PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INNOVATION THEORY AND PRACTICE:

BUREAUCRATIC ATTITUDES TOWARD ICT IN SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT

Hanjun Park

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University

May 2009

UMI Number: 3358937

Copyright 2009 by
Park, Hanjun
All rights reserved

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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Eugene B. McGregor Jr., Ph.D., Chair

Roger B. Parks, Ph.D.

James L. Perry, Ph.D.

Alice Robbin, Ph.D.

March 25, 2009

ii

 2009

Hanjun Park
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been completed without the encouragement,
sacrifice, and support of numerous people. I have to thank my committee members, who
have provided insightful comments and constructive suggestions. Professor Eugene B.
McGregor, my chair, has always been willing to help me. His sincere and inspirational
guidance and encouragement have led me through my graduate years in both the M.P.A.
and Ph.D. programs of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA).
Professor Roger B. Parks, my former Ph.D. program director, showed great interest in my
research and provided me with financial support for my course work.
Professor James L. Perry has always welcomed me and offered many interesting
ideas and suggestions for my research. Professor Alice Robbin, my minor advisor, has
been very supportive and provided critical comments and resources that have improved
the quality of my study. All of them have taught me to be a good researcher, scholar,
teacher, and mentor, which they are.
I would also like to thank my SPEA colleagues who were supportive of each other.
I believe our friendship, which has kept us tight through hard times, will continue. My
appreciation extends to the members of the Bloomington Korean Baptist Church. I
appreciate their sincere prayers for me and my family.
I am grateful to the faculty of the Department of Public Administration at Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), especially Professor Ja Yong Koo, Professor
Sung-Don Hwang, Professor Emeritus Chang Joon Kim, Professor Emeritus Myoung Soo
Kim, Professor Emeritus Mahn-Kee Kim, and Professor Emeritus Byong Man Ahn, who
introduced the study of public administration to me and helped understand the field by
iv

sharing their scholarly insights.

I am indebted to Professor In Chul Kim, who was my undergraduate and graduate
advisor at HUFS. He encouraged me to study abroad and has continuously invigorated
me to move forward since I was a freshman. I thank my parents and parents-in-law.
There is no word to fully express my gratitude to my parents, Young Sun Park and Hye
Jeong Jun, who have silently supported and sacrificed for me. I know it never ends. My
brother and sister have my appreciation for their love and prayers.
Jaesung, my precious son, also sacrificed what he has deserved. He is only four
years old. He wanted to spend time with me but let me go to the library. I have not been a
good daddy but want him to know that I love him more than anything else. Finally, KyoJin, my wife, deserves my greatest appreciation, pleasure, and love. She was always
standing by me. Although she has also worked on her doctoral degree, she thought of me
first and sacrificed her life as a doctoral student. This doctoral degree is not solely mine
but also hers. This dissertation is dedicated to Jaesung and Kyo-Jin.
I thank God, who has shown and led the way for me.

Hanjun Park

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INNOVATION THEORY AND PRACTICE:

BUREAUCRATIC ATTITUDES TOWARD ICT IN SOUTH KOREAN GOVERNMENT

This dissertation investigates two innovative Korean public management practices

as an avenue of creating public values: Online Citizen Contacts and On-Nara Business
Processing System. While the adoption of information and communication technology
(ICT) is widespread in the public sector and heavily researched, empirical research has
rarely paid attention to the strategic potential embedded in technology beyond automation
and efficiency. Emphasizing the coherence between theory and practice in the
transformed contexts of public management, this research examines three questions. First,
it surveys whether both public management practices have the potential capacity to be
exploited. Second, it investigates whether a strategic public management framework can
apply to the innovations practiced by the Korean government. Third, it examines what
affects the comprehension of public mangers toward the ICT-based public management
practices
Through the written survey, Korean public managers were asked to answer
questions about the strategic utility of both practices. By analyzing their responses with
factor analysis and regression analysis methods, this research reached several conclusions.
First, Korean public managers understand the potential capacity inherent in the practices.
Second, such potential however has not yet been articulated. Third, a strategic public
management framework accordingly does not fit in both practices. The results indicate
that the attitudes of Korean public managers toward ICT seem to have remained in the
traditional bureaucratic framework while the new innovative public management

vi

practices offer an opportunity to exploit their strategic potential for creating public values.
Fourth, this research also confirms the influences of several determinants such as training,
education, job, technology ease of use, and recruitment on the comprehension of public
managers about the innovative practices.
This research finds that the bureaucratic framework of public management
programmed in the mindset of public managers might constrain the innovative use of
such practices and thus claims that there is a gulf between actual practice and theoretical
strategic potential that can be exploited. Finally this research concludes that the future
development of Korean public management and e-government practices depends on the
application of strategic public management theory to a professional practice that aims to
close the gap, a potential opportunity to improve public management performance.

Eugene B. McGregor Jr., Ph.D., Chair

Roger B. Parks, Ph.D.

James L. Perry, Ph.D.

Alice Robbin, Ph.D.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. vi
List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xi
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1

Governance and Performance .........................................................................................4
New Practices in Old Institutions ....................................................................................5
Public Managers: Forgotten in the Age of Smart Technology ........................................6
Research Subjects ............................................................................................................8
Research Questions ..........................................................................................................9
CHAPTER TWO: ICT IN THE KOREAN GOVERNMENT ....................................11
History of ICT Adoption in Korean Government Agencies ...........................................12
Online Citizen Contacts .................................................................................................14
On-Nara Business Processing System ...........................................................................16
CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................21
Strategic Public Management ........................................................................................21
Government Reform and ICT-based Practices ..............................................................25
Social and Organizational Aspects of ICT.....................................................................32
Institutional Pressures: Isomorphism ............................................................................38
Power and Control: Agency Theory ..............................................................................42

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS .....................44

Analytical Framework ...................................................................................................44
Hypotheses .....................................................................................................................51

viii

CHAPTER FIVE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...................................................59

Dependent Variables ......................................................................................................59
Independent Variables ...................................................................................................62
Survey and Data Collection ...........................................................................................70
Statistical Models of Analysis ........................................................................................78
CHAPTER SIX: FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR ONLINE CITIZEN CONTACTS.....81
Descriptive Statistics for Online Citizen Contacts.........................................................81
Factor Analysis for Online Citizen Contacts .................................................................86
Revised Hypotheses ........................................................................................................91
Summary ........................................................................................................................93

CHAPTER SEVEN: DETERMINANTS OF ONLINE CITIZEN CONTACTS ......95

Regression Analysis for Online Citizen Contacts ..........................................................95
ANOVA for ICT Training .............................................................................................101
Summary ......................................................................................................................102

CHAPTER EIGHT: FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR ON-NARA BPS .........................104

Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS .......................................................................104
Factor Analysis for On-Nara BPS ...............................................................................107
Revised Hypotheses ......................................................................................................111
Summary ......................................................................................................................113

CHAPTER NINE: DETERMINANTS OF ON-NARA BPS .....................................114

Regression Analysis for On-Nara BPS ........................................................................114
ANOVA for ICT Training .............................................................................................122
Summary ......................................................................................................................123

CHAPTER TEN: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ............................................125

Summary and Discussion of Basic Findings................................................................125
Basic Problem Revisited ..............................................................................................136
ix

Global Wine in a Local Bottle: Dichotomy vs. Dimensionality ...................................137

Automated and Informated Organizations...................................................................144
Research Implications and Suggestions for Future Research .....................................147
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................150

REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................152
APPENDIX .....................................................................................................................178

TABLES

Table 1

Reform through IT Propositions and Findings in the Literature .....................31

Table 2

2008 List of the Korean National Ministries ...................................................73

Table 3

Survey Response Summary .............................................................................74

Table 4

Reduced Survey Response Summary ..............................................................75

Table 5

Respondent by Gender .....................................................................................76

Table 6

Respondent by Rank ........................................................................................77

Table 7

Description of Dependent and Independent Variables ....................................79

Table 8

Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Up Items .......................................83

Table 9

Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Down Items ..................................84

Table 10

Correlations among OCC Managing-Down Items .........................................84

Table 11

Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Out Items ......................................85

Table 12

Descriptive Statistics for OCC Internal Value and Procedure Items ...............86

Table 13

Rotated Factor Matrix for OCC .......................................................................88

Table 14

Design for Dependent Variables and Factor Analysis Result: OCC ...............90

Table 15

Summary Table of fGLS for the OCC Construct ..........................................100

Table 16

ANOVA Test of ICT training for OCC .........................................................101

Table 17

Results of Hypotheses Test for Determinants: OCC .....................................102

Table 18

Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Up Items .......................105

Table 19

Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Down Items...................106

Table 20

Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Out Items ......................106

Table 21

Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Internal Value and Procedure .........107

Table 22

Rotated Factor Matrix for On-Nara BPS .......................................................108

Table 23

Design for Dependent Variables and Factor Analysis Result........................110

Table 24

Summary Table of fGLS for the On-Nara BPS .............................................120

Table 25

ANOVA Test of ICT training for On-Nara BPS ...........................................122

Table 26

Results of Hypotheses Test for Determinants: On-Nara BPS .......................123

xi

FIGURES

Figure 1

Electronic Government Users and Interactions .................................................7

Figure 2

On-Nara BPS Work Processing Chart .............................................................17

Figure 3

Three Triangles ................................................................................................46

Figure 4

Conceptual Framework of Analysis for Korean Online Citizen Contacts ......49

Figure 5

Conceptual Framework of Analysis for Korean On-Nara BPS.......................50

Figure 6

The Politics-Administration Trichotomy and Strategic Triangle ..................126

xii

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The world has been flattened by globalization (Friedman, 2005). Advances in
technology are among the many changes that have flattened national borders and
introduced a new organizational environment in which new political and business
platforms have emerged. Such globalization has consequently forced changes on
organizational structure and management practices as well. With this revolutionary
globalization penetrating into the public and government sectors, the traditional
bureaucratic paradigm has lost its prominence in both theory and practice of public
management (Barzelay, 1992).1 This implies that innovative public management
practices need a more relevant theoretical guideline by which they can be properly
utilized and sophisticatedly understood. Therefore, this study examines new information
and communication technology- (ICT) based public management innovations adopted in
Korean national government organizations: Online Citizen Contacts and On-Nara
Business Processing System.
A tide of information and communication technology (e.g., the Internet) diffused
into public management practice and enabled governments to establish electronic
communication media that transformed the communicational behaviors and patterns
between citizens and public managers. These changes in public management practice
have also prompted theoretical discussions.
When globalization pressures introduced an innovative public management
1

Lynn (2006, p. 2) observed that the claim that the bureaucratic paradigm is dead has grown in the field of
public management. Kettl (2002) argued that governments need new theories to facilitate public
management practice because it has been revolutionized by forces such as devolution and globalization.

practice, they also affected the theoretical development of public management and
government reform because of the reciprocity between theory and practice.2 Scholars
have increasingly argued that new theoretical ideas need to lead and guide the field of
public management (Kettl, 1997, 2002; Heinrich et al., 2004; Lynn, 2006). Kettl (1997, p.
446) claimed that a remarkable revolution has swept public management around the
world and that the revolution requires the deeper understanding of basic ideas of
reform, the connections between the reforms and governmental processes, and the links
between these processes and governance. Such a claim implies that a deeper and richer
understanding can help governments current struggles with building the capacity to
manage transformed strategies through which they can then effectively coordinate
public service delivery and organizational performance (Kettl, 2002, p. 158). Heinrich et
al. (2004) confirmed that the need for a new sophistication in the theoretical foundation
would be the imminent issue in public administration and management.
Beginning in the early 1990s, it became popular to argue that the field of public
administration must be repositioned on new intellectual and practical foundations to
avoid collapsing into a rubble of irrelevance.Many of the fields leading scholars began
to embrace the idea of governance as an organizing concept (Heinrich et al., 2004, p. 3).

The advent of the term governance can be further explained by the ambiguous status
of public management as a consequence of revolutionary shift in the field. While
tectonic forces such as devolution and globalization altered the context of public
management by reconfiguring the traditional boundary between state and civil society,

Although Overman and Boyd (1994, p. 67) indicated that theory development in the field of
management traditionally has relied on practice and experience, Tschirhart (2006) implied that what is
interesting in studying public organization resides in integrating knowledge gained from multiple
theoretical perspectives to inform practice and develop better models and tools for research and practice.
In sum, the more theory informs practice and practice informs theory, the better the field of public
management becomes.

governance has been increasingly utilized as a concept capturing the transformational

roles of public management in advanced industrial societies (Kettl, 2002; Bevir, 2003).
In sum, globalization did influence both public management practice and
theoretical development. As implied above, the recent discussions about ICT adoption in
governments illustrate how both public management ideas and practices have been
impacted by globalization. Revolutionary progress of ICT-based practice gave birth to the
discussions of electronic government (e-government) and broadened the scope of its
scholarly inquiries into public management.3 Thus e-government research has produced
many diverse themes and findings that demonstrate how public management has been
reshaped especially with regard to its central platform based on the existence of the old
traditional bureaucratic state.
Because this dissertation specifically examines two Korean cases, it first
addresses whether the new wine of the late twentieth-century managerialismis being
adapted to the institutions of Old Public Administration without difficulty (Lynn, 2006,
p. 165). This question seems not all that different from the issue regarding the
connectedness and relevancy between public management theory and practice in the postbureaucratic era. ICT-based public management practice is a typical case reflecting
present global intellectual and practical developments and how the empirical examination
of such practice adopted in a Korean government that has nourished traditional public
administration doctrine, may help provide an answer to the question of the interaction
between theory and practice.

These inquiries have expanded to cover the interests in electronic democracy (e-democracy) and
electronic governance (e-governance).

1. Governance and Performance

Before both governance and performance independently played a critical role in
defining public management, the pendulum of traditional scholarly interests had swung
between the two ends of politics and administration. Although the contemporary spirit of
public management has induced another conceptsgovernance and performancethat
may strengthen the theoretical relevancy in practice, the governance is de facto not the
new creative conceptualization.
For instance, McGregor (1983, 1993) identified governance as one of the core
arenas with public service problems, which may be addressed by government reform
along with bureaucratic operations and problem-solving. Although this description
clarified the interactions of three political-administrative arenas by elaborating the
Wilsonian politics-administration dichotomy through distinguishing political activities
into governance and problem-solving, Moore (1995) also presented the framework of the
strategic triangle through which public management problems can be strategically
analyzed and attacked by respectively emphasizing governance and performance.
Although McGregor (1983) described his trichotomy as rooted on the dichotomy,
whereas Moore (1995) formulated the strategic triangle by assuming that the old public
administration approach was no longer appropriate, the core essentials in both discussions
are almost identical. This suggests that the essential components have remained the same,
although the new waves of globalization and devolution may transform the theoretical
and practical emphasis in public management research. Accordingly, the strategic triangle
framework for creating public values can provide an appropriate lens to examine the
current public management practices in light of the aforementioned question by Lynn:

whether the new wine of the late twentieth-century managerialismis being adapted to
the institutions of Old Public Administration without difficulty (Lynn, 2006, p. 165).

2. New Practices in Old Institutions

ICT has been claimed to possess the potential to transform organizations. In
addition, the present discussions of electronic government, governance, and democracy
presume that ICT can contribute to the processes of reshaping political relationships
citizen-government relationshipsand creating public values through government
organizations and in society.
Furthermore, Zuboff (1984) acknowledged the arrival of a smart machine age
by describing the potential of new technology that would transform organizations. She
argued that information technology has a fundamental duality that has not yet been fully
appreciated (Zuboff, 1984, p. 9). She added the following:
On the one hand, the technology can be applied to automating operations according to a
logic that hardly differs from that of the nineteenth-century machine systemreplace the
human body with a technology that enables the same processes to be performed with
more continuity and control. On the other, the same technology simultaneously generates
information about the underlying productive and administrative processes through which
an organization accomplishes its work. It provides a deeper level of transparency to
activities that had been either partially or completely opaque (Zuboff, 1984, pp. 910).

To distinguish the innovative capacity of technology from traditional logic of

automation, Zuboff coined the term informate, for technological capacity that
supersedes the traditional logic of automation (Zuboff, 1984, p. 10). When that concept
was introduced, its consequences were not clearly understood, and thus she described
such capacity as unexploited potential. In sum, her explanation implies that ICT can add
value through its application process and transform the nature of tasks and social
relationships that affect organizational activities. Such intellectual efforts to discover an
5

elaborated platform for understanding ICT potential can also help examine ICT-based
public management practices.
Although business processes and tasks inside government have long been
computerized, new technological development brings about radical changes as it alters
task environments and conditions by removing barriers separating government
organizations from citizens. Innovative ICT-based public management practices have
permeated those government organizations that used to remain inaccessible to citizens.
Therefore, it becomes significant to examine the influences of ICT on public managers
and their tasks from a more sophisticated lens that goes beyond the value of efficiency so
as to disclose the real potential of innovative public management practices with respect to
ICT applications.

3. Public Managers: Forgotten in the Age of Smart Technology

When present government reforms involve the adoption of new ICT applications,
the goals generally include improving customer satisfaction and efficiency. Peters and
Pierre (2001, p. 2) noted, the fundamental point about the reforms of the 1980s and
1990s is that politicians identified the civil service as a major part of the problem, rather
than as a part of the solution. These observations imply that the earlier research on egovernment, or ICT-based public management practices, has largely overlooked public
managers who are simultaneously users and operators of such ICT technologies. This
explains why public managers perception, evaluation, and utilization of e-government
practices have rarely been studied in the United States, South Korea, or elsewhere,
despite the works like Moon and Welch (2005).
Recent e-government studies ignore public managers as users of the related

practices, yet it was once common to use the inside user-centered approach to examine a
public-sector information system. Newcomer and Caudle (1991) suggested that privatesector information systems (IS) research should pay attention to user effectiveness and
employ surrogate measures such as user satisfaction, and they argued that the scope of
users is also a critical issue in order to make IS evaluation more comprehensive (p. 378).
However, recent e-government studies have directed research attention to citizens rather
than to public managers as users (Figure 1).

Inside Users:

Outside Users:

Public Agency/
Administrators

Citizens

(3)

E-government
via
The Internet

Public Agency/
Administrators

Businesses

Figure 1 Electronic Government Users and Interactions

The ICT potential that goes beyond efficiency and convenience may be shaped by
how public managers utilize the technology and interact with citizens. This perspective
reflects the notion of enacted ICT articulated by Fountain (2002) in characterizing
enacted technology as the perception, design, and use of objective technologies
(Fountain, 2002, p. 98). This indicates that public managers can utilize, misuse, or
constrain ICT as a means of managing organizations and implementing government
policies. Because of the high initial cost of adopting new ICTs and their tendency to
persist once adopted, their success requires commitment from public managers. Zuboff
7

(1984) also contemplated the tasks and roles of workersusersin the informated
organizations.
Life at the data interface invites the worker into the abstract precincts of managerial work.
It provides access to a broader view of the business as well as a deepened understanding
of ones tasks and their role in the wider sphere of organizational functions. When work
becomes synonymous with responsiveness to data, it engenders inquiry and dialogue,
thus opening the way for workers to envision new possibilities and fresh alternatives to
the reigning definitions of process, product, and organization (Zuboff, 1984, p. 302).

Given that public managers can shape the success of adopting ICT-based public
management practices, one can envision the future of such practices by investigating the
perception and attitudes of adopters toward ICT use in providing public services and
enhancing public management. Therefore, this dissertation examines both the potential
and workings manifested in ICT-based public management practices through the eyes of
public managers in the Korean national government.

4. Research Subjects
Two innovative Korean public management practices will be elucidated in regard
to their present contributions and future potential: (1) Online Citizen Contacts (OCC) and
(2) On-Nara Business Processing System (On-Nara BPS). These public management
practices were identified as innovative cases that, respectively, facilitate external
communications and internal task processing. These practices especially warrant
examination because the Korean national government has been consistently named
among the countries with the best e-government practices.4
However, gaining this reputation does not necessarily mean that Korean public

The Brown University study named Korea as first in global e-government consecutively for 2006 and
2007 (West, 2006, 2007). In addition, the United Nations has examined the global readiness for egovernment and recognized Korea as one of top countries for leading e-government practices, ranking it
fourth to sixth since 2003 (United Nations, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008).

managers, as internal operators, optimally utilize e-government. Unless public managers

positively assess e-government practices and actively create public values by utilizing egovernment functions as intended, the best e-government practices cannot be
accomplished. Without the true realization of promises by public managers who can
harness ICT and recast resources as an effective spur to create public values, the present
international assessment only confirms the superficial realization of aspiration hidden in
the new technology and related practices.
As noted above, the missing link is public managers who can enact technology
and create public values. Therefore, this research will examine public managers attitudes
and perceptions toward the two innovative e-government practices of OCC and On-Nara
BPS in the Korean national government, because public managers are both the forgotten
users of ICT adopted by their organizations and the main characters who can create
public values through innovative practices.

5. Research Questions
This research is proposed based on two premises. First, it presupposes that an ICT
is smart and has the potential to contribute to public management success. Second, it
assumes that the shaping and exploiting of potential capacity embedded in ICT are
determined by how public managers construct their understanding of innovative public
management practices.
Based on these premises, three major research questions were developed to
examine the utility of ICT-based public management practices, through a survey of
Korean public managers.
(1) Do new ICT-based public management practices really have the potential and

inner structure to be exploited by public managers for creating public values? By

examining how public managers perceive practices, this research will be able to portray
the potential capacities inherent in the technology with which public managers can
informate their organization.
(2) Is the strategic triangle notion of creating public values applicable to the
Korean public management practices utilizing ICT? The globalization of new ideas and
practices for public management leads to the question of how context might offset
practice.
(3) What affects the perception of public managers toward the utility of ICTbased public management practices? The identification of determining factors will
facilitate the understanding of how public managers may utilize new innovative practices
in their organizations. Perception has been commonly considered as a portent of behavior
and a regulator of intention about how to utilize new practices. Therefore, the
examination of factors determining their perceptions will consequently provide strategic
scaffolding through which such e-government practices can be diffused through
government organizations.
Ultimately, this research will elicit knowledge of and insights into public
management practice by envisaging e-government management and the possibilities of
improved ICT-based practices. By investigating two cases of e-government practices, this
research will discover how e-government study can contribute to the general field of
public management and suggest future directions for studying innovative public
management practices. In addition, it will provide a new basis for understanding whether
e-government is merely rhetorical exercise or an expanded set of operational possibilities.

10

CHAPTER TWO
ICT IN THE KOREAN GOVERNMENT
Although previous research has generated mixed assessments of the effectiveness
of ICT-based practices in government organizations, the studies examining ICT-based
public management practices are now generally identified as electronic government (egovernment) research. Governments have created and provided various services through
the Internet for more than a decade. Most local governments in the US have Internet
connectivity (99.4%) and their own web portals (91.1%), according to the report from the
International City County Management Association (2004). Most public sector
organizations in North America and Europe are now well beyond web publishing and
have implemented transactional capabilities (Marche & McNiven, 2003). This
remarkable growth of ICT adoption has definitely resulted from the continuous efforts to
utilize ICT as a major means of leveraging reform and, during the Clinton
administration, the National Performance Review (NPR) announced the belief in ICT as
a tool to reform government and began the initiative to maximize the utility of the
Internet (Garson, 2006, p. 46). Although the number of governmental web sites does not
necessarily indicate a particular level of informatization, the web-based interaction
between citizens and government organizations has undoubtedly been a prominent
government innovation in most countries.
The diffusion of Internet-based public service delivery and communication can be
found also in Korea. The 2005 national evaluation of government web sites, funded by
the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs (MOGAHA), discovered
that all 38 national, 16 provincial, and 234 local government organizations had their own
11

websites (Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs, 2005). At all levels,
promotion of electronic government (e-government) has been encouraged in Korea,
which was ranked in a Brown University study as first in global e-government in 2006
and 2007 (West, 2006, 2007). West lauded the South Korean government portal as
containing more than 800 services, providing a wealth of information, and being aesthetic
and easy to navigate (West, 2007, p. 24).
Based on the three factors(1) web measure, (2) telecommunication
infrastructure, and (3) human capital, the United Nations also examined global
readiness for e-government and ranked Korea fourth, fifth, or sixth since 2003 (United
Nations, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008). The success of Korean e-government has extended to
provincial and local government. This has been made possible by the presidential agenda
of continued investment in constructing a national ICT infrastructure.
The Korean governments first generation of informatization has focused on
administrative automation. The second generation will establish the ICT infrastructure
and mutual communication networks. In doing so, the Korean government was prepared
to launch the best e-government web portals and provide many online services.

