efficiency and equity in public services ;
• Intersection and alignment of EGOV4U Community
Capitals (based on Bourdieu’s categories) create
EGOV4U transactions space within each local Habitus
DiSE
Three types of agglomeration economy:
1. Localisation: take the form of pooled labour markets and
shared market intelligence in the same activity in a particular
locale
2. Urbanisation: For unlike activities in the same place, the
provision of transport infrastructure, research and development
facilities
3. Activity complex: they refer to economies that emerge from the
joint location of unlike activities which have substantial trading
links with one another’ (Parr and Budd, 2000; 603).
• Transactions costs are “the costs of doing business” (Arrow 1962).
• Thus the digital and eGovernmental exclusion of communities can
be seen as a transactions cost to these communities. In developing
networks that build on different forms of capital, transactions costs
become an important consideration.
DiSE
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
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The creation of infrastructure and access to eGovernment services
provides socially excluded communities with socio-economic
capacities and capabilities (SECC) in each EGOV4U locale and
habitus;
The formation of SECCs permits be from access tobe generated
eGovernment services for socially exclude groups in the form of new
economic activities, income and employment;
By gaining a range of capacities and capabilities from digital inclusion,
these groups are being re-inserted into the socio-economic
mainstream by developing them to create new economic activities.
Social enterprises and other Third Sector organisations (charities, etc)
have shown are important intermediaries in delivering the means for
digital inclusion and the development of multi-channel eService
networks.
By combining these networks with ICT networks, the basis of new
models of the digital social economy can be demonstrated.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
• Business Model Formulation and Adaptation: Business
models can be thought of as the content, structure, and
governance of transactions designed so as to create value
through the exploitation of business opportunities.
• Creating and Sustaining Public Value: The rise of the digital
economy and the appropriate use of ICT media can contribute
to greater public value by exploring how competitiveness and
cohesion may be integrated more effectively. By creating
economic models in which collaboration between public
domains is a central strategy, a more comprehensive virtual
and real social economy can emerge.
• Societal economic impacts: The concept of transformational
economies and their application are important outcomes of
evaluating key issues and questions that arise from developing
a digital social economy. They act as an important point of
reference point in an impact evaluation framework that is
central to the research narrative so that impacts and the spread
of benefits is more widespread.
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise
DiSE
• How are eService channel networks to be
identified and what is role of intermediary
organization in the delivery of transformational
economies?
• How can best practice from cases the rest of
Europe be contextualised as benchmarks for UK
experience and elsewhere;
• How the rudiments of digital social inclusion
projects as incipient business models be
developed into more comprehensive models of
the digital social economy?
Centre for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise