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Unpacking the digitalisation of public services: Configuring work during automation in local government
Mälardalen University, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Industrial Economics and Organisation.
Mälardalen University, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Industrial Economics and Organisation. Åbo Akademi University, Finland. (Digma)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6980-3448
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. (IRP)
2022 (English)In: Government Information Quarterly, ISSN 0740-624X, E-ISSN 1872-9517, Vol. 39, no 1, article id 101662Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The digitalisation of public services involves not only the transformation of the relationship between public service providers and clients, but also the transformation of public administration work. While most studies of digitalisation of the public sector have focused on the practical outcomes for the quality of public services and the quality of public administration work, none have unpacked , or theorised, how these changes actually come about in practice. This paper fills this gap by drawing on a study of the in-house adaptation of a digital automation tool (an RPA) by a Swedish local authority. In the article, we pay attention to what we, inspired by Donna Haraway and Lucy Suchman, call ‘configuring work’, i.e. the weaving together of the affordances of the technology, materials, discourses, roles and power structures. The contribution of the paper is two-fold. First, the paper demonstrates empirically how the digitalisation of a public service took place through an emergent, relational process that involved both the social and the material. Second, by adopting the the idea of ‘configuring work’ and paying attention to the effects of this, we show that the digitalisation process was successively shaped by the particular vested interests, ethics, discourses and the algorithmic materialities that comprised it. This helps us discuss the reason for why, in extant literature, digitalisation threatens the professional autonomy of the public administrators as well as why it may reduce service quality. Finally, we suggest how some of these issues may be addressed in future research.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 39, no 1, article id 101662
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-56801DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2021.101662ISI: 000742775400017Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85121392795OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-56801DiVA, id: diva2:1622278
Available from: 2021-12-21 Created: 2021-12-21 Last updated: 2023-10-31Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Digital automation of administrative work: How automating reconfigures administrative work
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Digital automation of administrative work: How automating reconfigures administrative work
2023 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This thesis is an examination of how digital automation of administrative work unfolds in practice. It sets out to understand how administrative work changes as it is digitally automated and how such changes have wider consequences beyond the performance of specific work tasks. A case study design is used, focusing on digital automation through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) at a Swedish municipality, and the methods to produce data include interviews, observations, and document analysis. The thesis contributes to the body of literature that understands work as practices performed by diverse configurations of social and material elements, a body of literature that spans the fields of organization studies and information systems research. It comprises five papers:Paper I builds a foundation for the thesis by examining the automation process and conceptualizing it as configuring work. This is a dynamic process of mutual reconfiguration of work practice, digital technology, and organizational arrangements through which a new agentive configuration of work is approached. Paper II explores the ways in which a new dichotomy of human and digital coworkers emerges and the role of social responsibility and context for work as a new division of labor emerges. Paper III takes a broader look at the effects of digital technology on the organizing of work and proposes the conceptualization of hyper-taylorization as a way of understanding how the rationale of digital automation technology comes to enhance Taylorism in terms of making work digitally legible, predictable, and controllable. Paper IV shifts the focus again to the ethics of digital automation, utilizing an example from the case study to explore ethical and managerial implications when digitally automating. Paper V is a conceptual paper that aims to conceptualize the thesis's core theoretical contribution, which is to understand digital automation of administrative work as not just a change in how work is performed but a change regarding how knowledge about work is created and the conditions of knowledge creation. Within this framework, “work” is understood as performing an epistemic machineryrelated to the materiality of the configuration that performs work. Thus, The paper concludes that digital automation, at least in technological history, implies an epistemological shift of administrative work towards a more strictly rationalistic way of understanding the world at the expense of a pluralistic set of ways of creating knowledge and understanding the world.The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of this shift and how the political terrain of administrative work comes to be abandoned as it is digitally automated.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalens universitet, 2023
Series
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations, ISSN 1651-4238 ; 392
National Category
Business Administration
Research subject
Industrial Economics and Organisations
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-64640 (URN)978-91-7485-619-4 (ISBN)
Public defence
2023-12-13, Delta, Mälardalens universitet, Västerås, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2016-07210
Available from: 2023-11-01 Created: 2023-10-31 Last updated: 2023-11-22Bibliographically approved

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Andersson, ChristofferHallin, AnetteIvory, Chris

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