1. History of ICT Adoption in Korean Government Agencies

The present success of Korean e-government would have not been possible
without the governmental ICT initiatives, beginning in the 1970s. Since 1978, the Korean
government has continuously strengthened its ICT infrastructure through a series of
national information infrastructure projects (NIIPS): the Administration Computerizing
Project (19781986), National Information Infrastructure Project (19871996),
Information Superhighway Infrastructure Project (19952000), and the Administration

12

Informatization Project (19962006) (Ministry of Information and Communication,

2003; Kim & Choi, 2001). Other factors such as the advanced ICT industry, strong
public interest in adopting ICT, and being an early adopter have also aided the advance
of e-government.
The history of ICT advancement in the Korean national government can be
divided into three periods: beginning (1960s1970s), building infrastructure (1980s
1990s), and full implementation of e-government (2000-present). The initial project
focused on office automation efforts with the introduction of computers in 1967. The
national government authority subsequently realized the need for informatization and
national infrastructure rather than simple task automation. In order to meet the new needs
and build the essential infrastructure, the government initiated undertook the
Administration Computerizing Project (19781986). This series of measures was
supported by later legislation, including the Computer Program Protection Act and the
Supply and Utilization of Computer Network Act in 1986 and the Software Development
Promotion Act, along with the National Information Infrastructure Project (19871996).
In the 1990s, Korea established the new Ministry of Information and
Communication (1994) for developing national informatization and proposed the
Information Super-Highway Infrastructure Project (19952000). The Framework on
Informatization Promotion Act, which played a foundational and guiding role for national
information policies, was enacted in 1995. In addition to these efforts, the Administration
Informatization Project (19962006) enabled South Korea to become a world leader in
implementing e-government projects (Ministry of Information and Communication,
2003; Kim & Choi, 2001).

13

In 2002, the Korean government established a vision along with principles of egovernment promotion by declaring networked, knowledge, and participatory
government. Thirty-one national e-government initiatives were formulated in 2003 as an
action plan and strategy for realizing the administrations vision for implementing egovernment projects. Various statutes and regulations were enacted and revised,
including the E-government Act of 2001, the Statute of Citizen Participatory Portal
Operation, the Statute of Civil Complaint Processing, and the Digital Signature Law.
The former Roh administration strongly advocated the diffusion of e-government
and introduced innovative e-government projects such as the On-Nara Business
Processing System (On-Nara BPS) and Online Citizen Contacts
(http://www.epeople.go.kr). In particular, the On-Nara BPS was recognized as one of the
top-ten achievements in the 8th World E-Democracy Forum (October, 2007), and Korean
e-government systems have gained attention from other national governments such as
Rumania, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, Panama, India, and Spain. Some of these countries
signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) for e-government development with the
South Korean government (Presidential Advisory Committee of Government Reform and
Decentralization, 2005). This dissertation examines such two cases of ICT-based public
management practices in Korea.

2. Online Citizen Contacts

Because the interactivity of Internet technology has facilitated the delivery of
government services and improved the democratic process, the adoption of web-based
technologies has become a global trend (Pina, 2007). One example is Online Citizen
Contacts (OCC), which since 2005 has provided citizens with electronic access to express

14

their concerns and propose policy ideas.

OCC has been an effective communication channel for both citizens and agencies.
Online petition, proposal, and policy participation can reduce citizens inconvenience and
save them time and effort. Government agencies can identify and merge duplicated
petitions to several agencies, thus saving time and resolving citizen concerns more
efficiently. Government agencies can also replace in-person public hearings and
discussion sessions. Public managers can manage and examine real-time citizen
responses and reactions to new policy issues.
Measures to engage the citizenry are not new in South Korea, whose government
established the Civil Affairs Office in 1971 and the Ombudsman of Korea in 1994.
However, the system can be regarded as innovative because OCC provides citizens with a
pioneering mode of interaction. Since OCC was implemented as an effort to improve and
integrate the processes for citizen complaints and suggestions in 2005, the Korean
government has strengthened it through continuing endeavors such as developing an
internal manual for civil complaints and organizational system enhancement (Presidential
Advisory Committee for Policy Planning, 2008, p. 35).
The Korean Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS) recently
reported that the number of citizen complaints and suggestions submitted to OCC and
thereafter reflected in national policy increased 23.3%, from 648 cases in 2006 to 799
cases in 2007, and that the number of citizens who participated through OCC increased
31.9%, from 4,653 cases in 2006 to 14,860 cases in 2007 (Korean Ministry of Public
Administration and Security [MOPAS], 2008). Another indication of the popularity of
OCC is that it improved the level of citizen satisfaction from 21.3% in 2004 to 45.9% in

15

2006, regarding the outcomes resulting from governmental actions and the responses to
their complaints and suggestions (Presidential Advisory Committee for Policy Planning,
2008, p. 54). The increasing use of OCC may have resulted partly from the improvements
in ICT infrastructure and social readiness.
Although the widespread adoption of the Internet-based provision of government
service has become a global trend, the Korean domestic context and national
competitiveness favoring ICT adoption have kept government organizations pressured to
produce positive outcomes of OCC.

3. On-Nara Business Processing System

On-Nara BPS is described as an online system that is designed to systemize and
standardize the entire process of handling administrative tasks and to establish scientific
management systems of government administration (Jeong, 2007).
Although the Korean government implemented an electronic business processing
system in the early 2000s, it only replaced the face-to-face report and offline approval
with an electronic means. It could not systemically provide core information such as who
drafted the decision, who decided, the rationale behind the decision, or which information
and resources were critical in the policy process. The business process inside government
organizations remained opaque. Furthermore, the traditional business process made no
move toward the so-called Information and Knowledge society. Because of the absence
of such information about previous policy decisions and related materials, the
organizational business process was arbitrary rather than consistent. It changed
depending on who was in charge, not what needed improvement (Presidential Advisory
Committee for Policy Planning, 2008, p. 3).

16

To overcome these problems, the On-Nara Business Processing System (On-Nara

BPS) was initiated by the Blue House, developed by MOGAHA (Ministry of
Government Administration and Home Affairs)currently Ministry of Public
Administration and Security (MOPAS)and tested from 2004 to 2006. Since January
2007, On-Nara BPS has been employed in all organizations in the national government.
Figure 2 illustrates the standardized administrative work process, consisting of several
critical activities.

Figure 2 On-Nara BPS Work Processing Chart5

As shown in Figure 2, both task management and document management are the
main components of the system, covering all activities throughout planning,
documentation, decision-making, and sharing and utilizing. For task management, OnNara BPS classifies administrative affairs by function and purpose and defines the most
basic task as unit task. In doing so, this system utilizes a task card that enables managing
performance of each unit and progress of the task. A task card has various sections such

Adopted from http://www.mopas.go.kr/gpms/view/english/inno/in_03_01.jsp

17

as heading, performance, plan management, quality management, PR management, and

client management. Through these sections, one can easily understand the nature,
characteristics, progress, and performance of each task. Whereas a heading section
provides information about and the nature of each task, a performance section
automatically lists a performance record. Even after completion of a unit task, On-Nara
BPS retains the information permanently, thus allowing government agencies to conduct
post-mortem analysis.
Document management supports a unit task by managing diverse files, reports,
and documents through a document card devised to manage the entire process of
administrative and decision-making throughout draft, review, revision, archive, and reuse.
Once a public administrator in charge produces the first document initiating a unit task,
the entire process of reporting, reviewing, and decision-making is managed and updated
through a document card. A document card is composed of three sections: heading, path,
and security. A heading section summarizes a document. A path section shows all
communicated and exchanged information by recording all developments, opinions, and
directives. Once the document is drafted, reviewed, and revised by public administrators,
it cannot be deleted from the system. Therefore, one can find detailed information on a
policy, such as who voiced a given opinion or whose opinion changed. In doing so, a path
section clearly shows progress of decision-making and promotes transparency and
responsibility.
The security section informs the level and scope of information disclosure and
accessibility. Once a document card is completed, it will be connected with related task
cards and automatically saved in the performance section. Accordingly, a document card

18

provides a foundation for evaluating individual or organizational performances (Jeong,

2007).
Business process management has been primarily discussed in management
literature and has not gained much attention in the public management field. However,
some studies, for instance, Gulledge and Sommer (2002), described the benefit of
business process management as effecting performance-related improvements in the
public sector. As briefly mentioned above, the implementation of business process
management can generate potential benefits such as increased accountability and
transparency in addition to improved efficiency and effectiveness. These are why the
Blue House strategically initiated the adoption of On-Nara BPS in the national
government organizations.
Whereas OCC was launched for expanding electronic transactions and
communications between citizens and agencies, On-Nara BPS was developed to improve
internal task management. Nonetheless, both systems were driven by Presidential
initiatives to realize public values through managing governmental and administrative
tasks. Seemingly, each practice has its own individual objective for adoption but, ideally,
can generate great synergy to the extent that integrating impacts of all e-government can
improve the policy-making process in government agencies.
First, the expanded electronic access to administrative information may allow
citizens to obtain better government and policy information. OCC, through its policy
forum and electronic civil petition processing, can provide citizens with more
opportunities to participate in the policy-making process with better information about
the concerned policy issues that would be obtained thanks to expanded electronic access

19

to administrative information.
The level of response to citizen inquiries and suggestions are incorporated in
evaluating the performance of both an individual public manager and the organization.
On the other hand, OCC theory is that it improves government responsiveness and the
chance of reflecting the citizens input in the policy-making process (MOPAS, 2008). In
the process of policy-making inside government agencies, the aim of On-Nara BPS is to
enhance accountability and transparency. Whereas On-Nara BPS was introduced based
on the assumption that the establishment of systemic business process management
through ICT can reform how public managers work, OCC was based on the premise that
web-based communication can improve how citizens and government organizations
communicate. From the standpoint of policy-making, these e-government practices can
generate synergistic effects if they can function as intended altogether.
However, these assumptions can be argued against by the critics claiming that
public managers can minimize or eliminate the effect of ICT. ICT cannot guarantee that
public managers communicate effectively hence the need to study the attitude of public
managers as active actors and facilitators in the decision-making process of government
agencies that have adopted ICT.

20

CHAPTER THREE
LITERATURE REVIEW
The central purpose of this dissertation is to analyze two Korean ICT practices from
the standpoint of strategic public management and to examine factors affecting the perception
by public managers about their use of ICT. To serve that purpose, this chapter thoroughly
reviews the existing literature and previous discussions about (1) strategic public
management, (2) information and communication technology, (3) electronic government as a
government reform initiative, and (4) organizational change theories that consider
institutional isomorphic pressures and agency perspectives. In doing so, this review

identifies a conceptual framework through which the primary hypotheses will be

developed and examined.

1. Strategic Public Management

The strategic approach toward public management has attracted substantial
attention from both academics and practitioners for the last two decades, and has
become a centerpiece of orthodox public management (Poister and Streib, 2005, p. 45).
Strategic management (SM), de facto, originated from the efforts to identify long-term
policies for private corporations in the 1950s and 1960s (Goldsmith, 1995). It has since
been embraced by the public and nonprofit sectors.
Whereas Bryson (2004, p. 6) defines strategic planning as a disciplined effort to
produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is,
what it does, and why it does it, SM is a more encompassing processconcerned with
managing an organization in a strategic manner and thus is often regarded as an
extension of strategic planning and includes the many steps of organizational action
21

(Poister and Streib, 1999, p. 310; Bryson, 2004).

The introduction of SM in the public sector has, however, illuminated several
critical issues. The field of public management did not readily embrace SM. Strategic
management needed to complete a classical rite of passage, namely the examination of
public-private difference, to show its relevancy and contribution to the field. Publicmanagement scholars claimed that SM, initially considered sophisticated for managing
private corporations, could be somewhat incomplete and potentially misleading when
applied in public settings (Nutt & Backoff, 1993). Ring and Perry (1985, p. 283) also
recalled the basic and critical distinctions residing in the strategic management process
between two sectors, by describing public managers as those who frequently function in
two different cultural contexts controlled by high moral character and a public
demand for efficiency.
McGregor (1998, p. 5) noted the complexity of decision-making inherently rooted
in the public sector and presented three grounds on which public-sector SM should differ
from private. First, the environmental components and constraints juggled around the
public sector are much more numerous and more complex than in the private sector.
Additional juggling at the mind of public management is regarded as more diverse
values than is conventionally the case for private sector counterparts. He found that the
juggling idiosyncrasy makes public strategy management unique, due to the process by
which public-sector decisions are made. He viewed that the process is less closely held
because the anchor points of decision making lie in a democratic fish bowl in which
the attentive public attempts to peer in, observe, and comment and thus the process of
formulating a strategy is juggled (Ring & Perry, 1985; Nutt & Backoff, 1993;

22

McGregor, 1998). Vinzant and Vinzant noted the following limitation.

To make matters even more difficult, there are few workable tools to help public officials
make sense of these apparent contradictions and determine whether, how, and to what
extent strategic management can be implemented. Although a great deal of information
exists, it is often not geared specifically to the public sector and not synthesized in a form
that makes it readily useable. (Vinzant & Vinzant, 1996, p. 139)

However, public-management scholars readily melded strategic management with

managing the public sector, in which public managers must cope with competing value
systems, in addition to the demands normally associated with managerial life (Ring &
Perry, 1985, p. 277).
Strategic management has been refined into strategic public management (SPM).
Many scholars have continuously addressed issues about SM in the public sector and
published their models and approaches. Moore (1995) proposed a sophisticated strategic
triangle consisting of managing out, managing up, and managing down, under the catch
phrase of creating public value. Mintzberg (2000) introduced a similar model for
managing the public sectormanaging on the edgesand explored the outward, upward,
and downward aspects of managerial actions of public managers. Poister and Streib
(1999) presented the change cycle model for SM, which constellated key management
functions revolving around the core values, mission, and vision of any public sector
organization (pp. 312314).
These SPM models are superficially similar to business ones, but they clearly
distinguish SPM from private-sector strategic management. Attention needs to be
centered on the core components such as values, mission, and vision. The models by
Moore (1995) and Poister and Greib (1999) are distinctive because both require the
ability to understand emerging issues, identify values underneath the issues, and craft

23

strategies aligned with the more critical values and complicated processes under the
complexity and ambiguity prevailing in the public sector.
This confirms the relevance for exploring the influence of new ICT from the lens
of strategic public management, because in revitalizing or transforming an organization,
new technology may offer opportunities and challenges. Bryson (2004, p. 132)
characterized technological innovation as one of the major forces driving change. The
strategic approach to public management of Moore (1995) reinforced this claim by
enabling public managers to play a major role in creating public values and setting longterm strategy rather than merely carrying out mandates with new technologies. In so
doing, SPM shares a similar conception that public managers shape the use of ICT with
enacted technology, a term coined by Fountain (2002).
Strategic management in the public sector is characterized as a systematic process
for managing the organization and its future direction (Berry and Wechsler, 1995, p. 159).
To create public values, Moore (1995) illustrated how public managers accomplish three
different functions conceptualized in a strategic trianglemanaging upward, outward,
and downward (Moore, 1995, pp. 2123, pp. 7173). Whereas managing up
emphasizes the role of building public support and securing legitimacy for organizational
initiatives, managing outward envisions what is substantively valuable. The last node
of the triangle, managing downward, emphasizes that a public management strategy
should be operationally and administratively feasible. Public management strategy rooted
in the three apexes encourages public managers to simultaneously manage down, up, and
out in a strategic triangle (McGregor, 2002, p. 142).

24

2. Government Reform and ICT-based Practices

2.1.

The Many Definitions of E-government

Although popular and academic literature is filled with examples of e-government,

there is no consensus about its definition. For example, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD], 2001) referred to e-government as the use of information and
communication technologies, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better
government. The World Bank defined e-government as the use by government
agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and
mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses,
and other arms of government. Gartner (2000) described e-government as a continuous
optimization of service delivery, constituency participation, and governance by
transforming internal and external relationships through technology, the Internet, and new
media. All of these definitions seem to emphasize the efficient provision of government
services because the products of governmentoverwhelmingly servicesare often
quite suited to electronic delivery and the greater service provided by private ecommerce has created demands for governments to do same (Hughes, 2003, p. 186;
OECD, 1998).
Whereas e-government has been defined simply as the use of digital technology
in the management and delivery of public services, predominantly through the Internet
(Edmiston, 2002), other scholars have expanded e-government to include the use of
information technology to support government operation, engage citizens, and provide
government services (Center for Technology in Government, 2003). These diversified

25

discussions have brought about various e-terms such as e-service, e-management, eadministration, e-democracy, and e-society by covering various themes such as
managerial efficiency, transparency, anti-corruption, and citizen demands.
As a first step toward examining ICT-employed public-management practices, the
branches of electronic government research should be identified and the definitions and
studies of e-government should be reviewed. Garson (2006) defined digital government
as an umbrella term that encompasses all applications of ICT in the public sector. Egovernment is one aspect of digital government, defined as the provision of
governmental services by electronic means, usually over the Internet (p. 19). Perry and
Kramer (1993) observed that most applications of computing in government currently
are conventional and oriented toward business functions rather than service delivery,
indicating that the current conceptualization of e-government shows the remarkable
progress of ICT applications made in government over the last 15 years (Perry & Kramer,
1993, p. 226).
Based upon these broad definitions of e-government, the present literature is
generally categorized into two clusters. The first cluster emphasizes the supply side,
which covers the issues of e-government service adoption, development, and, by
extension, administrative reform. The other takes a recipient demand-related perspective
that focuses on themes such as citizen contacts and customer satisfaction.
Adoption research has traditionally attracted the attention from practitioners and
scholars. This approach articulated how government utilizes ICT by elaborating on its
activities and supplied public services. Accordingly, it includes efforts to locate the
influential factors that determine the level of e-government. For example, Moon (2002),

26

in describing the current landscape of local e-government website adoption, examined

organizational and external influences on the adoption of e-government and concluded
that adoption was positively associated with government size yet was impeded by
inadequate financial resources and technology expertise. Ho and Ni (2004) attributed
decisions on adopting e-government features and launching departmental websites to
internal organizational factors and external peer influences. Various surveys that compare
and rank the level of e-government sophistication further expand the coverage of supplyoriented research (West, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006; UNPAN, 2003, 2004,
2005; McNeal et al., 2003).
Newly emerging research has shifted from electronic service delivery and
managerial efficiency to focusing on the demands of citizens as service recipients (Cohen,
2006; Carter & Belanger, 2005; Thomas & Streib, 2003). Spurred by the reinventing
government movement, demand for electronic delivery of government services forced
many countries to implement it. Accordingly, attention was limited to citizens as
customers. Both the emphasis on electronic service delivery and the influence from ecommerce have depicted citizens as customers in the private sector. In addition, the
National Performance Review (NPR), which has strongly promoted e-government,
assumed that customer orientation was a primary force for reinventing government.
Earlier research constrained citizens to playing a passive role as service recipients rather
than as an active coalition promoting shared interests (Schachter, 1997). Consequently,
priority was consistently placed on the themes of adoption/supply rather than the demand
perspective that had been relatively unexplored (Reddick, 2005).
Recent studies have begun to articulate the citizen perspective in interacting with

27

e-government. For instance, Thomas and Streib (2003) examined citizen-initiated

contacts with government through government websites and found that citizen interaction
has largely been created to acquire information rather than to make transactions. They
also discovered that government websites had become popular and were evolving into a
new avenue of citizen-initiated contacts (Thomas & Streib, 2003). This approach has
advanced to examine municipal government web sites as a conduit for public
involvements (Scott, 2006) and to study the effects of e-government on the trust and
confidence of citizens in government (Tolbert & Mossberger, 2006).
In addition to these empirical studies, some scholars have enriched the literature
by constructing theoretical frameworks to discuss interactions between citizens and egovernment. Chadwick and May (2003) proposed three heuristic models to classify
interactions: managerial, consultative, and participatory. Whereas the managerial model
pursues efficiency by improving the speed of service delivery and reducing costs, the
consultative model assumes that ICT helps government solicit citizen opinion that
contributes to policy-making on certain issues. The participatory model illustrates
widespread participation through various interactions in cyberspace. The authors
comment that the managerial practice of e-government has prevailed and that the other
models were marginalized in the United States and Great Britain (Chadwick & May,
2003, p. 292). In spite of these efforts to articulate citizen-centered research and to
recognize that the democratic potential of technology has increased, an approach to
examination of public managers as users of e-government applications inside government
organizations continues to be lacking in the e-government literature.

28

2.2.

Government Reform and ICT-based Practices

Goldsmith (2005, p. 57) argued that e-government was not so much an enabler
of reform as it was the reform itself and emphasized a networked government in
which government agencies would provide effective public service with multiple levels
of governmental, private, and nonprofit organizations by regarding IT networks as the
critical infrastructure of government reform. Goldsmith closely related e-government to
administrative reform by portraying the former as an innovative mechanism to enhance
efficiency, transparency, and productivity.
The most prevalent theme in public affairs literature is ostensibly government
reform (Durst & Newell, 1999; Williams, 2000; Thompson, 2000). Government reform
research has articulated either the substantive or symbolic forces of innovations for
enhancing administrative machinery and political legitimacy (Salamon, 1981; March &
Olson, 1983; Thompson, 2000). Before the Internet became a major instrument and
citizens were able to recognize the benefits of e-government, ICT had been analyzed as
an apparatus for reforming both government and business organizations (Goldsmith,
2005). Borins (2000) observed that public management reforms mostly involved the use
of ICT, partnership with the private sector, process improvements, and empowerment.
The impacts of ICT have been studied by many researchers, but their reported
results have differed. Norris (1992) reported improved responsiveness from government
to citizen needs. Brudney and Brown (1992) found that ICT enabled public managers to
increase their productivity. The PEW Internet report on the rise of the e-citizen observed
the consequences of emerging government web sites and confirmed their benefits, such
as saving time, improving relations, and finding information (Larson & Rainie, 2002).

29

Although Danziger and Andersen (2002) found that the major studies are mixed
concerning ICT impacts, ICT has significantly improved efficiency and productivity.
Kraemer and King (2003) reviewed ICT-initiated reforms. They categorized four
representative reform propositions in the literature and concluded that ICT remains a
useful instrument of administrative change, but it is no more likely to bring about
administrative reform today than it was two decades ago (Table 1). Although their
assessment was not intended to examine typical e-government research, an earlier study
of e-government had reached a similar conclusion (Norris, 2006; Holden et al., 2003).
The recent 2005 Korean E-government Survey (Ministry of Government
Administration and Home Affairs [MOGAHA], 2006), based upon responses from chief
information officers (CIOs) in government organizations, indicated that few changes
have taken place in organizational structures and institutional arrangements. This absence
of significant changes implies that the process of ICT adoption may result from the
reinforcement of existing values and cultures inside organizations.
Although the cited analyses exploring the impacts of ICT adoption have reached
different conclusions, they nevertheless confirm the continued interest in the impacts of
ICT in public organizations.

30

Table 1
Reform through IT Propositions and Findings in the Literature
Reform Through IT Propositions

Findings

Studies

Computers have the potential to reform

public administrations and their
relations with their environments.

Experience with IT and administrative reform has shown the

technology to be useful in cases of administrative reform, but
only in cases where expectations for reform are already well
established. IT application does not cause reform.

Kramer et al. (1981)

Moon (2002)
Norris and Moon (2005)

IT can change organizational structures

and, thus, is a powerful tool for reform.

IT application has brought relatively little change to

organization structures and seems to reinforce existing
structures.

Properly used, IT will be beneficial for

administrators, staff, citizens, and
public administration as a whole.

The benefits of IT have not been distributed evenly within

government organizational functions; the primary
beneficiaries have been functions favored by the dominant
political administrative coalitions in public administrations
and not those of technical elites, middle managers, clerical
staff, or ordinary citizens.

Laudon (1974); Danziger et al.

(1982); Kling (1983); Fountain
(2001); Pinsonneault and Kraemer
(2002)
Kraemer and Kling (1985)
Dutton and Guthrie (1991)
Weitzman et al. (2006)

The potential benefits from IT are

under-realized due to a lack of
managerial understanding of what the
technology can do and an unwillingness
of managers to pursue the potential of
technology when they do understand it.

Government managers have a good sense of the potential uses

of IT in their own interests. In cases where their interests
coincide with government interests, they push IT application
aggressively.

Source: Adopted from Kraemer & King (2003)

31

Danziger et al. (1982)

Dutton and Kraemer (1977)
Ventura (1995)
Holden et al. (2003)

3. Social and Organizational Aspects of ICT

3.1.

Conceptualizations of IT and ICT

Although loosely defined by scholars, information technology (IT) has generally

been conceptualized as a means of improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
Yet, Kramer and King (2003) found that the adoption of IT does not inevitably produce
positive results and that technological impacts can be diverse.
Orlikowski (1988) defined IT as the resource that enables human actors to
accomplish their information processing activities, whereas Zmud (1990)
conceptualized IT as the application of computer and communication technologies in the
acquisition, storage, analysis, distribution, and presentation of information. However, the
topics and functions associated with IT have evolved with technology itself (Lee, 1999).
Expanding the variety and potential applicability of information and communication
technology has enabled us to overcome the physical limitations of time and space to
exchange information and communicate.
Although the World Bank (2002, p. 3) refers to IT as the creation, storage, and
processing of data, including hardware (computer networks, servers, storage devices, and
desktop computers), system software (operating systems, programming languages), and
software applications, that institution defines ICT as a set of hardware, software
networks, and media for collection, storage, processing, transmission, and presentation of
information.
The World Banks conceptualizations of IT and ICT illustrate the difficulty in
differentiating them. On the one hand, according to Bouwman (2005, p. 22), ICT can be
separated from IT through conceptualization emphasizing the convergence of

32

telecommunication and computer technology. However, Hamelink (1997) argued

that ICT covers technologies that enable the handling of information and facilitate
different forms of communication among human actors, between human beings and
electronic systems, and among electronic systems (p. 3). These conceptualizations of
ICT emphasize the aspects of network through which one can (tele)communicate rather
than characteristics of IT. Although there are subtle differences between the two
conceptualizations, many scholars and practitioners have used the terms IT and ICT
interchangeably.
Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) clustered the 14 conceptualizations of IT found in
information-system research and other technology studies into five broad categories: (1)
tool view, (2) proxy view, (3) ensemble view, (4) computational view, and (5) nominal
views.
First, studies representing the tool view describe technology as the engineered
artifact which is expected to do what its designers intend it to do (Orlikowski & Iacono,
2001, p. 123). This perspective includes discussions on technological advancement as
labor substitution, productivity improvement, information processing enhancement, and
change agent of social relations. The second cluster of IT conceptualization, labeled
proxy, emphasizes an essential aspect, property, or value of the IT such as user
perception, diffusion, and capital. For example, user perception has been one important
domain of information-system research and has functioned as a variable in describing
technological use, such as ease of use, usefulness, and intention to use the technology
(Davis, 1989; Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001).
Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) conceptualized the third approach as the ensemble

33

view of technology, which regards technology as only one component in a package that
includes the elements necessary for utilizing and developing new technology. In other
words, the full understanding of construction, implementation, and utilization of new
technology can be possible only by unpacking the black boxes in which the technology
is intertwined with other social and cultural factors (Latour, 1987). The computational
perspective of technology, the fourth category, emphasizes the computational power of
IT through storing, retrieving, and transmitting information. The fifth category, nominal
approach to technology, articulates various aspects related to IT rather than examining
information technology itself. The authors held up studies on such topics as CIO
compensation and outsourcing practices of information system experts as an example (p.
128).
The categorizations of IT by Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) provide new research
avenues, assuming that IT is subjective, fragile, dependent on its socio-economic context,
and dynamic rather than fixed, taken-for-granted, static, or abstracted (pp. 130131).
Accordingly, their premises for conceptualizing ICT strongly reflect social aspects
embedded in ICT adoption, implementation, utilization, and evaluation.
3.2.

Social Perspectives of ICT Use

Social informatics (SI) is a branch of study that examines the social aspects of
computerization. Kling (1999) defined SI as the interdisciplinary study of the design,
uses, and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their
interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. The most significant goal conveyed
through SI research is that social context of ICT development and use affects the ways
people use ICT and later shapes the consequences of their use. In other words, although

34

the traditional standard model regards ICT as a tool, SI holds it as a socio-technical

system and articulates ICT implementation as an ongoing social process by considering
social, cultural, organizational, and other contextual components (Kling, 2000, p. 229).
Early studies focused on computerization impacts in organizations because they
were the major sites of computerization (Kling, 1999). Earlier research also analyzed
computerization and the social impacts of computing in public-sector organizations. For
example, in studying the adoption of computer applications in American local
government, Danziger and Dutton (1977) observed the influences of institutional needs
and social factors. Dutton and Kraemer (1978) examined management-oriented
computing in American local government and showed that management utilization of
computers improves availability of decision information needed by top managers.
In addition to discussions about adoption, implementation, and effects, the study
of ICT use is one of the central themes in SI. Rather than conceptualizing the use of ICT
as it is just prescribed in structured processes, this use may be approached as an
outcome of interaction among the technology, the users, and the organizational
environment (Bouwman et al., 2005, pp. 9495). As an example of investigating the use
of ICT, Schmitz, Fulk, and Steinfield (1990) presented a social influence model of media
use and argued that realistic understanding of behavior requires knowledge not simply
of objective features of the environment, but also the social milieu that alters and adjusts
perceptions of that environment (p. 127). In their model, technology use is primarily a
function of (1) media evaluations, (2) media experiences and skills, (3) social influence,
(4) task evaluations, and (5) situational factors.
Orlikowski (2000) advanced SI discussions and presented a technology-in-

35

practice lens by which researchers can understand peoples use of technology.

Technology-in-practice emphasizes that a users interaction with a technology is
recursive and the use of technology becomes structured by capabilities, motivations,
power relations, norms, and technological artifacts through recurrent practice (pp. 408
411). She further argued that the perception of users could be changed through recurrent
practices and could affect the enacted structure of technologies-in-practice through
reinforcement and transformation. Interestingly, her discussion can correspond to
sensemaking in the organizational literature. According to Weick (1995), sense
making isthings as placement of items into frameworksconstructing meaning,
interacting in pursuit of mutual understanding and patterning (pp. 79). To talk about
sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when
people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves (p. 15).
His conceptualization of sensemaking as an analytic construct can be comprehended
through its seven identifiable properties: (1) grounded in identity construction, (2)
retrospective, (3) enactive of sensible environments, (4) social, (5) ongoing, (6) based on
extracted cues, and (7) based in plausibility rather than accuracy. Arguments by both
Orlikowski (2000) and Weick (1995) identify social, contextual, and ongoing processes
and emphasize the retrospective and recurrent occurrences that can produce actions taken
by technology users and sensemakers.
In sum, discussions about SI have recognized the contextual nature of ICT and
have shown the importance of users, organizations, and environments that ICT interacts
with. Further, Oudshoorn and Pinch (2003) criticized the traditional viewpoint that
separates users and technology and have underscored the role of users by regarding both

36

users and technology as two sides of the same problem. This line of argument confirms
that both technical and non-technical aspects need to be considered in assessing the
adoption and use of new technology. As such, studying public administrators who
perceive and shape the use of IT can contribute to a better understanding of e-government
because public administrators as users are half responsible for e-governments success.
3.3.

ICT Adoption Research

Information system and communication research has attempted to identify factors

affecting the use of ICT. Various models explain the relationship between ICT use and
other social, technological, organizational, and individual factors. These analytic
frameworks include media richness, the technology acceptance model (TAM), the theory
of planned behavior (TPB), and a social influence model. In general, these analytic lenses
assume that users perceive a new technology and concretize their use of technology
through their intention to use it.
The technology acceptance model has been expanded accordingly. Typical factors
of this model, such as ease of use and usefulness, have been included to measure the
characteristics of technology in explaining the intention and use of ICT (Davis, 1989).
Another representative model is the social influence model (Fulk et al., 1990), which
explains that the use of new technology depends on technology evaluation, task
evaluation, and social influence. However, neither TAM nor the social influence model
may be appropriate for articulating the adoption of new technology because the adoption
of new technology may not be a matter of intention to use once adopted in government
organizations in which the adoption of new technology is mandated.
Although some of these models showed limitations and were developed at least a

37

couple of decades ago, they may provide insights into the study of cutting-edge
technology use. This contribution may be the consequence of influential components and
natures embedded in society, organization, and individuals that have not changed,
although technology has changed significantly. Employment of these models without
modifications, however, may constrain their potential in discussing the adoption of
technology in government organizations. Most of all, individual perceptions may not
significantly affect ICT use because most adoption and use of new technology have been
compelled through laws and mandates. Although many models have examined ICT use
by assuming that ICT use may differ, for example, from individuals perception of ease
of use and usefulness, they may not be effective in explaining ICT utilization in a
government organization.
Rather, the users assessment of technological effectiveness, can be as diverse as
the intention to use and thus provide more useful information concerning in government
organizations, while legislation and mandates may push the utilization of new technology
and not allow public administrators to have diverse intention to use. In addition,
examining the evaluative position of public administrators may be more beneficial than
revealing their intent to use, in that strong intent to use does not necessarily guarantee
the correlations with positive performance outcome of adopting new technology.

4. Institutional Pressures: Isomorphism

New institutionalism suggests an answer to why organizations change
homogeneously and tend toward isomorphism. Isomorphism refers to the constraining
process that forces one unit in a population to resemble another unit that faces the same
set of environmental conditions (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). As an explanation of the

38

similarity and stability of organizational arrangements in a given population or field of

organizations (Greenwood & Hinnings, 1996), institutional factors have been
hypothesized as significant in producing organizational change. DiMaggio and Powell
(1983) explained isomorphic change by means of institutional factors that include
coercive pressure, mimetic pressure, and normative pressure. Coercive isomorphism is
encouraged by state regulations, law requirements, rules and standards from external
factors, and influences from stakeholders.
The mimetic isomorphic process is a consequence of uncertainties when
organizational technologies are poorly understood, when goals are ambiguous, or when
the environment creates symbolic ambiguity. Under these uncertainties, organizations
may copy other organizations either unintentionally or intentionally. Formal education
and the development and elaboration of professional networks help initiate normative
isomorphism and thus legitimize new models to which organizations belonging to
professional networks tend to adopt. Whereas coercive isomorphism usually originates
from the environment surrounding the organizational fields, both mimetic and
normative mechanisms are internal to the field and help explain the spread of roles and
structures (Frumkin & Galaskiewicz, 2004, p. 285). However, Frumkin and
Galaskiewicz argued that these three processes cannot be exclusive but are likely to
derive from different circumstances.
Organization studies have highlighted the processes and consequences of
isomorphism. Processes of organizational isomorphism are also emphasized in the
literature on the diffusion of innovations (Lounsbury, 2001). This emphasis also indicates
the possibilities of uniting the diffusion of innovations and new institutionalism. In

39

addition to DiMaggio and Powell, who noted that innovations spread through
organizational fields, Tolbert and Zucker (1983) have described how many local
governments reformed their civil service systems by employing merit systems, primarily
because merit systems became widely accepted. Once a change reaches a critical mass of
acceptance within a field, it attains further widespread acceptance with less regard to
performance (ONeill, Pouder, & Buchholtz, 1998).
Ultimately, the key to why organizations behave homogeneously is that
organizational success depends on factors other than efficient coordination and control
of productive activities. Regardless of their productive efficiency, organizations that are
located in highly elaborated institutional environments and that conform to the
rationalized myths dominant in these environments obtain both legitimacy and resource
essential to survive (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). In other words, a fundamental driving force
of institutional isomorphism is securing legitimacy and resources, which heighten the
probability of organizational survival (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan,
1977; Meyer & Scott, 1983).
Organizational legitimacy is defined as status conferred by social actors (Pfeffer
& Salancik, 1978). Both Galaskiewicz (1985) and Pfeffer and Slancik (1978) identified
as legitimate, organizations whose principles and practices match those of social actors.
Deephouse (1993) showed that isomorphism in the strategies of commercial banks is
related to legitimacy conferred by bank regulators and the media. Zucker (1987)
explained that organizations become sensitive to the external environment and tend to
adopt external assessment criteria, such as the Nobel Prize and endorsement by important
people, and argued that such ceremonial criteria legitimize organizations with internal

40

participants, stockholders, and their publics (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Assessment and
utilization of e-government features may be affected by ceremonial criteria for the
purpose of attaining legitimacy. Particularly in the case of public organizations whose
performance criteria and goals are controversial, being legitimized by conforming to a
certain practice can influence the behavior of public administrators.,DiMaggio and
Powell (1983) pointed out that in addition to legitimacy, imitative behaviors would save
effort and resources to find a viable solution in the face of the uncertainty of problem
sources and solutions.
Although new institutionalism illustrates organizational conformity and survival
at the level of an organizational field, the analytic lens can also be utilized for explaining
actors and individual behaviors. First, theoretically, DiMaggio (1988) argued that
institutional models need not consider the interests and actions of actors because the
models are most appropriate to those conditions where actors are unable either to
recognize or to rationally act upon their interests. However, Friedland and Alford (1991)
argued that an adequate social theory must work at all societal, organizational, and
individual levels of analysis. They claimed that the theoretical discussions can be
expanded to organizational and individual levels by recognizing that individuals and
organizations strive to achieve their ends through social relations based on
institutionalized systems and practices. They believe that institutionalized rituals as a
mechanism by which individual actors attempt to assure their position and gain benefits
by reinforcing symbolic consequences (Friedland & Alford, 1991, pp. 249250). Swidler
(1986) argued that culture represents a tool mechanism by which actors choose both
institutionalized ends and the strategies, whereas Scott (1991) argued that an

41

institutional framework defines the ends and shapes the means by which interests are
determined and pursued. In other words, a conceptual bridge built on the cultural
mechanism of ritual behaviors in an institutionalized context can provide the potential for
analysis across macro- and micro-levels.
Second, individuals can be regarded as the ultimate respondents, recipients, or
carriers of institutional pressures. Human agency would be a major factor in the micro
process of the mechanism of institutionalization. If the levels of analysis are linked,
connecting whole organization to the individual, the result might lose some explanatory
power of certain phenomena but would allow researchers to investigate the influences of
pressures on individuals.

5. Power and Control: Agency Theory

The central issue to principal-agency theorists is how to induce the employee to
act in the best interest of the principal when the employee has an informational advantage
over the principal and their interests differ. Although agency theory has been used by
scholars in business management, political science, public management, and many other
academic fields (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 57), the principal-agency relationship can be
extended in the discussion about electronic government practices. This relationship
applies between elected officials and both political appointees and public managers. It
can also be found between public managers and citizens.
The adoption of electronic government practices addresses the principal-agent
problem in several ways. First, it allows principals to monitor and investigate an agencys
unobservable behaviors. Elected officials and political appointees can observe regular
public managers behaviors through information systems, such as reporting procedures

42

(Eigenhardt, 1989, p. 61). Second, practices such as electronic civil complaint processing,
electronic government information inquiries, and electronic access to government
information can enable citizens to better observe government activities and access
undisclosed policy information. Accordingly, such e-government practices can reduce
information asymmetry and provide greater opportunity for citizens to monitor and
investigate an agencys behaviors.
However, e-government can be perceived by agencies as reducing their
discretionary power and restricting their behavior. Therefore, the adoption of new ICT
can introduce resistance and passive use of ICT in order to disclose government
information as little as possible and avoid responsibility as much as possible.

43

CHAPTER FOUR
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS
1. Analytical Framework
In order to address the research questions,6 an analytical framework was
constructed as shown in Figures 4and 5 based on the literature discussed in chapter three.
The foundation of this framework is both explicitly and implicitly built on three major
discussions: (1) the politics-(governance)-administration trichotomy as an illustration of
multi-dimensional dynamics in public management; (2) the public value triangle as the
core of strategic public management; and (3) a three-way classification about utilization
and influence of ICT in public organizations (McGregor, 1983; Moore, 1995; Robbin,
Courtright, & Davis, 2004). The proposed analytic framework connects the implicit
linkages among such discussions.
Before reviewing this framework, attention must be paid to the three essential
scholarly discussions rooted in the analytic framework. In so doing, one may better
understand how the research interests of public management have consistently built the
field. It is notable that the three works cited in the conceptual framework for this study
were published in different decades respectively from the 1980s to 2000s but discussed
similar themes at the root. Arguably, the relevance among them would offer a strong
ground by which integrated framework is presented as one analytic lens.
Closer examination, however, provides an opportunity to reveal the relevance and

(1) Do new ICT-based public management practices really have the potential and inner structure to be
exploited by public managers for creating public values? (2) Is the strategic triangle of creating public
values applicable to the Korean public management practices utilizing ICT? (3) What affects the perception
of public managers toward the utility of ICT-based public management practices?

44

consistency that support the framework. Although the three scholarly discussions are
arguments situated in different times, they all involve one central idea. First, all three
works identically recognized three dimensions rooted in government activities, although
they named those three components differently. McGregor (1983) presented the tripodal
structure of public management and coined the politics-administration trichotomy in 1983
(figure 3), whereas Moore developed the strategic triangle model that could guide public
managers in orienting themselves to manage for value through managing up, down, and
out (Moore, 1995, 2000).
Both authors, however, dissected public management as an activity that merges
maintaining legitimacy, improving operational capacity, and building substantial policy
outputs. The current interest surrounding ICT advancement in government and civic
society, which confirms that the commonality of their viewpoints was not coincidental, is
not much different from two previously cited works. Robbin et al. (2004) reviewed
research from the late 1990s to early 2000s about ICT use and the dynamics between
government and civic society. They categorized research into three clusters: electronic
government (e-government), electronic governance (e-governance), and electronic
democracy (e-democracy).
Although Internet technology itself is new and has significantly transformed the
public sector, Robbin et al. (2004) also validated that the essential visions built in public
administration and managementcommon ideas shared by McGregor and Mooreare
still meaningful and relevant in examining ICT-employed public management practices.

45

Governance
Political
Process

Government

Managing
Up

Politics

Administration

Policy

Bureaucratic
Operations

Problem
Solving

Electronic
Governance

Management

The Politics-Administration Trichotomy

Simplified from McGregor, E. (1983, p. 72)

Managing
Down

Electronic
Government

Managing
Out

Strategic Triangle

Figure 3 Three Triangles

Electronic
Democracy

ICTs and Political Life

Adopted from Robbin, Courtright, & Davis (2004)

Adopted from Moore, M. H. (1995)

46

The evident commonality existed in such three works can underpin two
arguments. First, several questions define public management research, and scholars have
implicitly and explicitly responded to them. Three works on which this analytic
framework is grounded all articulated three interests of the field: administration (i.e.,
operations, managing down, and e-government), governance (i.e., governance, managing
up, and e-governance), and outputs (i.e., problem-solving, value-creation, and edemocracy).
Second, the emerging research on ICT adoption and use in government
organizationse-government studydoes not mean the beginning of a new field, but
rather that this research is inherent to public management because the e-government
study has the same objectives as the public management.
This analytic framework thus provides the foundation upon which to examine two
cases of ICT adoption in the Korean national government as strategic application of ICT
in public management practices: (1) Online Citizen Contacts and (2) On-Nara Business
Processing System (Figure 4 and Figure 5).
Based on this analytic lens, this research asked public managers to assess the
current state of such practices. Their appraisal indicated whether the strategic potential of
ICT exists in practice and how effectively ICT has been utilized for public value creation.
Analyzing these practices will deepen the understanding of two representative ICT
adoptions from the perspective of insidersservice providers and end usersin the
Korean national government.
Although Kraemer and King (2003) found that ICT brought few changes in
organizational structures and rarely played a critical role as a reform apparatus, ICT

47

adoptions have been hypothesized to produce significant outcomes and to generate

changes in organizational structure and work processes. Therefore, this research
hypothesizes a relationship between the perceived effectiveness of ICT adoption and
various determinants what can promote and shape the strategic use of the proposed
practices in Korea.

48

Determinants

Conceptual Model

1. Managing
Up (Ui)
A. Impetus

E-Governance

Accountability
Transparency

Institutional Pressure (Impi)

B. Organizational Culture

Performance Orientation (Perfi)

Information Sharing (Sharingi)
C. Bureaucratic Attitudes

Information Disclosure (Disi)

Innovativeness (Innovi)

Internal
Process

2. Managing
Out (Oi)

(Ii)

Citizen
Participation

E-Democracy

D. Technological Factor
View of ICT Potential (Potentiali)
Technological Ease (Easei)
E. Backgrounds
Level of Education (Edui)
Majors (Majori) Rank (Ranki)
Recruitment (Recruiti) Job (Jobi)
Gender (Genderi) Years (Yearsi)

3. Managing
Down (Di)
E-Government

Efficiency

Treatment ICT Training for Online Citizen Contacts (OCC) (Ti)

Figure 4 Conceptual Framework of Analysis for Korean Online Citizen Contacts
Sources:
McGregor, E. (1983). The public-service problem. Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, 466, 6176.
Moore, M. (1995). Creating public value: Strategic management in government. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Robbin, A., Christina C., & Davis, L. (2004). ICTs and political life. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 38, 411462.

49

Determinants

Conceptual Model

1. Managing
Up (Ui)
A. Impetus

E-Governance

Accountability
Transparency

Institutional Pressure (Impi)

B. Organizational Culture

Performance Orientation (Perfi)

Information Sharing (Sharingi)
C. Bureaucratic Attitudes

Information Disclosure (Disi)

Innovativeness (Innovi)

Internal
Process

2. Managing
Out (Oi)

(Ii)

Contribution to
Society

E-Democracy

D. Technological Factor
View of ICT Potential (Potentiali)
Technological Ease (Easei)

3. Managing
Down (Di)

E. Backgrounds

E-Government

Efficiency

Level of Education (Edui)

Majors (Majori) Rank (Ranki)
Recruitment (Recruiti) Job (Jobi)
Gender (Genderi) Years (Yearsi)

Treatment ICT Training for Online Citizen Contacts (OCC) (Ti)

Figure 5 Conceptual Framework of Analysis for Korean On-Nara BPS

50

2. Hypotheses
2.1.

Strategic Triangle: Managing Up, Down, and Out

The tripodal perspectives of public management suggest three kinds of innovative

public management practice: governance, policy intervention, and core operations. The
three dimensions suggest, in turn, that ICT is a malleable artifact, shapeable depending
strategic adoption and utilization. In short, there are many outcomes possible in the case
of ICT innovation.
Public managers may simply assess ICT-based practices directly from their basic
functions and personal experiences. The level of functionality has been the common
measure employed in appraising government Web portals in e-government literature.
Prior experiences can affect public administrators evaluative perception of e-government.
Public managers may also constrain the performance of ICT-based practices by reflecting
their mental constructs comprehending public management. However, as Orilikowski
(2000) contended in her technology-in-practice argument, users may formulate their ICT
use and appraisal through their recurrent experiences. Once a certain internal dimension
embedded in the ICT-based practices can be confirmed, it may ultimately reinforce the
utility of technology enactment.7

Hypothesis (1): The three perspectives of the strategic triangle and internal
process are both valid and reliable.
2.2.

Treatment Effects: ICT training

In order to implement a new technology-based practice, government needs to

7

The technology enactment framework emphasizes the importance of specifying the ways in which
information and communication technology is perceived by actors, who later attempt to shape the use of
those ICTs (Fountain, 2001).

51

provide regular training so that managers can keep up with new developments and
effectively utilize ICT-based practices. The effectiveness of ICT training can be
measured by comparing the group that received proper ICT training against the group
that did not.

Hypothesis (2a): ICT training for Online Citizen Contacts (OCC) will make a
difference in public managers perceptions toward OCC.
Hypothesis (2b): ICT training for On-Nara BPS will make a difference in public
managers perceptions toward On-Nara BPS.

2.3.

Impetus: Institutional Pressure

Institutional pressure has been articulated as an impetus for the penetration of

management practices. Such institutional pressure directs organizations by legitimated
elements, from standard operating procedures to professional certification and state
requirements, which do not necessarily emphasize task performance (Zucker, 1987, p.
443).
Coercion toward the national penetration of e-government may affect the
perceptions and behaviors of public managers because they have to satisfy government
regulations and mandates. In addition to the E-government Act of 2001, various statutes
and regulations have been enacted and revised to promote the utilization of e-government,
including the statute of citizen participatory portal operation, the statute of civil
complaint processing, the digital signature law, and the legislation of promoting
administrative informatization for realizing e-government. Aside from these legal
guidelines, normative force also encourages the diffusion of ICT-based practices in a way
of establishing a cognitive base and legitimation for occupational autonomy (DiMaggio
52

& Powell, 1983, p. 152). All institutional forces have driven the adoption of both OCC
and On-Nara BPS.

Hypothesis (3a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, institutional pressures will

be positively associated with managing-up and managing-out. (The
relationship with managing down and internal process will not be
significant.)
Hypothesis (3b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, institutional pressure will be
positively associated with managing-up, managing down, and internal
process. (The relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)
However, the three institutional influences may be present for the purpose of
theoretical conceptualization rather than practical differentiation. Frumkin and
Galaskiewicz (2004) indicated that institutional forces are not mutually exclusive in
practice. This research will assume that institutional pressures come from diverse sources
and overlap with each other.
2.4.

Organizational Culture

Schein (1990, p. 117) claimed that the role of the field of organizational
development is to primarily aid organizations to follow the right direction of their
evolution, that is, to enhance cultural elements that are viewed as critical to maintaining
identity and to promote the unlearning of cultural elements that are viewed as
increasingly dysfunctional. This means that cultural dynamics cannot be disregarded as
a factor in managing the positive evolution and changes in organizations. Today, the most
frequently mentioned cultural elements include performance and information-sharing in
government organizations.8

Since the advent of the reinventing-government movement, the emphasis of performance and informationsharing has penetrated into government organizations through new management practices and legislation
(Schachter, 1995; Radin, 2001).

53

Until recently, performance has not been a serious concern in the public sector.
Rather, a rule-based bureaucratic framework of managerial attitude has driven its goals
and plans. Although the recent introduction of performance-based evaluation into
government bureaucracies has transformed organizational atmosphere, both information
and ICT have been depicted as the most critical resource for better performance (Behn,
2007). On the one hand, performance improvement has been claimed to be an
idiosyncratic outcome of the adoption of ICT by organizations. On the other hand, the
adoption of ICT has been required to enhance performance. Accordingly, the
performance-oriented organizational culture will be positively related to how public
managers recognize the managing potential intertwined in OCC and On-Nara BPS.
(1) Performance Culture
Hypothesis (4.1a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, performance culture will
be positively associated with managing-out and managing-up. (The
relationship with managing-down and internal process will not be
significant.)
Hypothesis (4.1b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, performance culture will be
positively associated with managing-up, managing-down, and internal
process. (The relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)

In addition, dysfunctional communication and collaboration have been identified

as indicating problematic information sharing. Because ICT has been regarded as a
prescription for such situations, examining the relationship between cultural elements and
ICT effectiveness by strategic dimensions may generate insights. Therefore, one can
assume that strong and fluent information sharing may assist public managers to
recognize the potential of both ICT applications.
(2) Information Sharing

54

Hypothesis (4.2a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, strong internal

information sharing will be positively associated with managing-up and
managing-out. (The relationship with managing-down and internal process
will not be significant.)
Hypothesis (4.2b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, strong internal information sharing
will be positively associated with managing-up, managing down, and
internal process. (The relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)

2.5.

Bureaucratic Attitudes

The strategic approach for creating public values introduced by Moore (1995)
emphasized the roles of individual public managers through several episodes in his book.
The effect of ICT on the power and control structure has dominated the literature.
The use of new ICT or systems can be perceived as reinforced control over organizations
that depend on individual public managers. Although the adoption of a new system may
increase efficiency and remove bureaucratic red-tape, it may strengthen or weaken the
supervisor and senior leaders control over administrative tasks. Bozeman and
Bretschneider (1986, p. 485) argued that the straightforward attempt to use public
management information system (PMIS) to enhance managerial control is likely to meet
with resistance, perhaps diminishing the value of PMIS as a managerial tool. This
argument can be expanded to the principal-agency relationship between controlling and
controlled parties.
Information has been regarded as a critical resource defining the relationship
between top management and staff and between citizens and government organizations. It
can be assumed that public managers, who believe that extensive government information
disclosure helps neither them nor government organizations accomplish assigned duties,
are more likely to articulate negative assessments for the strategic potential of new ICT.

55

(1) Information Disclosure

Hypothesis (5.1a): For Online Citizen Contacts, the attitudes regarding
information disclosure will be negatively associated with managing-up and
managing-out. (The relationship with managing-down and internal process
will not be significant.)
Hypothesis (5.1b): For On-Nara BPS, the attitudes regarding information
disclosure will be negatively associated with managing-up, managing-down,
and internal process. (The relationship with managing-out will not be
significant.)
The values and attitudes of individual public managers may determine their
propensity to use ICT and thus shape the consequences of utilization. In government
organizations, the most critical value may be the reform orientation. Public managers
who continuously support administrative reform may be expected to have a deeper
understanding of ICT as a mechanism for implementing such reform. Scavo and Shi
(2000, p. 167) found that scholarly discussions that were the dominant government
reform paradigm of the 1990s either explicitly or implicitly make a series of assumptions
about the role of IT as a critical component of reinventing government organizations and
politics.
(2) Innovativeness
Hypothesis (5.2a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, innovative attitudes will
be positively associated with a public administrators attitudes toward managingup and managing-out. (The relationship with managing-down and internal
process will not be significant.)
Hypothesis (5.2b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, innovative attitudes will be
positively associated with a public administrators attitudes toward managingup, managing-down, and internal process. (The relationship with
managing-out will not be significant.)

2.6.

Technological Factors

Because the two cases articulated in this research are ICT-based public
56

management practices, technological elements and considerations should not be

neglected. Public managers who possess the deterministic ICT view may not positively
appreciate its potential for shaping the technology. Public managers who agree with the
malleable aspects of ICT may actively realize its potential or behave consistent with the
multiple promises of new ICT.
(1) View of ICT Potential
Hypothesis (6.1a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, the view of malleable ICT
potential will be positively associated with managing-up and managing-out.
(The relationship with managing down and internal process will not be
significant.)
Hypothesis (6.1b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, the view of malleable ICT potential
will be positively associated with managing-up, managing down, and
internal process. (The relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)
Technological ease is the most significant factor in technology acceptance (Davis,
1989). The adoption of ICT is de facto not a matter of acceptance in government
organizations because new ICT will be introduced as a mandate. However, technological
ease needs to be observed and examined alongside the relationship with strategic
utilization because technological ease will reinforce the chance to accomplish the
strategic goals that initiated ICT adoption. Technological ease will improve the
acceptance and ultimately broaden the range of potentials embedded in the adopted
technologies by relieving public management burdens and reducing uncertainty resulting
from technological complexity.
(2) Technological Ease
Hypothesis (6.2a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, technological ease will be
positively associated with managing-up and managing-out. (The relationship
with managing down and internal process will not be significant.)

57

Hypothesis (6.2b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, technological ease will be positively

associated with managing-up, managing down, and internal process. (The
relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)

2.7.

Background Characteristics

The analysis will include the following background characteristics of public

managers: (1) level of education (i.e., academic degree obtained), (2) majors (social
sciences vs. other areas), (3) gender, (4) recruitment, (5) rank, (6) number of working
years, and (7) job characteristics.
Hypothesis (7a): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, highly educated and highly
ranked male public managers who majored in social sciences, were recruited
through the national civil service exam, dealt with civic complaints, and worked
in national government longer will more positively assess managing-up and
managing-out than officials with the opposite characteristics. (The relationship
with managing-down and internal process will not be significant.)
Hypothesis (7b): Regarding On-Nara BPS, highly educated and highly ranked
male public managers who majored in social sciences, were recruited through the
national civil service exam, dealt with civic complaints, and worked in national
government longer will more positively assess managing-up, managingdown, and internal process than officials with the opposite characteristics.
(The relationship with managing-out will not be significant.)

The examination of such background characteristics of public managers will also

provide a better understanding of the bureaucratic nature that shapes the use of ICT
applications.

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CHAPTER FIVE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter discusses the research methodology, which covers data collection,
measurements of variables, survey instrument development, and statistical models.

1. Dependent Variables
As illustrated in the previous chapters, this study centers on identifying public
managers attitudes toward two representative cases of ICT-employed public
management practices in the Korean national government. The conceptual frameworks
dictated that the analysis focuses on the relationship between four dependent variables
and five groups of independent variables (Figures 4 and 5). Based on the literature,
dependent variables are distinguished into four clusters for Online Citizen Contacts and
On-Nara BPS: (1) managing up, (2) managing down, (3) managing out, and (4) internal
process.
For Online Citizen Contacts, five questions were created to measure the aspects of
managing up. They addressed transparency, professional discretion, accountability,
responsibility, and empowerment for citizens. In the literature of public management,
these items have been shown to be closely related to each other as core values
constituting the tensions between bureaucracy and democracy from the perspective of
governance. Accountability has been often regarded as a synonym for responsibility and
answerability (Bertelli & Lynn, 2006, p. 43). Administrative discretion has been
articulated by many scholars studying professional ethics, including Finer (1941) and
Friedrich (1940), who began the debate on the relative influence of professional ethics
versus political control. Accordingly, such discretion is directly intertwined with
59

accountability, transparency, responsibility, and empowerment as the keys to how to

reconcile the demands of democracy with the imperative of bureaucracy, the most
important challenge in democratic governance (Meier & OToole, 2006, p. 1).
Light (2006) traced US government reforms for the last six decades and observed
that primarily four reform philosophies have taken turns dominating government
bureaucracy. One of the major reform ideas, the scientific management approach,
seeks greater efficiency through the application of scientific principles to organization
and management (Light, 2006, p. 6). This stream of reform idea may significantly center
on the managing down leg of the strategic triangle. The construct of managing down is
measured through the five items of work interruption, workload, time for citizen
complaints, time for citizen suggestions, and simplification of administrative procedure.
These items have been frequently mentioned as representative of operational efficiency.
Specifically, ICT-employed public management innovations have been commonly
claimed to reduce cost, save time, decrease workload, and simplify procedure, though it
might require significant investment in its initial adoption.
The dimension of managing out will be observed through five question items as
well. They will focus on how successfully Online Citizen Contacts could create valuable
outputs for the whole society. As desired by the Korean national government, OCC might
provide more opportunities for citizens to express their opinions and complaints, which
government organizations may utilize in making policy decisions. If OCC provides
citizens with an easier mechanism for participating by removing requirements such as
identifying organizations in charge, visiting government offices, and submitting
complaints or suggestions, it can be regarded as successful. Although the triangle in

60

Moore (1995) did not mention internal procedure, this study uses three questions to
examine how OCC affects and alters internal procedures and culture.
Although both the OCC and the On-Nara BPS questionnaires explore issues of
ethics and decision power, the latter questionnaire employed slightly different questions
for the four foundations: managing-up, managing-down, managing-out, and internal
processes. For example, the managing-up questions for On-Nara BPS include
control/audit capacity and decentralization of decision-making but exclude citizen
empowerment and responsibility. Since On-Nara BPS and OCC differed in that the latter
centers on the external process and communication and the former emphasizes the
internal ones, this study employed a slightly varied but not totally different notion that
can more appropriately draw out the umbrella characteristic managing up embedded
in each case. The same goes for the other umbrella characteristics. With regards to
managing down, another question item red tape was included.
Due to the different nature of both Online Citizen Contacts and On-Nara BPS
correspondingly laying emphasis on the external or internal communication and process,
the constructs of managing out and internal process, which respectively examine the
internal and external dynamics, are composed with different question items in both cases.
As a consequence, the managing out aspect of On-Nara BPS was observed by quality of
outputs and its internal process was examined through information exchange and sharing.
A significant finding of this study would be either the external effectiveness of the
internal system On-Nara BPS or the internal influence of OCC, which addresses external
communication and process. Such findings would confirm that the ICT-based public

61

management practices are strategic and thus need to be more sophisticatedly handled by
finding their spillover effects.

2. Independent Variables
Five clusters of independent variables will be scrutinized through 15 individual
variables for their association with dependent variables. They cover impetus,
organizational culture, bureaucratic attitudes, technological factors, and backgrounds.
2.1.

Impetus: Institutional Pressures

Institutional pressure comes under the impetus cluster and was measured through
six questions, two each for normative, coercive, and mimetic pressures. In a globalized
context in which all social, political and economic activities are interconnected, public
management would not be isolated from external influences that cross national borders.
Innovative management alternatives and reform ideas are quickly disseminated, and a
bandwagon effect forces government organizations to adopt them. Recent examples
include the reinventing government movement and new public management (NPM).
Wise (2002) pointed out that NPM has been portrayed as a fast spreading global
paradigm in the literature. As with NPM in the public sector, new ICT-based practices
have been rapidly adopted by government organizations around the world.
However, Kettl (2000, p. 59) argued that making the reforms work depends on
important preconditions that many nations do not possess. The success of a reform
endeavor does not rely on adoption itself but on administrative efforts integrating
government and civil society. Schick (1998) warned that without appropriate capacities
and resources to sustain successful reform, ill-prepared countries may risk taking
shortcuts that turn into dead ends. Despite this caveat, government leaders have been

62

preoccupied with adopting innovative practices that could only fill their aspirations rather
than accomplish the expected performance. Technological progress, including the
adoption of ICT, has been readily sought in both private and public sectors throughout
the world.
The resemblance between governmental innovations and reforms is isomorphic in
that all governments are structured organizations and must respond to similar institutional
environments. DiMaggion and Powell (1993) stated that an organizational field follows
an evolutionary path from diversity to homogeneity. Based on this premise, they
defined isomorphism as an assimilating process and categorize isomorphic institutional
pressures into three forces: coercive, mimetic, and normative.
To measure these forces, six questions were created based on how the forces were
conceptualized in the literature. In order to find the relationship of six questions, the
exploratory factor analysis was conducted and it produced only one factor item with an
eigenvalue of 2.99179 (explaining 50% of the variance). All six indicators had positive
factor loadings of .67 or higher, except the second item for mimetic institutional pressure
(.5612) on this factor item that clustered six questions. A reliability test of these six items
yielded a Cronbachs coefficient of 0.7930. Despite the three theoretically differentiated
conceptualizations, the factor analysis did not distinguish them. Overall, it appears that
the six items fit together well as a scale.
Two contrasting views explicate the finding of one primary factor item across six
survey questions for institutional pressures. On the one hand, this could reflect that the
six items might not fully capture what each question item represents. On the other hand,
it could imply that such institutional pressures would not work solely through the process

63

of isomorphic progress. Because all institutional pressures ultimately accelerate

organizational imitation of the practices or structures perceived as the best in the field, all
isomorphic forces can be interconnected and intermingled in promoting the rationalized
myths through rituals for legitimacy. Accordingly, three isomorphic mechanisms can be a
matter of degreehow influential each pressure would berather than a matter of which
pressure would influence. Some scholars indicated de facto that more than one
mechanism will work simultaneously and thus be overlapped and intermingled in an
isomorphic process (Frumkin & Galaskiewicz, 2004, p. 285). Therefore, the factor score
serves the measure for institutional pressures as a whole in this research.
2.2.

Performance Culture

Organizational culture was observed by both performance orientation and

information sharing. In the last couple of decades, many scholars have cited high
performance, excellence, and innovativeness of government organizations as representing
the contemporary trend of public management research and practice (Lynn & Ryu, 2004).
Although both scholars and practitioners have paid attention to performance-oriented
management and culture, the literature has often portrayed a gap between reality and
aspirations resulting from core changes intended for higher performance. Isomorphic
pressure, de facto, has been considered partly responsible for the gap, a myth that
organizational performance will be improved once the best practices are adopted.
Whereas isomorphic pressure reinforces aspiration, performance-centered attitudes and
culture can be contrasted against the isomorphic pressure as a competing driver in
expanding an innovative management practice over organizations.

64

In order to examine the intensity of performance-driven atmosphere, respondents

were asked three questions. An internal reliability test of the three items about
performance yielded a Cronbachs coefficient of 0.6315. Although the commonly
accepted rule-of-thumb is above 0.7, the three questions were combined by producing a
factor score, because previous studies in many disciplines have also employed 0.60 as a
criterion for internal reliability.
2.3.

Information Sharing

Whereas the extent to which atmosphere was performance-driven was examined

by fair performance evaluation, performance-based promotion, and speed of ICT
adoption, information sharing was examined by two questions about vertical and
horizontal aspects in sharing information.
Drucker (1988) emphasized that information sharing is a key element in total
quality management (TQM) and the new organization. In order for government to
face complex social problems, public managers need to collaborate on government
decisions. Successful collaboration can be fostered by sharing task-related information
among public managers. Information sharing can be more fluently facilitated by adopting
advanced ICT.
Although ICT has significant potential to assist government organizations to
address social problems, ICT is often stymied in achieving its promises (Drake et al.,
2004, p. 67) by the personnel who would employ it (Constant et al., 1994). In the survey,
information sharing was measured by two questions. The first item measured the level of
vertical information sharing between supervisor and staff, and the other one centered on
horizontal information sharing among coworkers. An internal reliability test of the two

65

items about information sharing inside organizations produced a Cronbachs coefficient

of 0.7835.
2.4.

Information Disclosure

After the Internet expanded the capacity for citizens to access government
information, citizen requests for disclosing the information started transforming the
relationship between government and citizens because the issue of information disclosure
is closely associated with that of governance. As noted, an e-government practice is a
representative instance of innovative public management, and the disclosure of
government information has become an essential index demonstrating a level of
democracy because of its political nature. In the literature, information asymmetry is a
popular theme from the theoretical lens of analyzing principals and agents since
information is a source of power regulating their relationship.
This study employed two questions to determine the influence of information
disclosure on (1) work efficiency and (2) citizen trust. However, the two questions lacked
strong coherence (Cronbachs alpha: 0.5551), implying that they may not be integrated as
one measure. Although both questions were asked to find public managers attitudes
towards information disclosure, this might be a case that respondents judged them
through two dissimilar instrumental lenses. Accordingly, these two items will be
articulated separately rather than integrated into one measure by creating a factor score.
Because Online Citizen Contacts was primarily designed to reach the external
environment like citizens, observations of information disclosure related to trust will be
employed in the OCC analysis. On the other hand, the On-Nara BPS analysis will
examine the influence of information disclosure on internal efficiency.

66

2.5.

Innovative Attitudes

Innovative attitudes and behaviors of public managers have been repeatedly

compared to those of private counterparts. It presumes that government reform has been
futile because public managers are resistant to change, closed to the outside, and less
likely to put new policies and practices into place than their private sector counterparts
(Altshuler, 1997, p. 1; Wise, 1999, p. 150). However, this predominant view of
government innovation is a subjective judgment at best.
Rainey (1999, p. 130) argued that governments all over the world have tried
administrative reforms repeatedly. These reforms can be conceived as innovations, and
the willingness of civil servants to accept and support these reforms obviously has a
major influence on their success or failure. This presupposes that a public manager is a
major player in determining the success of innovations. If public bureaucracy might
struggle with reform fatigue and thus not be inclined to collaborate in search of
excellence under endless requests to transform itself, the public bureaucracy in need of
change cannot actively serve the goal of government reform. On the contrary, innovative
and reform-friendly public managers will initiate organizational transformation to meet
the challenges from complicated demands toward government. In sum, the attitude of
public managers towards government reform is an important element for successful
reform.
Being an innovative and reform-friendly public manager is not irrelevant to being
a strategic and visionary agent because every reform and innovation has been initiated to
remove problems and improve performance. In the survey, their innovative attitudes were
examined by how accepting they are of government reform.

67

2.6.

Job Characteristics: Distance to Citizens

Distance to citizens is one of essential aspects characterizing public managers

tasks. Just as government authority can be local, provincial, or national, public managers
functional responsibilities also vary by their job characteristics. In order to capture the
influence from different individual task duties, this study deliberated the degree of how
close their jobs would be to citizens and selected the relationship to citizen complaints as
a measure.
2.7.

ICT Training

Light (2006, p. 16) examined reform success and found that reform does not
improve employees perceptions of performance unless it contributes to organizational
capacity. He identified providing needy resources and developing new skills as
determinants affecting public managers perception of successful reform. Information and
communication technology training clearly contributes to organizational capacity.
Satisfactory ICT training may reinforce the needs for new ICT applications in
government activities and encourage public managers to leverage how effectively they
can perform with ICT.
For measuring how public administrators assess ICT training, four questions were
created: (1) whether ICT training has been continuously provided, (2) whether they can
update their skills and knowledge about the newest ICT, (3) whether they had proper ICT
training for using OCC, and (4) whether they had proper ICT training for using On-Nara
BPS. The inter-item reliability for ICT training was examined independently for OCC
and On-Nara BPS. For OCC, Cronbachs alpha for the three items produced 0.8797 and

68

confirmed strong coherence among these items. The alpha value for the On-Nara BPS
(0.8769) confirmed the same.
2.8.

Technological Ease

Technological components were assessed through the perception of ICT potential

and technological ease. Technological ease has been identified as a determinant for
technological use by scholars who advocated the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).
This model is limited because the use of technology is not a matter of choice in the public
sector. Many government innovations have been mandated and forced to public managers
regardless their intentions.
In spite of the limitations, technological ease also needs to be examined in this
research on a couple of accounts. First, ease of ICT can help public managers boost their
performance. Second, it can relieve workload and the related stresses caused by
traditional technologies and conditions. Once ease of technological use is judged from the
point of effective aid and not a matter of choice, technological ease can contribute to the
achievement of potential values embedded in government activities more than ICT by
itself.
2.9.

Background Variables

The last cluster of independent variables will articulate individual background

components including educational levels, majors, organizational ranks, mechanism of
recruitment, job characteristics, gender, and length (years) of service. Although most of
these variables have been common control variables in previous research, including the
mechanism of recruitment is unique to this research.

69

In Korea, the civil service exam (CSE) has been the major gateway to a public
service career and a tool for facilitating the study of public administration and related
fields (Park & Park, 2006). However, Korean national officialdom has recently begun
more flexible mechanisms such as special recruitments and contracts, even for senior
positions. Therefore, this study will examine the influence the employment systems of
traditional examination and open recruitment.

3. Survey and Data Collection

The survey instrument for measuring both dependent and independent variables
was developed and administered in 2008.
3.1.

Survey Questionnaire Development

Based on the literature and this studys conceptual framework of analysis, the
survey questionnaire was completed with 18 items for OCC; 18 items for On-Nara BPS;
25 items for exploratory components regarding organization and e-government
development in Korea; and 15 items for background characteristics of respondents. To
enhance the reliability and validity of the survey questionnaire, preliminary drafts were
thoroughly reviewed and revised with the committee members and with suggestions from
public managers currently working in the Korean national government.
Both the Korean and English versions of the questionnaire were pretested by 15
persons between June 9 and June 20, 2008. The participants included Korean public
managers working at national agencies, senior researchers working at the research
institute in the field of public affairs and policy studies, and doctoral students studying in
the US. They examined both versions and indicated that they were able to complete the
Korean version in around 15 minutes and the English version in 20 to 25 minutes. The

70

pretest participants provided helpful feedback about the (1) general structure and
response scale arrangement, (2) question wording, (3) negative questioning in Korean,
and (4) elimination of some redundant questions. The questionnaire was revised
accordingly. For example, some items that were initially constructed with reverse or
negative questioning were revised to clarify and prevent misunderstanding because some
negative and reverse questions may harm the feelings of public managers and also make
less sense in Korean context. Items identified as redundant concerned institutional
pressures. Although they were designed as paired questions to measure different concepts
associated with institutional pressures through paired questions, their report of
redundancy might indicate that the questions about institutional pressures were claimed
to be measure the same concepts. After the final revision, the questionnaire was reviewed
by three public managers working in the Korean national government.
The official version of the questionnaire and the related documents about its
survey procedures and measures were developed to protect respondent identity and to
satisfy the requirements of human subject protection. The questionnaire and proposed
administrative procedures was approved by the human subject protection committee
(study number: 08-13309).
3.2.

Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis is individual public managers working in the Korean national
government. Most previous studies have examined state and local governments but have
paid little attention to federal and national governments (Edmiston, 2002; Ho, 2002;
Moon, 2002; Reddick, 2004; Norris, 2005). The Korean national government has the
most profound effect on citizens lives, even though it is more remote from citizens than

71

are provincial and local governments. However, the Internet has removed or reduced the
effective distance between government and citizens. As such, this study is significant
because it examines the attitudes of public managers in national governments, civil
servants who could be rarely contacted by citizens in person.
3.3.

Survey Distribution and Data Collection

Respondents were recruited from public managers who are working in the Korean
national government, which is currently composed of 15 ministries and 20 agencies.
Because of limitations in time and resources, this survey could not be administered to
public managers in all 15 ministries. Before drawing the sample, therefore, the national
government organizations for survey distribution were selected.
In order to choose the organizations, the 2005 assessment of informatization level
by national government organizations was considered as a standard for selection by
which the Korean national ministries were classified into four groups in 2005
(Informatization Promotion Committee, 2005). However, the current Lee administration
reorganized the national ministries by integrating and abolishing several organizations in
2008.

72

Table 2
2008 List of the Korean National Ministries
Korean National Ministries
1. Ministry of Strategy and Finance
2. Ministry of Education, Science and
Technology
3. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Trade
4. Ministry of Unification

Reorganization (2005 informatization assessment)

Ministry of Finance and Economy (B) + Ministry of
Planning and Budget (A)
Ministry of Education and Human Resource
Development (B) + Ministry of Science and
Technology (B) + Ministry of Information and
Communication (S)
Survived (B)
Survived (C)

5. Ministry of Justice

Survived (A)

6. Ministry of National Defense

Survived (A)

7. Ministry of Public Administration

and Security
8. Ministry of Culture, Sports, and
Tourism
9. Ministry of Food, Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fishers
10. Ministry of Knowledge Economy
11. Ministry of Health, Welfare, and
Family Affairs
12. Ministry of Environment

Survived (B)
Survived (B)
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (B) + Ministry
of Maritime Affairs and Fishers (S)
Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (A) +
Ministry of Information and Communication (S)
Survived (B)
Survived (B)

13. Ministry of Labor

Survived (A)

14. Ministry of Gender Equity

Survived (B)

15. Ministry of Land, Transportation,

and Maritime Affairs

Ministry of Construction and Transportation (B) +

Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fishers (S)

Notes.
1) Abolished Ministries: Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fishers, Ministry of Information and
Communication, Ministry of Science and Technology.
2) Level of Informatization 2005: S (2), A (5), B (11), C(1).
3) Selected Ministries 2008: S+A (1), S+B (1), S+B+B (1), A (1), A+B (1), B(4) by the 2005
informatization assessment. (Ministries shown in bold and italics)
4) S (highest) A B C (lowest).

Table 2 shows the current list of Korean national ministries and how the previous
ministries were reorganized. Because of limited access to national government agencies
and resources, this study selected nine ministries comprising almost all levels of
informatization assessment. The selected organizations are italicized in Table 2. In

73

addition, this study specially selected the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission,
which primarily manages Online Citizen Contacts. This brought the total of organizations
to 10.
In the selected organizations, 49 to 119 surveys were distributed in each
organization, for a total of 679 surveys. Due to time and financial limitations, the
sampling method relied on convenience (accidental) sampling. Such method is common
in distributing a written survey in the Korean national government.

Table 3
Survey Response Summary
Organization
Ministry of Environment
Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Ministry of Land, Transportation, and Maritime Affairs
Ministry of Public Administration and Security
Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism
Ministry of National Defense
Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs
Ministry of Knowledge Economy
Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission
Total

Distribution

Collection

Return

71
74
53
100
119
73
50
49
50
40

57
53
45
84
89
40
44
29
44
29

80.2%
71.6%
84.9%
84.0%
74.8%
54.8%
88.0%
59.2%
88.0%
72.5%

679

514

75.7%

The questionnaire was distributed to public managers working in each agency,

upon their availability and willingness to participate. Public managers were informed
about the purpose of this research and survey when the survey questionnaire was
distributed. They acknowledged that their participation was voluntary and that
confidentiality would be maintained. Participants were also informed about how to report
any violation of their rights, if any, during the survey process and how to return the

74

completed surveys. Collection started 10 days after questionnaire distribution. The survey
was administered from August 18 to September 19, 2008 and collected 514 out of 679
questionnaires, a 75.7% rate of return. The survey response by each organization is
summarized in Table 3. Because more than 50% of surveys were collected during the
first phase, no follow-up distribution and collection was needed.

Table 4
Reduced Survey Response Summary
OCC
Organization
Ministry of Environment

Distribution

On-Nara BPS

Analysis

Rate

Analysis

Rate

71

41

58%

41

58%

74

32

43%

29

39%

Ministry of Education, Science, and

Technology
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Trade
Ministry of Land, Transportation,
and Maritime Affairs
Ministry of Public Administration
and Security
Ministry of Culture, Sports, and
Tourism

53

33

62%

32

60%

100

62

62%

61

61%

119

70

59%

68

58%

73

29

40%

27

37%

Ministry of National Defense

50

36

72%

35

70%

Ministry of Health, Welfare, and

Family Affairs

49

20

41%

16

33%

Ministry of Knowledge Economy

50

33

66%

32

64%

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights

Commission

40

24

60%

21

53%

679

380

56%

363

53%

N (%)

Although many returned surveys contained a response to each question, some

included unmarked responses or patterned responses such as an identical answer for
many consecutive questions. Such concerns were thoroughly examined, and unreliable

75

responses were eliminated. Patterned responses were detected through reverse-worded

items. Accordingly, the sample size was reduced as shown in Table 4.
To determine whether the reduction in sample size might alter the characteristics
of respondents and thus significantly distinguish the included and the excluded, two
currently available items of gender and rank were compared. The gender composition of
public managers was compared for the surveyed agencies, respondents submitted surveys
before reduction, and samples for OCC and On-Nara BPS were reduced after removing
unreliable and incomplete surveys (Table 5).
The proportion of females varied from 24.19% to 29.09%, and the difference
between highest ratio and lowest one is 4.9%. The female ratio in the sample before
reduction by reliability examination was 29.09%. However, the gender ratio of analyzed
samples became similar to that of organizational population after removing unreliable
observation (Table 5). Differences are less than 1.8% between population and analyzed
samples. It hardly implies that there is a significant difference in regard to gender.

Table 5
Respondents by Gender
Gender

Organizational

Collected

Female

24.36%

Male

75.64%

Analyzed
OCC

On-Nara BPS

29.09%

24.19%

25.99%

70.91%

75.81%

74.01%

Total: 100%
Note. Source for Organizational Composition: Ministry of Public Affairs and Security (12/31/2007)

The item of rank was also reviewed by the above four groups. The samples show
no significant difference in their overall rank structure before and after reduction for
improving reliability of responses (Table 6). While three of the groups are almost
76

identical, the overall rank structure of surveyed organizations shows a slightly different
composition.

Table 6
Respondents by Rank
Rank

Organizational

Collected

5.2%

Analyzed
OCC

On-Nara BPS

3.35%

3.76%

3.39%

21.99%

29.24%

29.57%

29.38%

35.43%

34.15%

34.41%

32.49%

23.81%

21.21%

20.97%

22.88%

9.65%

8.71%

8.33%

8.19%

3.92%

2.01%

1.61%

2.26%

10

N/A

1.34%

1.34%

1.34%

Total: 100%
Notes.
1) Source for Organizational Rank: Ministry of Public Affairs and Security (12/31/2007)
2) Employees in rank 10 are mostly clerical staffs and are very few in the national government
organizations.

Although rank five (5th grade) was overrepresented, all other ranks were fairly
represented because other groups of ranks are similar in the proportional standing across
the groups. Although such items as gender and rank may not be enough to confirm
consistency across samples and organizations, these comparisons may help reduce
suspicion of bias. Such items as gender and rank are important demographic information
because females pursued government careers not long ago and rank can implicitly capture
work experience, work years, and recruitment as well. Accordingly, the comparisons by
gender and rank may be regarded as an evidence for the similarity of groups.
Common source bias must be considered because both the explanatory and
explained variables come from the survey. Thus their relationship may be tainted by the
bias resulting from common-method variance (Campbell & Fiske, 1959). Respondents
77

affective states and social desirability have been claimed to bias responses when both
dependent and independent variables come from self-reported questionnaire responses.
However, Spector (2006) argued against the criticism that common-source bias
automatically affects variables measured by the same method by suggesting that such
criticism is a distortion and oversimplification. This position has been shared among
researchers (Spector, 1987; Crampton & Wagner, 1994; Doty & Glick, 1998; Moynihan
& Pandey, 2004). The consensus is that while common-source bias does exist, its effect
is not to invalidate relationships uncovered in studies employing self-reported data but to
perhaps marginally attenuate the strength of the findings (Moynihan & Pandey, 2004, p.
428).
In order to control for possible common method bias, several measures were
taken. The first was to protect confidentiality. This reduces bias by encouraging honest
answers. As another measure to control the priming effects like the item-contextinduced mood states, this study randomly ordered related questions. In addition,
questions were subject to thorough review and revision to remove ambiguity and avoid
vagueness. Such procedural actions were utilized to neutralize any potential commonsource bias (Tourangeau et al., 2000; Podsakoff et al., 2003).

4. Statistical Models of Analysis

After obtaining the responses, the analysis was accomplished by employing factor
analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression analysis. Factor analysis showed
whether a certain structure, which can be strategically articulated, is embedded in the
ICT-employed public management practices. ANOVA examined whether ICT training,
as a treatment, contributes to public managers attitudes toward OCC and On-Nara BPS.

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Ultimately, Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression analysis examined the effects of
each explanatory variable on how public managers perceive and utilize both innovative
practices, OCC and On-Nara BPS. The representative functional form of regression
equations follows:

Online Citizen Contacts:

(Ui, Oi, Di, Ii)occ = 0 + 1Impi1 + 2Perfi2 + 3Sharingi3 + 4Disi4 + 5Innovi5 +
6Potentiali6 + 7Easei7 + 8Edui8 + 9Majori9 + 10Ranki10 +
11Recruiti11 + 12Jobi12 + 13Genderi13 + 14Yearsi14 + 15Ti15 +
i

On-Nara BPS:
(Ui, Oi, Di, Ii)On-Nara = 0 + 1Impi1 + 2Perfi2 + 3Sharingi3 + 4Disi4 + 5Innovi5 +
6Potentiali6 + 7Easei7 + 8Edui8 + 9Majori9 + 10Ranki10 +
11Recruiti11 + 12Jobi12 + 13Genderi13 + 14Yearsi14 +
15Ti15 + i

Table 7
Description of Dependent and Independent Variables
Dependent Variables

Independent Variables
Institutional Pressure (Impi)
Performance Orientation (Perfi)

Managing Up (Ui)

Information Sharing (Sharingi)

Information Disclosure (Disi)
Innovativeness (Innovi)

Managing Out (Oi)

View of ICT Potential (Potentiali)

Technological Ease (Easei)
Educational Level (Edui)

Managing Down (Di)

Major (Majori)
Rank (Ranki)
Recruitment (Recruiti)

Internal Dimension (Ii)

Job Characteristics (Jobi)

Gender (Genderi)
The Length of Service (Yearsi)
Training (Ti)

79

Such regression models provide the basic form of analytical model. Each case of
OCC and On-Nara BPS was analyzed by the dependent variables confirmed through
exploratory factor analysis. Although these models assumed that all four arenas of
managerial functions will be confirmed as structured in the survey questionnaire, further
analysis was varied according to the results of factor analysis.9

The exploratory factor analysis for dependent variables produces three factors in OCC and two factors in
On-Nara BPS.

80

CHAPTER SIX
FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR ONLINE CITIZEN CONTACTS
The first public management puzzle of this research, Online Citizen Contacts, is
thoroughly explored through this chapter by descriptive statistics shown in the survey
responses and exploratory factor analysis.

1. Descriptive Statistics for Online Citizen Contacts

Although the most remarkable development in the last decade in promoting egovernment initiatives has been the adoption of bulk, wholesale applications, such as
providing downloadable tax forms or agency brochures, the concerns of scholars and
practitioners have shifted to personalized, retail communications with citizens (Neu et
al., 1999, xiii). This phenomenon implies that the mission of Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) cannot be fulfilled solely by improving efficiency in
the public sector, and thus the goal of adopting ICT-based practice has to closely parallel
the mixed scholarly discussions about e-government, e-governance, and e-democracy.
Todays personalized retail communication between citizen and government does
not necessarily narrowly limit its coverage to personal e-mail exchanges, but extends to
the evolving ICT. As an exemplary case, the South Korean national government has
utilized ICT to improve policy decisions by identifying problems and suggestions raised
by citizens through the Online Citizen Contacts (OCC).
Although the OCC might help policy decision-makers search for more realistic
alternatives and monitor public opinion, the original objectives of OCC were to promote
citizen participation in the policy process. It is intended to be a conduit for citizens to
express their opinions and augment their involvement in the policy process. In this sense,
81

the OCC has positively functioned to serve citizens. However, how the OCC has worked
for public administrators is quite another matter.
Descriptive statistics of survey responses demonstrated that, in general, public
managers perceive Online Citizen Contacts as beneficial. Respondents were asked to
appraise the OCC through a questionnaire consisting of 18 items. Each item was
measured by a seven-point Likert scale with the anchors being strongly disagree and
strongly agree. For respondents not in a position to assess OCC, a Not Applicable
response was included.
As noted, one of main questions in this study ultimately focused on verifying the
strategic structure embedded in OCC as an e-government practice in addition to simply
evaluating OCC. In order to do so, the main structure of the questions reflects
McGregors politics-administration trichotomy embracing public management practices
in a strategic triangle: Managing Out, Managing Up, and Managing Down (McGregor,
1983, p. 72; Moore, 1995). Along with these apexes, an internal process dimension was
included. To verify through original survey instruments how well OCC has been
implemented from the standpoint of the three strategic components, exploratory factor
analysis (the principal components factor analysis) was conducted to differentiate latent
elements embedded in public administrators opinions toward the OCC. Before
conducting a factor analysis, descriptive statistics for individual questions were reviewed
to examine the reliability among items which were created to measure the theoretically
identical constructs.

a.

Managing Up

82

The items created for this element cover the issues of transparency, accountability,
responsibility, discretion, and empowerment. Their means range from 4.604 to 4.966
over the midpoint of scaleindicating that public administrators considered OCC
positive for managing up. Before running a factor analysis, Cronbachs alpha was
calculated to find how well the items were designed to measure the proposed construct (
=.7154).

Table 8
Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Up Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Empowerment for Citizens

4.796781

1.22184

Transparency

4.966

1.113249

Professional Discretion

4.69697

1.204366

Accountability

4.609658

1.463448

Responsibility

4.604

1.238649

= .7154

b.

Managing Down

The items developed for managing-down reviewed issues of interruption by calls

and visits, workload, response time for citizen contacts, and changes in administrative
procedure.
All of their means exceeded the midpoint of the scale, ranging from 4.363 to
5.114 and indicating that public administrators considered OCC positive for managing
down. However, because Cronbachs alpha demonstrated a slightly lower value than 0.70
( =.6698), the correlations were inspected so as to have detailed information about their
internal consistency (Table 9).

83

Table 9
Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Down Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Interruption

4.363454

1.483114

Workload (Reversed)

4.957916

1.180596

Time (1)

4.957916

1.180596

Time (2)

5.114

1.178041

Administrative Procedure

4.672

1.255216

= .6698

Table 10 showed that workload (Q7) had weak, negative correlations with other
items, which implies that OCC Q7 might not be an appropriate measure for the managingdown factor. Moreover, its exclusion lowered the Cronbachs alpha to 0.6493 and the
correlations between the workload item and others are very weak. Thus, it cannot be
proven to be closely associated with other items.

Table 10
Correlations among OCC Managing-Down Items
Q2

Q7

Q8

Q15

Q2

1.000

Q7

-0.0877

1.000

Q8

0.3154

-0.0815

1.000

Q15

0.3331

-0.1535

0.5817

1.000

Q17

0.3162

-0.0189

0.6069

0.5261

Q17

1.000

Note. Q2= Interruption; Q7= Workload; Q8= Time; Q15= Time; Q17= Administrative Procedure.

c.

Managing Out

Five items for managing-out were generated to measure public administrator

opinions on Online Citizen Contacts. According to the descriptive statistics, public
84

administrators generally believed that OCC has accomplished positive outward effects.
The mean values of all five items exceeded the midpoint of the scale, ranging from 4.631
to 5.122. Public administrators particularly recognized that OCC has been increasingly
utilized for processing citizen complaints and suggestions. The Cronbachs alpha
of .8350 also confirmed the internal consistency among these items (Table 11).

Table 11
Descriptive Statistics for OCC Managing-Out Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Level of Utilization (1)

5.122984

1.195529

Level of Participation (1)

4.631791

1.151452

Ease of Participation

4.913828

1.200146

Level of Utilization (2)

5.030303

1.124394

Level of Participation (2)

4.75

1.114641

= .8350

d.

Internal Value and Procedure

The internal changes possibly resulting from the introduction of OCC were
explored through three questions. Ranging from 4.352 to 4.905, the means of responses
for these questions indicated that the OCC incurred relatively positive influences on the
internal environments. The Cronbachs alpha of .7194 also confirmed these items were
reliably correlated (Table 12).

85

Table 12
Descriptive Statistics for OCC Internal Value and Procedure Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Participatory Value

4.875

1.204579

Sense of Public Service

4.905242

1.170812

Internal Policy & Procedure

4.352

1.235779

= .7194

2. Factor Analysis for Online Citizen Contacts

Without specifying the number of factors, the initial factor analysis found four
factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00, whereas three factors were expected. The first
factor includes nine marker items. The second factor consists of four items including
professional discretion, public service, internal policy/procedure, and responsibility.
Although the first two factors seem to be heterogeneously composed, three managingdown items were grouped by the third factor (time1, time2, administrative procedure).
Because the fourth factor had only one marker item asking about the workload (Q7), this
item was dropped from further analysis. As examined in the descriptive statistics of OCC
managing-down, this result means that the workload does not likely measure any
component built into the roles of OCC. Rather, responses from public administrators
could be an output capturing their opinions about workload as their entire work
responsibility rather than as their workload linked to the adoption of OCC. Another item,
Interruption (Q2), initially developed for the construct of managing-down, separately
loaded in the first factor not with the rest of the managing down items loaded in the third
factor. Therefore, these two items were dropped before running another round of factor

86

analysis. Without those two items, the recalculated Cronbachs alpha showed that the
internal reliability was drastically improved, from 0.6698 to 0.8014.
Without the interruption (Q2) or workload (Q7) items, factor analysis
dropped the fourth factor and reproduced the other three factors by reconfiguring
identical items previously grouped together (Table 9, p. 84). With regard to factor
loadings of each item, the cutoff point that appeared in previous research is greater than
or around 0.50. Nunnally (1978) recommended that in order to assess the fit between
items and their construct, all of the primary factor loadings should be greater than 0.5. In
this analysis, all factor loadings were greater than 0.5, with the exception of Q6
(transparency in managing-up: .4866), whose value approximated 0.5. This demonstrates
an overall good match between each factor and related marker items, and therefore all
items are retained for further analysis (Table 13).
Although the conceptual framework of Mark H. Moores strategic triangle has
facilitated a good grasp of government functions by dissecting the critical components
embedded in the roles and responsibilities of government organizations for creating
public values, exploratory factor analysis could not confirm the strategic triangle
underlying public managers perceptions. The factor analysis, nonetheless, uncovered a
meaningful output.

87

Table 13
Rotated Factor Matrix for OCC
Factors
Item

Management Public Service Operational

Authority
Ethics
efficiency

Q3. Empowerment for Citizens

.7056

Q5. Level of Participation (1)

.6503

Q12. Accountability

.6353

Q4. Internal Participatory Value

.6118

Q1. Level of Utilization (1)

.5975

Q9. Ease of Participation

.5710

Q16. Level of Utilization (2)

.5695

Q18. Level of Participation (2)

.5503

Q6. Transparency

.4866

Q11. Sense of Public Service

.7375

Q14. Responsibility

.7294

Q13. Internal Policy & Procedure

.7230

Q10. Professional Discretion

.7190

Q17. Administrative Procedure

.8443

Q8. Time (1)

.7918

Q15. Time (2)

.6979

Number of Items
Eigenvalues
Percent variance (cumulative)

7.15558

1.37151

1.15558

22

42

61

Recent government reform has overemphasized efficiency-oriented innovations

that have redefined the relationship between government and society through the
mechanism mobilizing theoretical advantages of market (Wise, 2002; Pollitt, 2001;
Lynn, 2002; Frederickson & Smith, 2003; Denhardt, 2004). Kaboolian (1998, p. 190)
noted that the reform movements are remarkably similar in goals they pursue and the
technologies they utilize while the reform movements vary in depth, scope, and success
88

by country. Through recent government innovations, it has been evident that ICT is a
treasured tool for the innovator.
The advent of new ICT brought public management innovation to the
international stage and reinforced its own popularity. The spirit of present public
management innovation has sought management reform in government not only through
the introduction of new techniques but through the imposition of a new set of values and
potentials.
Since both Online Citizen Contacts and On-Nara BPS are ICT-enabled
management practices, the operational efficiency and customer-service orientation would
be improved. However, the descriptive statistics and factor-analysis showed that ICTbased public management practices may enable government to create values and benefits
in addition to operational efficiency. In the case of Online Citizen Contacts, the
emergence of public service ethics indicates that public managers shape their use of
innovative practices according to their mindset, which responds to the opportunities and
constraints unique to and surrounding their tasks and organizations.
The other finding of management authority and operational efficiency factors
demonstrated that ICT-based practices have been primarily regulated within the
bureaucratic framework of old public administration. Such findings imply that the
globally fashioned new tools and technologies internationally propelled by e-government
were localized and indigenized by Korean public managers.
Based on the output presented in Table 14, the deduced variables through the
factor analysis can be labeled as management authority, public service, and operation
efficiency.

89

Table 14
Design for Dependent Variables and Factor Analysis Result: OCC
Survey Instrument Design

Factor Analysis Output

Factor

Alpha

Questions

.7154

Managing Up

.6698

Managing Down

.8350

.7194

a.

Construct

Construct

Questions

Alpha

Management
authority

.8677

Public Service Ethics

.8106

Managing Out

Operational
Efficiency

.8013

Internal Procedure

N/A

Management authority

The first extracted factor includes nine items was loaded with variables designed
to measure three components: managing up, managing out, and internal value and
procedure. Although the combination of items (5 managing-out, 3 managing-up, and 1
internal value and procedure) might suggest that the first factor would not be easily
defined, questions in the first factor converged on issues about political relationship and
government authorities.

b.

Public Service Ethics

The second extracted factor was loaded with four questions designed to measure
the governancemanaging updimension and internal value and procedure. These
items can, however, be considered critical components explaining public service ethics.
Whereas other managing-up and internal procedure items captured in the first factors
more likely emphasized on the association with political leaders and citizens, these four
questions center on the ethical dimension unique to individual public-service personnel.

90

c.

Operational efficiency

The last facto extracted from the factor analysis was labeled as operational
efficiency. After removing two items that did not show consistency with other items, this
factor was entirely loaded with the original managing-down marker items. Removal of
the two itemsQ2 and Q7also improved Cronbachs alpha from 0.6698 to 0.8013.

3. Revised Hypotheses for Determinant Analysis

In the chapter four, this research hypothesized that all four conceptual arenas
strategic triangle and internal procedureof managerial roles are both valid and reliable
as guidelines with which public managers utilize the present public management
practices such as OCC and On-Nara BPS. However, the exploratory factor analysis for
OCC cannot confirm the hypothesis.
As described in above, the result shows that the three extracted primary factors
demonstrate what would control the utilization of Online Citizen Contacts. However,
these three factors are not identical to the three components configured in the strategic
triangle or internal process. The first factor can be labeled as management authority,
representing the functions of managing up and out. The questions representing the
function of managing down were clustered as a factor of operational efficiency. The last
factor contains four questions about professional discretion, public service, internal
procedure, and responsibility, which may capture the dimensions of managing up or
internal procedure. This factor could accordingly be named, public service ethics.
Although the analysis produced three factors, the nature of two factors does not
reflect the theoretically defined functions of the strategic triangle, except the second
factor loaded with the items of managing down. Therefore, the hypothesis for strategic

91

triangle for OCC cannot be confirmed. Because the confirmation of this hypothesis is
prerequisite for determinant analysis, the hypotheses for other independent variables have
to be revised. Revised hypotheses are as follows:
ICT Training Hypothesis (A1): ICT training for Online Citizen Contacts
(OCC) will be positively associated with management authority and
operational efficiency. (The relationship with public service ethics
will not be significant.)
Impetus Hypothesis (B1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, institutional
pressures will be positively associated with management authority and public
service ethics. (The relationship with operational efficiency will not be
significant.)
Performance Culture Hypothesis (C1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts,
performance culture will be positively associated with management authority
and public service ethics. (The relationship with operational efficiency will
not be significant.)
Information Sharing Hypothesis (D1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, strong
internal information sharing will be positively associated with management
authority and public service ethics. (The relationship with operational
efficiency will not be significant.)
Information Disclosure Hypothesis (E1): For Online Citizen Contacts, the
attitudes regarding information disclosure will be negatively associated with
management authority and public service ethics. (The relationship with
operational efficiency will not be significant.)
Innovative Attitudes Hypothesis (F1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts,
innovative attitudes will be positively associated with a public administrators
attitudes toward management authority and public service ethics. (The
relationship with operational efficiency will not be significant.)
View of ICT Potential Hypothesis (G1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts, the
view of malleable ICT potential will be positively associated with management
authority and public service ethics. (The relationship with operational
efficiency will not be significant.)
Technological Ease Hypothesis (H1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts,
technological ease will be positively associated with management authority.
(The relationship with operational efficiency will not be significant.)

92

Background Characteristics Hypothesis (I1): Regarding Online Citizen Contacts,

highly educated and highly ranked male public managers who majored in social
sciences, were recruited through the national civil service exam, dealt with civic
complaints, and worked in national government longer will more positively assess
management authority and public service ethics than officials with the
opposite characteristics. (The relationship with operational efficiency will not
be significant.)

The further examination what may determine the perception of public managers
on the utility of Online Citizen Contacts will rely on these new hypotheses in the next
chapter. Such revision is not a minimal change because the nature of dependent variables
has been transformed while all independent variables remain the same. In spite of these
changes, the newly revised hypotheses still provide an opportunity to investigate the use
of innovative public management practices and thus fully answer the original research
questions.

4. Summary
As summarized in Table 13 and Table 14, empirical analysis did not confirm that
the managerial construct of strategic triangle may match with the perceptual framework
shown in the survey for OCC. While the factor of operational efficiency was entirely
loaded with the variables devised for the managing down marker items, other factors
extracted from the factor represented managerial dimensions characterizing political
management and public service ethics.
The factor of management authoritypolitical managementwas loaded with
various items designed to measure managing-out, managing-up, and internal value and
procedure. This result also implies that managerial logics, that guide governance and
performance capacities of public managers, have not been differentiated with regards to
the utilization of OCC.
93

Because the result cannot confirm the hypothesized factor constructs of strategic
public management, this chapter provided the revised hypotheses for further analysis of
determinants in the next chapter.

94

CHAPTER SEVEN
DETERMINANT ANALYSIS
FOR ONLINE CITIZEN CONTACTS
1. Regression Analysis for Online Citizen Contacts
Dependent variables for the OCC were discovered by exploratory factor analysis
as a structure of three latent constructs: (1) management authority, (2) public service
ethics, and (3) operational efficiency. Table 15 (p. 100) presents the results of a model
employing nine independent variables and six control variables to explain their
relationship with dependent variables through the revised ordinal least square (OLS)
regression for OCC by the factor-analyzed dependent structures.
In order to confirm whether OLS was the appropriate estimation technique,
multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity were examined for the OLS regression models
for OCC. The variance inflation factor (VIF) to detect multicollinearity indicated it was
not critical in such models. However, Whites test rejected the null hypothesis that
variance of the residuals is homogeneous (Whites test, p< .000). This means that OLS
estimators do not provide the estimate with the smallest variance.
The violation of homoscedasticity implies that the least square estimator is no
longer best, that there is another estimator with a smaller variance, and that the least
squares estimator is still a linear and unbiased estimator. Such violation also implies that
the standard errors usually computed for the least squares estimator are incorrect. As a
consequence, confidence intervals and hypothesis tests that use these standard errors
may be misleading (Hill et al., 2007, p. 201). To develop an estimate that is better than

95

the least square estimator, the feasible generalized least squares (fGLS) technique, which
minimizes a weighted sum of squares and thus yields the BLUE (best least unbiased
estimator), was applied. Based on the factor analysis and the limitation found in the initial
OLS regression, the OLS regression models presented in the methodology chapter were
revised by applying the fGLS method. The result is summarized in Table 15.
Bearing on the political construct of management authority, isomorphic pressure
(p< .05), performance culture (p< .001), ICT training (p< .05), technological ease
(p< .001), and recruitment (p< .05) were found to be significant factors.
1.1.

Impetus

The analysis supports the influence of isomorphic pressures ( = .159, p<.05) in

regards to the dependent variable of management authority for OCC. This means that the
isomorphic pressure positively influences the public managers awareness of political
management capacity of OCC. The other dependent variable of operational efficiency,
loaded with originally items crafted for managing-down, also showed a significant
relationship with isomorphic institutional pressure. Public managers who perceived
strong isomorphic pressure leading the evolution of e-government indicated that OCC
significantly improves operational efficiency ( = .405, p<.001). For the association with
operational efficiency, the coefficient shows that isomorphic pressureimpetushas the
greatest influence among a series of variables, about twice as great as the second largest
coefficientfor information disclosure ( = .203, p<.05).
Although isomorphic pressure was shown to be not significant in the association
with the dependent variable of public service ethics, this may be a natural consequence of

96

the forces that have promoted e-government does not significantly affect the personal
value system such as professional ethics.
1.2.

Performance

The influence of performance centered atmosphere is confirmed as associated

with the dependent variable of management authority ( = .348, p<.001). While such
influence is also found as positively associated with the dependent variable of public
service ethics ( = .263, p<.05), the result indicated that the perceived level of
organizational performance orientation does not have an influence on the public
managers psychological construct for the OCC operational efficiency. Higher levels of
perceived performance orientation increase public managers stronger awareness to of
political capacity of OCC and public service ethics through OCC while such higher
perception does not show any relationship with the dependent variable of operational
efficiency. With regards to OCC, the value of operational efficiency does not seem to
matter to public managers who identify the performance-orientation.
1.3.

ICT training

Although the result implies that ICT training does not show any significant
relationship with public managers awareness of operational efficiency in using OCC
system, ICT training for OCC may help public managers aware of OCC as a politically
effective system ( = .123, p<.05). Respondents having effective ICT training for OCC (
= .260, p<.05) also gave OCC high marks for improving professional ethics. This study
found that the positive contribution of ICT training on non-operational dimensions that
can be enacted by operators, public managers. This result is interesting because the

97

emphasis in ICT training had been on improving efficiency and the provision of
government services, before recent studies highlighted other potential of ICT.
1.4.

Information Disclosure

Those who agreed that extensive disclosure of government information increases

citizen trust indicated their strong awareness of OCC as an instrument improving public
service ethics ( = .159, p<.05). As can be anticipated, public managers who believe that
extensive information disclosure increases citizen trust toward government also found
OCC more efficient than did those who dont believe so ( = .203, p<.05).With regards to
OCC, information disclosure is a significant explanatory variable for both dependent
variables of public service ethics and operational efficiency although the pro-information
disclosure attitude did not however show significant influence on managerial authorities.
Such observations make sense in that OCC can be an efficient mechanism to civil
servants having a pro-information disclosure attitude because they may rather regard
other manual interactions between citizens and themselves as an inefficient process.
In the principal-agency theory, information is described as a powerful resource
that affects the relationship between two parties. Therefore, the information asymmetry is
a typical phenomenon and agents may hide critical information that affects the
relationship between principals and agents. The result can accordingly be interpreted as
that civil servants, who are less likely to fortify the tensions between two parties, seems
to positively assess the operational capacity and ethical safeguard of OCC.
1.5.

Technological Ease

Technological ease of OCC contributes only to the political management capacity

of OCC ( = .154, p<.001). Although the influence of technological ease could be

98

confirmed, it would reversely imply that technological ease would not matter in guiding
public managers to aware of the operational efficiency and public service ethics which
OCC could promote.
1.6.

Job Characteristics

Interestingly, public managers whose job closely involves handling citizen

complaints and suggestions demonstrated OCC less likely to increase public service
ethics for them than for those who did not take a charge for such job ( = -.086, p<.05).
This result might be generated by a psychological dynamics affecting individual
standards for judging professional ethics. Because of their direct involvement with citizen
complaints and suggestions, these public managers may set a higher standard for
professional ethics and thus be stricter and relatively negative in assessing it than those
whose jobs were not strongly related with citizen inputs.
1.7. Background Demographics
Public managers who started their government careers through the official civil
service exam are more likely aware of the political capacity driven by OCC in Korean
government organizations ( = .275, p<.05). Korean civil service applicants can enter the
public service by successfully passing the exams which are annually offered for ranks 9,
7, and 5.10

10

In Korean public service, smaller number indicates a higher position.

99

Table 15
Summary Table of fGLS by OCC Construct
Dependent Variables
Independent
Variables

Management authority
Coefficient

Public Service Ethics

Standard Error

Coefficient

Standard Error

Operational efficiency
Coefficient

Standard Error

Isomorphic Pressure

.159 *

(.0790)

.034

(.1036)

Performance

.348 **

(.0946)

.263 *

(.1018)

-.085

(.1220)

ICT Training

.123 *

(.0678)

.260 *

(.0877)

.016

(.1140)

(.1147)

.010

(.1042)

Information Sharing

-.146

.405 **

(.1173)

-.004

(.0881)

Information Disclosure

.075

(.0477)

.159 *

(.0590)

.203 *

(.0646)

Innovativeness

.073

(.0708)

.069

(.0726)

.011

(.0645)

View of ICT Potential

.039

(.0364)

.014

(.0450)

-.084

(.0652)

Technological Ease

.154 **

(.0472)

.003

(.0488)

.091

(.0499)

Job Characteristics

.045

(.0273)

-.086 *

(.0377)

.037

(.0407)

Recruitment

.275 *

(.1205)

-.137

(.1313)

-.171

(.1668)

Length of Tenure

-.001

(.0072)

-.011

(.0081)

-.000

(.0102)

Major

-.015

(.0932)

-.208

(.1314)

.151

(.1262)

Education Level

.016

(.0405)

.107

(0605)

-.011

(.0705)

Rank

.027

(.0493)

.062

(.0579)

.047

(.0642)

-.000

(.1088)

.164

(.1542)

.230

(.1418)

Gender
R2
F test

.457
10.78 **

* p<0.05; ** p< 0.001

100

.219

.264

5.24 **

8.36 **

Given that the civil servant exam is very competitive and most applicants have
generally spent more than two years in preparation, public managers recruited through
the exams may be considered better prepared to serve the public than those who entered
public service through other avenues. In addition, such efforts may indicate strong
motivation toward public service.

2. ANOVA for ICT Training

In order to verify the effectiveness of ICT training, an analysis of variance
(ANOVA) was performed to determine if these public managers significantly differ from
each other on how they perceive OCC to their satisfaction of ICT Training (Table 16).

Table 16
ANOVA Test of ICT training for OCC
Mean
ICT Training for OCC

F ratio

.2541925

22.76

.0000***

-.2074904

.2540559

25.27

.0000***

-.1389079

.1496531

9.60

Not Consented

Consented

Management authority

-.1931854

Public Service Ethics

Operational efficiency

.0021**

* p< 0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p< 0.001

Korean public managers indicated their opinions about whether ICT training was
properly provided to them. Although 203 respondents assented, 255 respondents
disagreed or did not show strong agreement with regards to OCC training. The result of
the ANOVA test indicated significant differences in group means for all three dependent
variables on Online Citizen Contacts.

101

3. Summary
This chapter identified significant variables through determinant analysis for OCC.
Explanatory variables showed the different relationship with three dependent variables
(Table 17). The analysis results showed that five variables correlated with dependent
variable of management authority in OCC; where isomorphic pressure, performance, ICT
training, technological ease, and recruitment were the significant predictors of an
awareness of political management capacity designed in OCC.

Table 17
Result of Hypotheses Test for Determinants: OCC
Independent
Variables

Dependent Variables
Management authority

Public Service Ethics

Operational efficiency

Isomorphic Pressure

Confirmed

Confirmed

Performance

Confirmed

Confirmed

ICT Training

Confirmed

Confirmed

Information Sharing

Information Disclosure

Confirmed

Confirmed

Innovativeness

View of ICT Potential

Technological Ease

Confirmed

Job Characteristics

Confirmed

Confirmed

Length of Tenure

Major

Education Level

Rank

Gender

Recruitment

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With regards to the capacity of safeguarding public service ethics, high levels of
perceived performance oriented atmosphere, satisfaction of ICT training, and proinformation disclosure attitudes indicated to increase the awareness of public service
ethics whereas job characteristics measuring how closely related to citizen complaints
showed that higher levels of involvement in citizen complaints would reduce the
awareness of professional ethics. As described in above, this may reflect the increase of
citizen complaints resulting from the adoption of OCC because OCC improved the
accessibility to government organizations. The overloaded work burden may make civil
servants exhausted and reduce their awareness. The operational capacity of OCC was
observed to be correlated with the isomorphic pressure and pro-information disclosure
attitudes. The further discussion will be elaborated in the last chapter.

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CHAPTER EIGHT
FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR ON-NARA BPS
The second public management puzzle of this research, On-Nara BPS, is
thoroughly explored through this chapter by descriptive statistics shown in the survey
responses and exploratory factor analysis.

1. Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS

In addition to Online Citizen Contacts (OCC), the On-Nara Business Processing
System (On-Nara BPS), which has been fully implemented since 2007, is another
example of Korean governmental efforts to innovate administrative process with new
Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
The basic functions of On-Nara BPS are to process and manage internallyproduced documents, but its original intention was to improve values such as
transparency and accountability. Given the systems functions and potential benefits, the
adoption of On-Nara BPS is an innovation toward strategic public management. Public
administrators seemed to assess the On-Nara BPS positively except in two cases:
centralization (Q5) and opinion exchange (Q7). The tables below describe their overall
evaluations of On-Nara BPS.

a.

Managing Up

The items designed for the On-Nara BPS construct of managing-up cover the
variables of transparency, accountability, centralization, discretion, and control. Their
mean values range from 3.865 to 4.952around the midpoint of the Likert seven-point
scale. While respondents reported, that due to On-Nara BPS, they more cautiously
exercised professional discretion and the supervisors control capacity had been
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strengthened, their assessment was that On-Nara BPS has decentralized administrative
decision-making rather than centralizing it (Table 18). Before running factor analysis,
Cronbachs alpha was calculated to find how well the items were designed to measure the
proposed construct ( =.8432).

Table 18
Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Up Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Accountability

4.792961

1.223301

Decentralization (Reversed)

3.865169

1.150415

Professional Discretion

4.952675

1.112174

Transparency

4.896266

1.175648

Control Capacity

4.590535

1.239817

= .8432

b.

Managing Down

Six items proposed to measure the On-Nara BPS managing-down cover the
issues of complexity, workload, speed, time, ease of work, and red tape. Although the
red-tape item was included in this group, Kaufman (1977) noted that red tape might be
the result of the desire to preserve the accountability in government processes and could
be, then, factorized in the managing-up cluster.

105

Table 19
Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Down Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Complexity (Reversed)

4.358824

1.580415

Workload (Reversed)

4.950515

1.184274

Speed

4.68815

1.206944

Time

4.619048

1.463175

Ease of Work

5.104938

1.182038

Red Tape (Reversed)

4.3

1.399621

= .8432

Their mean values ranges from a low of 4.3 to a high of 5.104. Cronbachs alpha
of .8671 confirmed the internal consistency among these items.

c.

Managing Out

The questions were crafted to measure to what extent On-Nara BPS creates
valuable external outputs. Because On-Nara BPS is an internal system, how On-Nara
BPS externally contributes to the well-being of citizens and society was examined
through the quality of outputs. Although their mean values varied from 4.157 to 5.020,
Cronbachs alpha indicated the internal construct consistency among the measured items
( =.8302).

Table 20
Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Managing-Out Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Quality of Output (1)

4.157058

1.310844

Quality of Outputs (2)

4.903093

1.204713

Ease of Participation

5.02079

1.12527

= .8302

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d.

Internal Value and Procedure

The influence of On-Nara BPS inward organization was acquired through four
questions. The mean values varied considerably from 3.006 to 4.865, but the internal
consistency seems to be reliable among the questions ( =.8101). According to the
respondents, the adoption of On-Nara BPS did not facilitate the exchange of opinions
between supervisors and their subordinates as actively as it did the exchange between coworkers (Table 21).

Table 21
Descriptive Statistics for On-Nara BPS Internal Procedure Items
Item

Mean

SD

Min

Max

Value for Participation

4.865145

1.20311

Opinion Exchange (1)

3.006211

1.319328

Opinion Exchange (2)

4.335391

1.237166

Information Sharing

4.652263

1.256925

= .8101
Note. Opinion Exchange (1): Between supervisors and subordinates
Opinion Exchange (2): Between coworkers

2. Factor Analysis for On-Nara BPS

Without dropping any items or specifying the number of factors, the exploratory
factor analysis produced two latent variables with eigenvalues greater than 1.00, as
shown in Table 22. Whereas the first factor is a mixture of three constructs, the second
factor is a homogeneous group consisting of only the six managing-down items. The
primary factor loadings for all items are greater than 0.50 (Table 22). This indicates an
overall good fit between each factor and the related marker items, and thus all items are
retained for the further analysis. Because the items for the managing-down construct
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survived entirely and turned out as the second factor, this latent structure can be clearly
labeled as operational efficiency.

Table 22
Rotated Factor Matrix for On-Nara BPS
Factors
Item

Management
authority
.8007
.7840
.7556
.7189
-.7146
.7016
.6800
.6315
.6282
.6265
.6115
.5652

Q6. Professional Discretion

Q3. Accountability
Q4. Value for Participation
Q9. Quality of Outputs (2)
Q5. Decentralization
Q16. Ease of Participation
Q1. Quality of Outputs (1)
Q14. Control/ Audit Capacity
Q11. Transparency
Q13. Opinion Exchange (2)
Q7. Opinion Exchange (1)
Q17. Information Sharing
Q8. Workload
Q2. Complexity
Q12. Time
Q15. Ease of Work
Q18. Red Tape
Q10. Speed

Operational
efficiency

.8258
.7999
.6861
.6749
.6508
.6059

Number of Items
Eigenvalues
Percent variance (cumulative)

12
8.15695
36

6
2.03151
57

As with OCC, On-Nara BPS did not confirm the strategic managerial construct
from the survey responses. However, the exploratory factor analysis generated some
substantial findings. The result clearly separated political and operational dimensions,
108

unveiling the outermost layer surrounding the core structure of strategic management.
Although the apexes of managing-out and managing-up were conceptually differentiated
in Mark H. Moores strategic triangle, they may be inherently related in the traditional
bureaucratic framework of public administration as McGregor (1983) described. The
result indicated that the strategic triangle for public management could not be confirmed
contrary to the first hypotheses. Although the factor analysis generated the factor loaded
entirely with managing-down marker items for On-Nara BPS, the other factor, which was
loaded with all other items and undifferentiated, at most support the dichotomous
dimensions of politics-administration.
Attention should also be paid to the two separately factorized itemsred tape and
control capacity. Red tape can be defined as burdensome administrative rules and
procedures that have no efficacy for the rules functional object (Bozeman, 1993;
Rainey et al., 1995; Bozeman, 1999). Pathological phenomena of bureaucracy include
excessive or meaningless paperwork, formalization, and bureaucratization (Kaufman,
1976; Bozeman, 1993; Welch & Pandey, 2006). Whereas On-Nara BPS was claimed to
ameliorate accountability, transparency, participation, and efficiency, the procedure
designed to steward such values might increase formalization or red tape. This was ages
ago recognized by scholars such as Waldo and Kaufman, who appreciated what was
perceived as red tape could be a system or treasured safeguard (Waldo, 1946, p. 399;
Kaufman, 1977, p. 4).
In the result, red tape was factored in the second group and control capacity,
professional discretion, and accountability in the first one. This may mean that extensive
rules and regulations do not necessarily produce red tape. Although public administrators

109

accept On-Nara BPS as an instrument for reinforcing control capacity and accountability,
they apparently didnt regard it as red tape. Although around 45% of respondents, 230 out
of 510, reported that On-Nara BPS did not likely increase red tape, only 28% of
respondents, 143 out of 510, indicated that it did.
Just as Bozeman (1993, p. 279) noted that some authors make no distinction
between formalization and red tape, the border between red tape and effective control
capacity is also thin. Excessive control may cause conflict and resistance in using the
system. The procedure and control capacity reasonably designed to promote
accountability and transparency might not become red tape, and therefore public
administrators could conceive the procedure and feature just from the lens of efficiency
or inefficiency. That the red tape item was factored in operational efficiency may support
the possibility that the control capacity of On-Nara BPS is not excessive and public
administrators may rightfully understand the systems fundamental purpose.

Table 23
Design for Dependent Variables and Factor Analysis Result
Survey Instrument Design

Factor Analysis Result

Factor

Alpha

Questions

Construct

Construct

.8425

Managing Up

.8748

Managing Down

.8246

Managing Out

N/A

.8038

Internal
Procedure

N/A

110

Questions

Alpha

12

.9258

.8748

Management
authority
Operational
Efficiency

a.

Management authority and Operational efficiency

The On-Nara BPS case differs from the OCC one in that the formers factor
analysis did not produce a latent variable representing individual ethical dimension.
Unlike OCC, the items of professional discretion, public service, internal policy and
value, and responsibility were not distinguished in the On-Nara BPS analysis and
were therefore brought under the first factor. Along with them, items from the three
constructs of managing-up, managing-out, and internal component were considered one
factor. Cronbachs alpha is 0.9258, and verifying internal consistency. As mentioned
above, the second factor of operational efficiency exclusively reflects the managingdown construct developed in the survey instrument.

3. Revised Hypotheses for Determinant Analysis

As examined in the case of Online Citizen Contacts, the determinant analysis for
On-Nara BPS also requires the confirmation of the first hypothesis about the applicability
of strategic triangle to the practice of On-Nara BPS. The exploratory factor analysis
found that the applicability cannot be confirmed in utilization of On-Nara BPS because
the result produced only two factors. The first factor was labeled as management
authority. This factor turned out to group the theoretically defined functions of managingup, managing-out, and the internal procedure. On the other hand, the other dimension of
the strategic triangle, managing down, was completely captured by the second factor,
which was labeled as operational efficiency in the above. Accordingly, the result from
On-Nara BPS could not confirm the hypothesis either and the other hypotheses for the
determinant analysis for On-Nara BPS should be revised. Revised hypotheses for other
independent variables are as follows:

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ICT Training Hypothesis (A2): ICT training for On-Nara BPS will be
positively associated with operational efficiency. (The relationship
with management authority will not be significant.)
Impetus Hypothesis (B2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, institutional pressure will be
positively associated with operational efficiency. (The relationship with
management authority will not be significant.)
Performance Culture Hypothesis (C2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, performance
culture will be positively associated with operational efficiency. (The
relationship with managing authorities will not be significant.)
Information Sharing Hypothesis (D2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, strong internal
information sharing will be positively associated with operational efficiency.
(The relationship with management authority will not be significant.)
Information Disclosure Hypothesis (E2): For On-Nara BPS, the attitudes
regarding information disclosure will be negatively associated with operational
efficiency. (The relationship with management authority will not be
significant.)
Innovative Attitudes Hypothesis (F2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, innovative
attitudes will be positively associated with a public managers attitudes toward
operational efficiency. (The relationship with management authority will not
be significant.)
View of ICT Potential Hypothesis (G2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, the view of
malleable ICT potential will be positively associated with management
authority. (The relationship with operational efficiency will not be significant.)
Technological Ease Hypothesis (H2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, technological
ease will be positively associated with operational efficiency. (The relationship
with management authority will not be significant.)
Background Characteristics Hypothesis (I2): Regarding On-Nara BPS, highly
educated and highly ranked male public managers who majored in social sciences,
were recruited through the national civil service exam, dealt with civic complaints,
and worked in national government longer will more positively assess
management authority and operational efficiency.

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The further examination of On-Nara BPS will rely on these new hypotheses.
Because the results from On-Nara BPS could confirm the first hypothesis, which
examines whether public managers fully perceive the theoretical constructs of the
strategic triangle underlying innovative public management practices, the other original
hypotheses were revised. Such revision is not a minimal change because the nature of
dependent variables has been transformed while all independent variables remain the
same. In spite of these changes, the newly revised hypotheses still provide an opportunity
to investigate the use of innovative public management practices and thus fully answer
the original research questions.

4. Summary
As summarized in Table 22 and Table 23, empirical analysis could not confirm
that the strategic public management might be applicable to the ICT-based practices
through the perception of public managers toward OCC. While the factor of operational
efficiency was entirely loaded with the variables devised for the managing down marker
items, all the other variables were grouped together into the second factor which
represents the political management capacitymanagement authority.
The inability to distinguish the managerial arenas of governance and performance
might result from the continued influence of traditional bureaucratic paradigm of old
public administration. Because the result cannot confirm the applicability of strategic
triangle model in the ICT-based practiceOn-Nara BPSin Korean national
government organizations, this chapter provided the revised hypotheses for further
analysis of determinants in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER NINE
DETERMINANT ANALYSIS FOR ON-NARA BPS
1. Regression Analysis for On-Nara BPS
The exploratory factor analysis reveals the latent structure of On-Nara BPS with
two factors: (1) management authority and (2) operational efficiency. Unlike OCC, OnNara BPS did not produce a public service ethics factor. Table 24 summarizes the results
of the model, which includes the same explanatory varaibles as for OCC. Just as OCC
analysis was identified as limited and thus revised, On-Nara BPS was also analyzed by
GLS regression models rather than by the initial OLS estimators.
1.1.

Performance

The awareness of operational capacity of On-Nara BPS turned out to be

significantly related to perceived performance-oriented culture ( = .238, p<.05). To
public managers who perceive the performance-oriented organizational atmosphere, OnNara BPS may be an instrument which improves the efficient operational capacity.
1.2.

ICT Training

The satisfaction of ICT training ( = .183, p< .05) generated a significantly

positive relationship with the political management capacity of On-Nara BPS. Public
managers who indicated higher levels of ICT training satisfaction for On-Nara BPS
however showed a more negative perception of its operational capacity ( = -.258,
p<.001). The inconsistentoppositeeffect of ICT training on On-Nara BPS may cause
some confusion, as the same ICT training demonstrates a positive relationship with
respect to political management arena. However, the perceived nature of the system may
provide a clue for the inconsistency that resulted in the opposite effects of the same ICT
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training on managerial arenas of operations and political management. Through the ICT
training for On-Nara BPS, those public managers who were impressed either by the
notion that this system is designed primarily for promoting values of accountability,
transparency, and the more cautious, prudent exercise of professional discretion, or by the
idea that On-Nara BPS will serve such values by sacrificing efficiency and economy, will
consequently report a negative assessment for such sacrifice.
In particular, the negative influence of ICT training on On-Nara BPS, concerning
its operational capacity, may suggest the existence of two system problem. Adoption of
On-Nara BPS would represent redundancy and inefficiency if each agency had its own
electronic business processing system before adopting On-Nara BPS. Accordingly, ICT
training for On-Nara BPS might represent a moment in which public managers find the
inefficiency of having two systems.
1.3.

Information Sharing and Information Disclosure

High levels of perceived Information sharing behaviors increase the public

managers awareness of political capacity of On-Nara BPS ( = .231, p< .05).
Information sharing is a key element for government organizations to meet the challenges
from the complex organizational environments and to initiate collaboration. Healthy and
fluent information sharing is a measure to break the information asymmetry and
Therefore, public managers who are not a selfish agent but a loyal steward may consider
On-Nara BPS as an mechanism by which all organizational members can share taskrelated information rather than a control instrument that suppress themselves.
Public managers who believe that policy-process efficiency will be improved
from the extensive disclosure of government information indicated the On-Nara BPS

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brought improvements in this regard ( = .114, p< .05). As Lynn (2006, p. 145) noted
that issues of delegation and accountability were intuitively perceived as principal-agent
problems in the development of American public administration, a highly advanced
formal business processing system might improve political control and audit capacity but
also stimulate the ethos of public managers. If public managers are agents who are
concerned about their self-interest, they may resist using the system, whereas a morally
motivated public manager might respect the value of information disclosure and thus hold
the system in higher regard.
1.4.

Innovativeness

The result of determinant analysis indicated that the innovative attitude of public
managers is negatively associated with the dependent variable of management authority
in the case of On-Nara BPS ( = -.140, p< .05). Because most ICT-based public
management practices have been depicted as an innovation, this finding is unexpected.
Two plausible explanations can be considered. First, public managers who believe that
government reform needs to be continued may implicitly set higher standards for
innovative practices and thus judge them more strictly. If On-Nara BPS has not yet
functioned fully or realized its promise, reform-friendly innovative public managers
sensed it more negatively. Second, if innovative public managers envisage government
reform as efficiency-oriented changes accomplished by removing redundant procedures
and regulations, the On-Nara BPS functions and procedures designed to guard
accountability and transparency represent regressions. Consequently, these interpretations
may justify this negative association.

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1.5.

View of ICT Potential

In both OCC and On-Nara BPS, personal view of ICT potential did not show any
significant relationship with any dependent variable except with the operational capacity
of On-Nara BPS. Public managers who believe the benefits promised by ICT, more likely
reported that On-Nara BPS is operationally efficient ( = .210, p <.001). This relationship
means that those public managers may be inclined to consider strategic ICT application
as an operational aid to achieve the efficiency rather than a mechanism for political
management.
1.6.

Technological Ease

Technological ease was found to be significant explanatory variable in association

with both dependent variables. The perceived technological ease seems to strengthen the
awareness of operational capacity ( = .267, p <.001) and political management capacity
( = .214, p <.001) of On-Nara BPS. Technological ease might be significant in both
managerial arenas because On-Nara BPS has been observed simply as the internal
business processing system rather than a system which can help public managers serve
the citizens and society well.
1.7.

Job Characteristics

Public managers whose jobs are more closely related to civil complaints and
suggestions reported that On-Nara BPS would less likely enhance the operational
capacity in accomplishing their jobs ( = -.066, p <.05). This negative association might
result from the discrepancy between the business processing system facilitating the
internal process and the nature of work centered in external communication. Accordingly,
On-Nara BPS may rarely help public managers complete the civil complaint and

117

suggestion-related work. Based on the present assessment that On-Nara BPS has
remained a system for business processing rather than business management (Kong,
2008), the systemic elaboration through integrating scattered government functions may
synergize the managerial effectiveness.
1.8.

Recruitment and Background Characteristics

Negative association is also found in the background variables recruitment ( = .246, p<.05), work years ( = -.013, p<.05), and education level ( = -.082, p<.05),
alongside innovativeness ( = -.140, p<.05). This means that highly educated public
managers, who started their government career through the official civil service exam
and have served many years, more negatively regarded the political consequences
driving OCC in Korean government organizations. Because background variables have
not been shown as significant factors affecting the other constructs in OCC and OnNara BPS, more attention needs to be paid to why such background variables became
significant for the awareness of political management capacity in On-Nara BPS.
One of the noteworthy discoveries in the On-Nara BPS regression analysis is
found in analyzing the influence of gender difference. Stackman et al. (2005, p. 579)
reviewed previous studies and noted that the empirical studies on gender-value profiles
have been equivocal. While the variable of gender rarely achieves statistical significance
either at the p< 0.05 or the p< 0.001 levels in OCC and On-Nara BPS, the distinction of a
public managers gender profile becomes statistically significant in explaining the
political utility of On-Nara BPS ( = .392, p<.001). Male public managers are more
likely to report that the adoption of On-Nara BPS enhances the political management
capacity and behaviors in the internal business process.

118

In other words, the gender profile can become relevant in utilizing On-Nara BPS,
as it mostly controls internal work processing. For example, Watson and Ryan (1979)
found that male managers exhibited a more pragmatic orientation than did female ones.
The other empirical study found that female managers would place stronger emphasis on
career than did male managers (Powell et al., 1984). These findings resulted from a
search for an ethos inside organizations. Given that the empirical evidence is equivocal
and conflicting, what have been stereotypically regarded as role characteristics of gender
were not supported.
Vigoda (2000, p. 343) found that female, highly educated employees, and those
with higher income showedthat they are vulnerable to their achievements,and less
willing to perform negligent behaviors that risk their positions and job security in the
organization. From these findings, it may be proposed that female public managers with
a higher position are sensitive to their achievements and more accountable for their
behaviors. As a corollary, it may be proposed that female public managers with a lower
position are less sensitive to their achievement and accountability.
The rank distribution of female public managers, de facto, differs slightly from
that of male public administrators. Whereas 25.9% of male respondents are below grade
6,11 51.6% of female respondents are in that category. Because female public
administrators more likely hold lower positions from this statistic, they are resultantly
less aware of the accomplishments and political dynamics than are males. This can be
illustrated by rank distribution reflected in gender profile. In order to examine if there is a
gender difference in the structure of grade, a t-test was conducted, which confirmed that
the rank-structure differs significantly by gender (t(442)= 5.1782, p< .000). Although the
11

In the Korean public service, middle management is deemed grade 6 and higher.

119

rank-structure was not previously identified as a significant variable, the influence of

rank-structure seemed to be strengthened through a medium of gender.

Table 24
Summary Table of fGLS for On-Nara BPS
Dependent Variables
Independent
Variables

Management authority
Standard
Error

Coefficient

Operational efficiency
Coefficient
-.108

Standard
Error

Isomorphic Pressure

.140

(.0743)

(.0873)

Performance

.142

(.0856)

.238 *

(.1053)

ICT Training

.183 *

(.0591)

-.258 **

(.0756)

Information Sharing

.231 *

(.0895)

-.045

(.0940)

Information Disclosure

.114 *

(.0390)

-.031

(.0504)

Innovativeness

-.140 *

(.0553)

.011

(.0655)

View of ICT Potential

-.053

(.0343)

.210 **

(.0481)

.267 **

(.0486)

Technological Ease

.214 **

(.0404)

Job Characteristics

.018

(.0243)

-.066 *

(.0291)

Recruitment

-.246 *

(.1038)

.002

(.1256)

Length of Tenure

-.013 *

(.0059)

-.004

(.0073)

Major

-.007

(.0848)

-.033

(.1000)

Education Level

-.082 *

(.0364)

-.038

(.0484)

Rank

.008

(.0416)

-.011

(.0477)

Gender

.392 **

(.1049)

.167

(.1226)

R2
F test

.494

.319

23.35 **

6.87 **

* p<0.05; ** p< 0.001

One may somewhat conjecture the expertise level embedded in individual public
managers and organizations, based on the variables educational level and length of

120

service. Highly educated public managers might achieve their level of education either
before they entered the public service or after they started to serve in government
organizations. Although public managers might not have the expertise in their first years,
they could accumulate expertise through their own work experiences and further
education related to their jobs. Based on their confidence in their job built with such
expertise and higher educational backgrounds, one can expect that public managers with
higher degree may prefer to serve under more autonomous work environment.
Length of service is not all that different from the case of education level. The
longer public managers serve, the more knowledgeable they become in their work.
Korean public managers often say that what keeps them in government organizations is
the pride in being are the only persons who know about what they take charge of in spite
of uncompetitive salary and conditions. In other words, there are many employees who
undertake the responsibility for financing, for instance, in every private firm, but there is
only one person who presently knows about and is in charge of public financing across
the country. Ironically, this implies that the public bureaucracy with expertise is a doubleedged sword. It can facilitate skillful policy-process but make the process dependent on a
public manager in takes charge of a certain duty. As long as public managers serve, they
accumulate their expertise and task-specific information. That is why a knowledgemanagement system is needed and why the Korean national government plans a more
sophisticated On-Nara BPS. The length of service is not simply a matter of duration, but
a matter of knowledge and information, which is a critical resource accumulated over
those years.

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As a consequence, the influence of education level and the service length on OnNara BPS can be interpreted as negatively associated with the variable of recruitment
mechanism. Such background variables identified as negatively significant factors can be
summarized as a foundation for so-called strong bureaucracy. Ultimately, the negative
relations with political aspects of On-Nara BPS would be described with the theory of
principal-agents.

2. ANOVA for ICT Training

To reconfirm the effectiveness of ICT Training for On-Nara BPS, an analysis of
variance (ANOVA) was performed. The ANOVA of ICT training for On-Nara BPS on
On-Nara BPS perceptions showed that two groups of public managers differed
significantly with respect to the dimension of management authority, but confirmed that
the two groups vary on the aspect of operational efficiency only at the level of 0.1.

Table 25
ANOVA Test of ICT training for On-Nara BPS
Mean
ICT Training for On-Nara BPS

Not Consented

Consented

Management authority

-.3209733

.4140779

Operational efficiency

-.0795226

.10334

F ratio

65.12

.0000***

3.52

.00614*

* p< 0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p< 0.001

However, these results for both OCC and On-Nara BPS generally correspond with
previous discussions about the necessity of training in introducing new work methods or
changes in government organizations. Although the success of innovation is another
question, many scholars emphasized the presence of formal training as an apparatus for
promoting innovative changes in government organizations (Kaufman, 1981; Wise,
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1999). As a key mechanism for changing prevailing habits and practices, training can
shorten the time for public administrators to inure themselves to bearing new changes and
to increase the odds for successful implementation of innovation inside organizations.

3. Summary
This chapter identified significant variables through determinant analysis for OnNara BPS. Explanatory variables showed the different relationship with two dependent
variables (Table 26).

Table 26
Result of Hypotheses Test for Determinants: On-Nara BPS
Independent
Variables

Dependent Variables
Management authority

Operational efficiency

Isomorphic Pressure

Performance

Confirmed

ICT Training

Confirmed

Confirmed

Information Sharing

Confirmed

Information Disclosure

Confirmed

Innovativeness

Confirmed

Confirmed

Technological Ease

Confirmed

Confirmed

Job Characteristics

Confirmed

Recruitment

Confirmed

Length of Service

Confirmed

Confirmed

Confirmed

View of ICT Potential

Major
Education Level
Rank
Gender

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The analysis results showed that nine variables correlated with dependent variable
of management authority in On-Nara BPS; where performance, ICT training, information
sharing, information disclosure, innovativeness, technological ease, recruitment, length of
service, educational level, and gender were the significant predictors of an awareness of
political management capacity designed in On-Nara BPS.
With regards to the capacity of operational efficiency, high levels of perceived
performance oriented atmosphere, satisfaction of ICT training, view of ICT potential,
technological ease, and job characteristics measuring how closely related to citizen
complaints showed such variables significantly influence the awareness of operational
capacity of On-Nara BPS.

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CHAPTER TEN
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This chapter summarizes results of the research and discusses implications of
major findings. The conclusion outlines contributions and limitations of this study.

1. Summary and Discussion of Basic Findings

This research has examined the applicability of the strategic triangle, an essential
strategic model of public management, to two ICT-based innovative practices in Korean
national government: Online Citizen Contacts (OCC) and On-Nara BPS.
1.1.

Applicability of Strategic Public Management

This research concludes that Korean public management practice does not fully
support the strategic triangle model of public management. The exploratory factor
analysis could not confirm the applicability but did lead to some meaningful findings.
The perceptual makeup of the Korean public manager dedicated to OCC utilization was
composed of three dimensions: political, operational, and ethical. The result of On-Nara
BPS showed that public managers utilized the system based on its perceived operational
efficiency and management authority. Although the empirical analysis for OCC extracted
another factor of public service ethics, both cases indicated that public managers guiding
the utilization of such ICT-based practices might be influenced by the traditional
bureaucratic paradigm of public management.
This result may be explained by comparing McGregors trichotomy and Moores
strategic triangle. Figure 6 describes that the essential components of both arguments
(McGregor, 1983; Moore, 1995) have remained similar, although the new waves of

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globalization and devolution may transform the theoretical and practical emphasis in
public management research.
However, theytrichotomy and strategic trianglecan be distinguished in that
McGregor (1983) described his trichotomy as rooted on the classic dichotomy whereas
Moore (1995) formulated the strategic triangle by assuming that the old public

Managing
UP

Governance
Political Process

Government

Political
Dimension

Politics

Administration
Dimension
Policy

Administration

Problem Solving

Bureaucratic
Operations
Managing
DOWN

Management

Managing
OUT

Figure 6 The Politics-Administration Trichotomy and Strategic Triangle

Reconstructed from McGregor, E. B. (1983, p. 72) and Moore, M. H. (1995)

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administration approach was no longer appropriate. In other words, Moore (1995) paid
more attention to the tasks of improving organizational performance and creating public
values in the transforming environment around government organizations. Because such
emphasis on the arena of managing-out could not be identified in the result, it seems that
the trichotomy might be more relevant for explaining both cases.
In his trichotomy, McGregor (1983) commented that solutions to three classic
problems of governance, policy, and administrative operations should be synthetically
solicited because the solution of only one or two of the problem areas risks systemic
failure. This means that the areas of classic problem may not be mutually exclusive.12 In
the cases of OCC and On-Nara BPS, the result indicated that the logic affecting the arena
of governance might also affect the arena of policy as problem-solving.13
The fact that the factor analysis only separated the managing-down questions
operational efficiencyfrom other arenas and thus failed to distinguish the managing-up
questions from the managing-out ones, may imply that Korean public managers perceive
and utilize the ICT-based public management practices with a framework of
trichotomybasically dichotomyrather than a framework of strategic triangle.
Although the research cannot confirm the applicability of strategic public
management model in the ICT-based public management practices, another factoranalysis result shows how uniquely a global innovationdiffusion of ICT-based
practicecan be naturalized in Korea. The second factor representing the ethical
dimension of public service uncovered the ethical obligation that has occupied Korean
public service for centuries. Many scholarsboth Western and Easternhave
12

McGregor (1983, p. 71) maintained that the old-time dichotomy between politics and administration
derives from the interaction of three political-administrative arenas.
13
It parallels the association between the political-administrative dichotomy and its trichotomy.

127

consistently insisted that the government bureaucracy in East Asian countries differs
from Western ones because the former has been guided by old Confucian ethics
embedded in the national culture. Korean public service may therefore require those
public managers to be good servants to rulers, who are now citizens and top management
in a democratic society (Frederickson, 2002). However, old Confucian ethics are not
primarily responsible for todays ethics because old-time public administrators were
considered to be above the common people and thus would bestow favors to them instead
of to rulers. Essentially, they were not servants but the governing class. Recent history is
more likely to have strengthened the ethics of present public managers. For a significant
period after the Korean War, Korean civil society had to fight against an illegitimate
government created by the military autocracy. Civic demonstrations and movements that
removed military autocracy transformed Korean bureaucracy from being the dictators
servants to being government employees for the citizens (Kim, 2002). Such historical
accounts might establish how Korean bureaucracy would be more sensitive on the ethical
dimension in the case of OCC practices.
1.2.

Major Determinants

This study explored the significance of several determinants in regard to

dependent variables identified through exploratory factor analysis. The fGLS analysis
explored the multiple associations between potential determinants and dependent
variablesoperational efficiency, management authority, and public service ethics for
OCC and operational efficiency and management authority for On-Nara BPS. The
regression analysis highlighted what would significantly enhance the understanding of

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public managers attitudes toward the ICT-based practices. A comprehensive review of

the analyzed results may also help the deeper understanding of the practices.
First, as noted in the literature, institutional pressure carried by the best-practice
research and assessment has been identified as a major force promoting ICT adoption in
government organizations. The isomorphic pressure that represents the external impetus
driving the adoption of ICT-based public management practices was significant only with
two out of the three dependent variables extracted in OCC. That external pressure was
significant neither in OCC public service ethics nor in either dependent variable of OnNara BPS. The institutional pressure was found significant in only two constructs of OCC.
This seems logical, considering that e-government was remarkably boosted by the
popularization of the Internet and the introduction of OCC, the Internet-based
communication channel between citizens and government organizations.
It is unlikely that the external isomorphic pressure significantly affected the
dependent variable of public service ethics. In addition, the insignificance of institutional
pressure on On-Nara BPS implies that the external isomorphic forces do not likely
determine how public managers coordinate the internal business process. In sum, such
results may show that public managers are active players who adopt and utilize ICTbased practices. For example, the external pressure to make government transparent and
enforce public managers to work efficiently through ICT might be more sharply reflected
in the perceptual construct of public managers regarding OCC. This may be because
OCC was initiated to serve as the external communication channel and was driven by the
external forces such as the Presidential initiative and the fad of ICT-based practices. The
variable of isomorphic pressure that would be externally originated was found to be

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significant in regard to OCC whereas the independent variable was not significant OnNara BPS, which seemed to be perceived only as the internal business processing system.
Second, the OCC analysis confirmed the influence of a performance-centered
atmosphere on the perceptual makeup of professional ethics and political logics by public
managers. In case of On-Nara BPS, the result showed the significant association of
performance-centered atmosphere only with operational efficiency and not the factors of
management authority and professional ethics. This is because public managers, who
valued performance, may recognize On-Nara BPS as an instrument only improving
operational efficiency.
Third, the examination of technological ease indicated that its influence was
significant only regarding management authority (i.e., managing-up) in OCC, whereas
the influence was significant with both dependent variables for On-Nara BPS.
Technological ease is a critical determinant for realizing the potential of internal business
processing systems, whereas technological ease seems not to matter in regard to
improving efficiencies and promoting ethical practices through OCC. In sum, this study
observed that technological ease does not necessarily improve operational efficiency but
that it could affect the other utilities of ICT-based practices like improving political
rolescontrol and accountability (i.e., managing-up).
Fourth, ICT training may help public managers perceive the utility of both OCC
and On-Nara BPS but not necessarily assist them to automate their tasks efficiently. ICT
training influenced the perceptual makeup of public managers for both political roles and
ethical contribution embedded in OCC. Such influence of ICT training is also found in
the political dimension of On-Nara BPS. Therefore, ICT training will probably contribute

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to the comprehension of potential of ICT-based practices by public managers. Although

this research could not explicitly examine the contribution of training to strategic public
management, this may suggest that ICT training can facilitate informating beyond
automating an organizational process.
Fifth, the variable of recruitment also produced an important relationship.
Because the analysis demonstrated the recruitment mechanism as significant only in the
political management capacity for both OCC and On-Nara BPS, one can expect
recruitment to be a critical component defining the principal-agent relationship. However,
its direction of influence was positive in OCC and negative in On-Nara BPS, which may
be attributable to the tension between self-interest and the ultimate mission of public
service. Although the theoretical explanation of principal-agent framework directly
relevant to On-Nara BPS, it is a puzzle to observe that public managers who entered
national service through a civil-servant exam more likely perceived OCC as politically
effective. The issue of recruitment will be continuously examined in the following
section.
1.3.

Public Managers: Same Managers or Different Generation

The variables of personal demographic background suggested their association

with the tensions between principals and agents in On-Nara BPS. The analysis revealed
that the personal background characteristics describing public managers, who were
female, highly educated, started their government career through the official civil-service
exams, and have served longer in the government sector, may significantly object to
political management and control through On-Nara BPS.

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Whereas personal background variables hardly confirmed significant relationships

with other dependent variables in either On-Nara BPS or OCC, their association with the
dependent variable of management authority in both cases warrants attention. Although
recruitment did not show negative relationshipsthe principal-agent tensionin OCC, it
intensified the tensions between principals and agents in On-Nara BPS. There are several
possible explanations why the principal-agent tension does not become conspicuous in
OCC.
First, these contradictory effects could be attributed to the principals involved.
The existence of multiple principals or multiple layers of principals may leverage the
direction of bureaucratic influence.
That prospective applicants for public service usually spend a significant amount
of efforts preparing for their entrance exam under the current civil service recruiting
system suggests that they were strongly motivated. Accordingly, they continue to take
pride in their career and expertise. In spite of lower incomes than their private sector
counterparts, public managerswho entered public service through civil-servant exam
have pursued government careers partly because of job security and higher social status
of being bureaucrats, a pattern found in northeastern Asian countries including Korea,
Japan, and China (Jun & Muto, 1995). Accordingly, many highly competent social elites
have become civil servants, thus have played a critical role in industrial restoration and
economic prosperity since the Korean War. Although Korean public bureaucracy has
been able to recruit elite public managers, political leaders and appointees have had to
rely on the elite bureaucracy by implying the relationship of temporal principals
through elections captured by perpetual elite agents whose job is secured by law.

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Because top management that is politically elected or appointed as organizational

principals hold their positions only temporarily, public managers who entered the public
service through the exam may not want to be controlled by temporary political leaders
and appointees, and thus they may also resist being controlled through utilization of new
ICT-based practices such as On-Nara BPS.
Therefore, On-Nara BPS, which became the major mechanism regulating the
overall tasks of public managers, could be less welcomed by public managers who began
their government career through civil-service exam rather than entering public service
through other means. In sum, the recruitment system, which infuses such public-service
spirit and pride in public managers, reduces the acceptance of political power and control
of ICT-based practices.
On the other hand, when citizens take the principal position in communicating
with public managers through OCC, those managers who were motivated to pass the
exam may be more likely to support the enabling of ICT-based public management
practices to make their organizations more politically legitimate and answerable to
citizens. This interpretation is plausible if citizens as a whole will never lose their
authority in a democratic society, whereas public managers will enter and leave
government organizations.
In addition, the tensions between public managers and citizensin OCC might
be far less intense than those between public managers and political leaders in On-Nara
BPSbecause the control mechanism is weak, indirect, and complicated, particularly for
public managers who are working in the national government. The principal-agent
relationship between citizens and either political leaders or appointees may mitigate the

133

tension between citizens and public managers also because citizens believe that elections
are the mechanism to judge government bureaucrats as well as political leaders while the
voting system by which citizens can influence political leaders and appointees does not
easily extend to control government bureaucracy. The weak and indirect control capacity
for government bureaucracy may also be why public managers who started their public
service career through the civil-servant exam are more likely to positively regard the
functions of political control through OCC even though citizens never lose their position
as principal.
The other explanation for why the recruitment mechanism promotes political
potential of OCC, rather than as a mechanism that promotes principal-agent conflict, may
stand on the nature of OCC. Whereas On-Nara BPS can enable political leaders and
appointees to directly control and monitor the decision-making process, OCC provides
citizens an electronic channel for submitting complaints and suggestions. Although
citizens can request government organizations to disclose administrative information, for
instance, public bureaucracy have the authority to determine whether certain information
is appropriate for be release, giving the citizen passive control at best. This suggests that
public managers have flexibility to manage the use of OCC, and thus the lens of
principal-agent may lose its explanatory power.
Such observations and interpretations for OCC and On-Nara BPS also maintain
that individual, cultural, and social minds and contexts differently articulate ICT
innovations because technology is malleable (Davenport, 1993; Zuboff, 1984; Danziger,
2004; Corea, 2006). As observed, that may be why the same independent variable
functions differently and manifest different faces inherent in each ICT systems. The

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recruitment system has been ingrained with the characteristics of public managers who
entered into public service through exams. But, it functions differently in OCC than in
On-Nara BPSthat is positively for OCC and negatively for On-Nara BPS.
In addition to the differences between recruitment mechanisms, length of service
was found to affect negatively the dependent variable of managerial authority in On-Nara
BPS. Unlike other demographic variables, recruitment mechanism and length of service
will more likely capture the institutionalized characteristics rather than the characteristics
of individual public managers because a public-service career is legally defined and
secured by law.14
Two opposite interpretations may therefore be considered. First, although a public
manager may be a young, innovative, public management major and a recent graduate,
our finding implies that there is a chance the manager may become a typical agent after
years in a government organization because the institutional contexts can transform a
newcomer into a typical bureaucrat. That would explain why previous efforts to introduce
smart technology into government organizations have tended toward automation and
computerization rather than informating organizations.
Second, this limitation, which may reproduce the organizational culture and
maintain the traditional bureaucratic paradigm over generations of public managers, also
offers an opportunity to break the paradigm. For instance, government organizations
cease reinforcing the traditional bureaucratic paradigm if they can find a mechanism to
infuse government organizations with the innovative minds of newly recruited public
managers and keep those newcomers from absorbing the old organizational conventions.
14

The composition of gender and major totally depends on who wants to enter into public service.
Therefore, variables of gender and major only capture personal characteristics, whereas the variables of
recruitment and length of service can capture the institutionalized characteristics of public managers.

135

The diversification of recruitment mechanism may plant flexibility into government

organizations. The negative significance of the length of service variable implies that
keeping a rising cohort of newly-recruited young and well-educated civil servants, who
may well embrace the innovative civil service model, can be a prescription to spread the
vision of strategic public management though their organizations.

2. Basic Problems Revisited

Korean public managers have worked within the institutional environment of
government organizations that have survived, indeed thrived, through the era of the old
public administration paradigm. This study examined whether Korean national
government organizations, institutions nourished by old public administration, were
successfully adopting ICT-based practices, described as the new wine of the late
twentieth century managerialism (Lynn, 2006, p. 165).
New, innovative ICT-based public management practices have permeated in
Korean national government organizations, and a strategic perspective of public
management suggests several potential impacts of ICT. As indicated in the earlier chapter
(Figure 4 and Figure 5), Robbin et al. (2004) reviewed the related studies and
characterized ICT applications in the public sector as affecting e-government (i.e.,
managing-down), e-governance (managing-up), and e-democracy (managing-out). Their
categorization implies that ICT applications have diverse potentials, and parallels that
ICT applications are grounded in three key managerial roles by which they contribute to
governments and societies. Ultimately, it also means that ICT-based practices can go
beyond the efficiency standard and have a capacity of actively creating public values.

136

However, the basic problem this study pursued was whether the potential has been
accomplished by public managers and government organizations. In terms of Zuboff
(1984), whether Korean ICT applications that could potentially informate organizations
have actually done so is the primary interest of this study.
To answer the question, this study employed Moores strategic triangle (Moore,
1995) as heuristic. The strategic triangle holds theoretical promise as a way to understand
practice and implies, according to Moore, that practice has also changed. Thus, a
performance model has theoretically replaced the 19th century dichotomy. Based on the
premise of the rise of strategic public management, this study examined two ICT-based
practices in Korean national government. The potential of both OCC and On-Nara BPS
can be comprehended by the theoretical constructs of the strategic trianglemanaging-up,
managing-down, and managing-out. The results were that the construct of managing-out
did not load significantly.
The absence of the managing-out construct can be interpreted in two ways. First,
the surveyed organizations simply lacked the focus on public value creation. Second, this
focus may be constrained by a logic of political management in an environment that both
legitimates and authorizes organizational activities and manages operational details.
Consequently, the absence of managing-out focus is reminiscent of the politicsadministration dichotomy, which dominated 19th-century public administration.

3. Global Wine in a Local Bottle: Dichotomy vs. Dimensionality

Because the scales of instruments worked, the survey responses captured how
Korean public managers recognized the diverse benefits and potential built into ICTbased public management practicesmetaphorically, a new global wine. Their responses

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suggest vast areas where value-added ICT can be applied. In theory, ICT applications
could take many forms of key managerial roles and actions. As designed in the survey,
for instance, ICT applications could take any of Moores strategic management
dimensions. They could also reengineer internal processes, procedures, ethics, or cultures.
However, this study disclosed that the local bottle of Korean national government
organizations might be an old one that can only embody a traditional bureaucratic
paradigm. The basic problem this research pursued reveals a basic mismatch between
theory and practicemetaphorically, new global wine in an old local bottle.
A detailed explanation of both applications highlighted how this gap exists and
how it constrains the realization of potential embedded in ICT-based public management
practices. Although the analysis produced three factors for OCC, not all were anticipated.
Further, the analysis of On-Nara BPS produced only two factorsmanagement authority
(up) and operational efficiency (down). Upon close examination, the question items were
all loaded significantly high on one of the two factors. Thus, the question items designed
to capture the operational capacity of managing-down were entirely loaded on the factor
of operational efficiency; management authority captured almost all the other items that
dealt with managing political environments and consequences. Whereas this research has
failed to confirm an explicit alignment between Moores strategic triangle and public
managers perceptual makeup of practices that shape present ICT applications, the results
nevertheless offer meaningful conclusions.
3.1.

Traditional Bureaucratic Influence

The results implied that Korean bureaucracy is still functioning according to the
traditional bureaucratic paradigm of old public administration. Although Online Citizen

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Contacts (OCC) produced a factor portraying public service ethics, the two primary
factors in both applications were management authority and operational efficiency. These
might have their conceptual origins in the dichotomy of politics and administration.
The operational efficiency factor loaded with the question items designed for
managing-down in both cases, whereas the analysis failed to extract those factors that
may regroup other variables theoretically designed to capture managing-up and
managing-out. Such failure implies that the perceptual framework of Korean public
managers might not yet be sophisticated enough to differentiate the two managerial
dimensions.
Consequently, the primary forces influencing public managers in utilizing OCC
and On-Nara BPS turned out to be the administrative and political standards. This
suggests that Korean public managers have perceived innovative ICT-based public
management practices within the traditional bureaucratic framework. In sum, the nonstrategic and simpler model, the politics and administration dichotomy, still fits both
applications. However, the dichotomy discovered in this research does not signify that
Korean public management has remained and functioned within the institutional
framework and parameters of the old traditional bureaucratic environments. It is, instead,
that Korean public management has not yet fully embraced an innovative strategic model.
The finding demonstrated that the conceptual utility of the politics-administration
dichotomy (dimensionality), initially acknowledged in the US by Woodrow Wilson in
1887, is still alive in Korea in the early 2000s.
Since Wilson in his seminal article The Study of Administration (1887)
codified the field of public administration by differentiating administration from politics,

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this dichotomy has led to the development of an intellectual identity and a public
administration crisis. Yet, it has also been seriously criticized as unrealistic (Waldo,
1948). Before considering this further, the extracted factor structures of OCC and OnNara BPS need to be examined to determine if they represent a firewall that may or
may not exist in the classic politics-administration dichotomy (Frederickson & Smith,
2003, p. 18).
Some authors have observed that this dichotomy has persisted because of an
emphasis on a division of roles and authority between public administrators and
political leaders (Svara, 2001, pp. 176177; Demir & Nyhan, 2008, p. 82). In addition,
the neutralityneutral competenceof the professional knowledge and expertise of
public managers has been regarded as a resource that safeguards their professional
independence. However, the empirical evidence demonstrates that public managers have
played a political role by their involvement in making policy decisions and maintaining
linkages with interest groups (Svara, 2001). Because news media and interest groups
continuously monitor government organizations, public managers cannot ignore the
political environment when making or implementing policy, even though they may desire
to avoid the political burdens that result when political and administrative values conflict.
Therefore, this absolute dichotomy may be a myth, and conceptual dimensionality
can continue to contribute to an understanding of bureaucracy. Retrospectively, this is
why the theoretical utility of the dichotomy has persisted as a basic concept in the field
for decades despite serious criticism (Demir & Nyhan, 2008, p. 81). Frederickson and
Smith (2003) described the utility of such discussions as follows:
It continues to be fashionable to say that there is no politics-administration
dichotomy, as if such a statement conveyed a special insight. As theories of
140

political control of bureaucracy indicate, to unbundle politics and administration is

a key to understanding how politics controls bureaucracy and how bureaucracy
influences politics and policy. Therefore, it is wrongheaded to approach the
subject of public administration on the assumption that politics and administration
are more or less the same thing (Frederickson & Smith, 2003, pp. 3940).
In spite of its theoretical utility, this approach is an offspring of the industrial era
established during the Progressive Era of American politics and thus does not embody
new developments in the field. It fails to adequately respond to complicated and
transformative environments and, hence, does not guide innovative public management
practice in a flattened world. Although this research found results that resembled the
dichotomy, the extracted managerial dimensionsmanagement authority and operational
efficiencywere not isolated in a way that resembled the politics-administration
dichotomy. This means that Korean public managers have acknowledged both roles
rather than ignoring either.
The identified mental construct for managerial roles among public managers
however shows that it is evident that Korean public managers have not seen their roles in
an innovative light and might constrain the utilization of innovative public management
practices by limiting key management options for creating public values. As the external
environment of public management has become complicated and the demands from
citizens have increased, the managerial roles however should adapt to meet such changes
(McGregor, 2000).
Although the strategic triangle can offer a theoretical guideline how to face the
challenges, the standard and logic of creating public values should not be divorced from
and, indeed, is most likely compelled by local norms for managing complex political
environments and the consequences of public action.

141

3.2.

The Context of Korean Bureaucracy

The adoption of ICT-based practices in government organizations has been a

global trend. However, what keeps ICT-based public management practices trapped in a
non-strategic and simpler model is the result of confusion between governance and
performance inside a mindset of Korean public managers.
This confusion may not be unique to Korea. In addition, discussions about both
dichotomy and strategic public management have been developed in a Western context,
namely, US public administration and management and yet are universally persuasive
with respect to the findings identified through this study. Without answering why Korean
public management in practice has not yet articulated the strategic model of public
management, the findings cannot be properly interpreted.
The ability to differentiate the arenas of political dynamics into the exercise of
power and controlgovernanceand the creation of public valueperformancemay
be a result of Korean bureaucratic experiences of absolute rulers.15 The strong
Presidential system in earlier administrations, nourished by absolute power, distorted the
arena of governance and led public managers to pay little attention to creating public
values for citizens. Accordingly, Korean public managers may fail to differentiate
between governance and creating public values for citizens. Such a mental construct for
local public managers seems to be imprinted on ICT-based practices. In addition, the
analysis of OCC offers an opportunity to contemplate how the Korean context might
influence innovative public management practices and could also further contribute to
theoretical discussions.
15

McGregor (1983, p. 71) pointed out that what is arrayed against administrationis only nominally
labeled politics covering two distinct activities of governance and problem solving in reality, the arena
of governance assumes the exercise of power through partisan politics.

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A unique managerial dimension discovered through the survey was the factor
accounting for public service ethics. Because public service historically has been
regarded as an honorable calling by the whole Korean society, public managers have
strived to be virtuous and respectable. Therefore, the salience of the public service ethics
factor suggests that the adoption of OCC forced Korean public managers to be more alert
when carrying out their tasks and in communicating with citizens.
Because the strategic triangle is a westernized model of modern public
management, it does not necessarily fit nonwestern countries. The essential managerial
roles in different countries may vary. A popular and quickly disseminated innovative
practice can enable public managers to better appreciate a particular value of locally
emphasized managerial roles rather than the roles and standards described in imported
innovations and best practices.
The identification of public service ethics as a strong factor may illustrate the
present status of Korean public service as involving innovative public management
practice that is not completely trapped in the past but is struggling to move forward in
order to keep up with the changes induced by globalization. Such struggles can ignite the
evolution and transformation of Korean public service. They can also help create mature
public managers as free and intelligent agents who can strengthen the less exploited
potentials of ICT-based public management and develop the unexploited ones with smart
technology.
In sum, the inapplicability of the strategic triangle in itself does not imply that
national public management is deficient. Although the dominance of the traditional
bureaucratic model may suggest that the transformative measures are still needed, the

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emergence of public service ethics suggests an opportunity for theoretical and practical
development that is more relevant to Korean public management.

4. Automated and Informated Organizations

Two main types of ICT innovations have been generally distinguished: ICT
artifact innovation, which represents the enhancements in material features, and ICTbased socio-economic innovation, which describes complementary changes in organized
modes of production/consumption or the nature of socio-cultural practices that require
exploitation of the capabilities of ICT to improve human practices in socially
appropriate ways (Corea, 2006; Davenport, 1993; Zuboff, 1988). Both OCC and OnNara BPS employ both types of ICT artifact innovation. Exploring the concepts of
automating and informating organizations by means of smart technology can advance
such discussions (Zuboff, 1985, 1988).16
An exploration of managerial capability of ICT-based innovation underscores the
distinction between automating and informating an organizational process. This research
observed that the potential of OCC and On-Nara BPS have been exploited in the
framework of old public administration that emphasized the internal process and rulebased management rather than value contribution and performance-oriented management.
This means that the primary contribution of OCC and On-Nara BPS is more likely to
automate government organizations than to informate them.
To informate organizations or create public values, public managers need to enact
ICT-based public management practices to facilitate collaboration, communication, and

16

Zuboff (1985, 1988) argued that technology cannot be considered as neutral (1985, p. 5). By observing
that managers are beginning to understand how ICT can be harnessed to achieve strategic objectives, she
addressed the duality underlying ICT deployment: automating and informating.

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information sharing, thus creating public valuesinformate organizations. This is

different from merely using innovative practices to reinforce the bureaucratic nature of
public organizationssuch as automating standardized bureaucratic processes and
procedures (Fountain, 2001; Danziger, 2004). The choice of automating or informating
lies largely with public managers who are the critical determinant in shaping the use of
innovative practices. Therefore, the attitudes and perceptions of public managers should
not be forgotten in the design, implementation, and use of strategic ICT applications.
Behn (2007) described the stages by which new innovative technology has
converted governmental business processes from manual government (m-government)
and electronic government (e-government) to performance government (p-government).
While illustrating the changes and challenges that emerged from the transition processes,
he criticized the present e-government initiatives as little more than automation (Behn,
2007, p. 216). Interestingly, his conceptualization of ICT-based innovation has evolved to
differentiate the consequences into automation and something beyond automation. The
latter has been termed informating organizations or performance-government (Behn,
2007; Zuboff, 1984). Their commonality is the idea that innovative ICT-based practices
can create values and embody new strategies for improving organizational performance.
Although the public service ethics factor indicates that the given system might go
beyond automation, a fully informated organization can be accomplished only by
securing managerial roles for actively creating public values. This requires government
organizations and managers to appreciate the differentiated roles of management
responding the complicated and transforming environments. This would enable the

145

Korean government to break the circle of mutual reinforcement between traditional

bureaucratic framework and restrictively enacted technology (Fountain, 2001).
Specifically, several measures can be suggested. First, public managers have to
pay more attention to and better comprehend their managerial responsibility of creating
public values.17 No matter how innovative ICT-based public management practices may
be, government organizations that consider adopting them cannot achieve true public
management success so long as the traditional framework of old public administration
dominates and prohibits innovative public managers from carrying out their roles as
demanded in the flattened world.
Second, citizen feedback to government bureaucracy should be strengthened.
Under the earlier administrations, public managers had to respond to and satisfy the
demands of their political leaders rather than meet the needs of citizens because there was
no effective mechanism by which citizens could directly deliver their feedback about
public service to government bureaucracy. By empowering citizens to evaluate their
performance and contribution, public managers may take an intensive interest in creating
public valuesstrengthening their role of managing-out. Otherwise, citizens will be
only able to take political leaders to account indirectly through elections, which rather
fortify the system of governance than the needs of better performance.
Third, unless a citizens mechanism of direct feedback for performance is
established and effectively maintained, a system that allows political leaders to deliver a
citizen-based evaluation for bureaucratic performance to meet citizen demands can be
17

McGregor (1993, p. 178) claimed that public management success depends on achieving three strategic
positions: (1) intervention, (2) governance, and (3) operation. If public managers are a conduit which
bridges theory and practice and which carries theoretical visions into innovative practices, their key
criterion for public management, filtering their task contexts and guiding their behaviors, becomes a
cornerstone of successful public management (Moore, 1995; McGregor, 1993; McGregor, 1983).

146

proposed. In the age of absolute rule, political leaders blurred managerial roles in Korean
bureaucracy. Political leaders can now help citizens deliver their demands, facilitate the
understanding of these demands by public managers, and achieve public management
success.
With these measures, public managers can accomplish performance-government
(p-government) and informate their organizations by exploiting the potential of smart
technology. As they resolve the mismatch between theoretical guidelines and limited
utilization of innovative practices, innovative public managers can imprint their values
and standards on innovative practices. Therefore, a complete understanding of the three
strategic positions by public managers improves the chances of successful public
management because such understanding can facilitate matching theory and practice, thus
synergizing performance.

5. Research Implications for Future Research

5.1.

Implications for Theory and Practice

This research has several theoretical implications for public management theory
and practice. First, it supports the claim that e-government study is not the creation of a
new independent field, but rather the applied form of public management studies
observable through the lenses of strategic public management, the politics-(governance)administration trichotomy, and the politics-administration dichotomy.18 The usefulness of
such theoretical discussions and models in examining strategic ICT application in the
public sector provided evidence that the field of public management should continuously

18

Although ICT-based public management practices are introduced as a strategic application for the
purpose of creating public values, the result of the analysis exhibited that Korean public managers might
remain in the bureaucratic framework of traditional public management.

147

pay attention to the advancement of ICT-based practices, generally associated with egovernment.
Second, the discontinuity between strategic management theory and public
management practice may allow the tensions between principals and agents to persist and
continue to affect the attitudes and behaviors of Korean public managers. This research
suggests that to break the tension, government bureaucracy needs to be led by
performance-based outcomes rather than rule-based processes. The effective mechanism
by which citizen assessment for public service performance can be delivered to
government bureaucracy will fortify the needs of creating public values inside
government organizations.
Third, global indicators of e-government advancement (as assessed by the World
Bank, the United Nations, and Brown University) consistently have identified Korea as a
leading e-government country. The current indicators are not significantly flawed but
they only consider the level of functions and technological sophistication. Based on the
limitations that seem to be evident in Korean e-government practices, this study suggests
that new indicators need to be developed to reflect the outcomes of ICT-based practices.
The global indicators of e-government readiness and advancement function as a
mechanism that carries isomorphic pressures. If new indicators may be elaborated to
assess the outcomes of ICT-based practices, they can play a role of spreading the
outcome (performance)-emphasized ICT applications in the public sector.
5.2.

Limitations of the Study

Several limitations of this research may suggest directions for future research.
First, the applicability of the strategic triangle to more specific ICT-based practices

148

should be examined. The survey for this research investigated Online Citizen Contacts
and On-Nara BPS, both adopted in all Korean national organizations. Although such ICT
systems have allowed this study to examine the perception of public managers toward
systems regulating general business processes, the study has also captured an indirect link,
rather than a direct one to producing public values through specific policy issues such as
national education or social welfare provision. That the association of ICTs with specific
policy issues was not examined might explain why the factor-analyzed constructs of
dependent variables did not produce another factor cluster for managing-out.
Second, although the entire questionnaire was sophisticated and judged reliable
and valid both with respect to statistical tests and grounded in, both archival and surveyed,
in the end our results depend on analysis derived from the survey. Thus, we are
dependent on only one cross sectional survey. Should other survey datasets or datasets
from multiple sources become available, further exploration may produce replicable and
more detailed results. This dissertation provides a framework for grounding future
research.
Third, this study did not divide respondents by groups. However, negative
significance for the length of service offers further opportunity to examine the influence
of that variable. Such research can reanalyze the determinants, with special attention
given to the rising cohorts of newly recruited young Korean civil servants who are likely
to eventually change Korean public management. This would explore whether Korean
government bureaucracy requires newcomers to adapt to the institutionalized norms
rather than allowing them to propose and implement innovations that can transform the
bureaucracy.

149

6. Conclusion
While the adoption of ICT opened a new horizon in public management studies,
this research found that the articulation of ICT-based public management practices has
not yet completely departed from the bureaucratic era of public management theory. The
managerial arenas of governance and performance were not differentiated in the
perceptual framework of public managers. Although neither key managerial arena should
ignore the significance of the other, the failure to differentiate between governance and
performance would constrain the process by which public managers could create public
values, informate organizations, and accomplish p-government.
This can be understood as consistent with the notion of stateness, the strength
of government presented by Fukuyama (2004). He argued that strong stateness depends
on how to unpack the different dimensions of state functions. When public managers
can successfully unpack differences between governance and performance, they will be
able to create public values for society.
The coexistence of a traditional aspect and a strategic potential may encourage
researchers to contemplate the issues of continuity and discontinuity between public
management theory and practice. Such contemplation will allow researchers to contribute
continuously to the development of knowledge in the field. So long as e-government
study strives to close the gap between rhetoric and reality, it will contribute meaningfully
as public management research. This dissertation concludes that the future development
of ICT-based innovative public management practices depends on the application of
strategic management models, with the aim of closing the gap between theory and
practice. The theoretical guidelines contained in this dissertation can provide an

150

opportunity to shed the traditional bureaucratic yoke surrounding public management

practices.

151

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APPENDIX
ONLINE CITIZEN CONTACTS
1. The Online citizen complaint system has been increasingly utilized in my agency.
2. Telephone calls and visits by citizens have been reduced.
3. OCC has empowered citizens through policy-making process in my agency.
4. OCC has shown public administrators the value of participative decision making in
national agencies.
5. National policy decisions based on citizen suggestions have increased.
6. OCC has made government more open to the public since 2005.
7. My workload has increased.
8. I have increasingly been able to respond to citizen complaints more quickly.
9. OCC has made it easier for citizens to participate in making and implementing of
policy decisions in my agency.
10. I am more cautious in exercising my discretion.
11. OCC has given me a greater sense of public service in 2005.
12. My responses to the online citizen complaints have been formal and non substantive.
13. As a result of OCC, internal policies and procedures now favor active administrative
participation in public policy decision making.
14. Because of OCC, public administrators are now directly responsible for government
actions affecting citizen.

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15. I have increasingly been able to respond to citizen suggestions more quickly.
16. The online citizen suggestion system has been increasingly utilized in my agency.
17. The OCC has simplified administrative procedure of processing citizen complaints.
18. Because of OCC, national policy decisions have been increasingly affected by
citizen complaints and suggestions.

ON-NARA BUSINESS PROCCESING SYSTEM

1. The ONB System has helped public administrators improve the quality of
government service to citizens.
2. The ONB system has added complexity to ordinary administrative procedure.
3. Accountability has improved under ONB system.
4. Front-line public administrators comments through ONB system are increasingly
valued in my agency.
5. The ONB has decentralized administrative decision-making in my agency.
6. I have been increasingly cautious in exercising discretion since the ONB was fully
implemented.
7. Because of ONB, front-line public administrators are free to express their own ideas
and suggestions to their supervisors.
8. My workload has increased.
9. The ONB System has improved my professional ability to serve citizens.
10. The ONB System has increased the speed of making decisions.

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11. The ONB allows all administrators to see what is happening in the process of
decision making.
12. The ONB system has saved me a substantial amount of time in carrying out my work.
13. The ONB system stimulated the exchange of opinions among agency administrators
after it was launched.
14. The ONB has strengthened the control power of top-policy makers in the decisionmaking process in my agency.
15. The ONB system has made my work easier.
16. The ONB promotes public administrator use of citizen inputs in making decisions.
17. The ONB promotes information sharing with co-workers in my agency.
18. Since adoption of ONB, bureaucratic red tape has increased.

GENERAL ATTITUDE QUESTIONS

1. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in government has been
promoted to keep up with the World-leading nations and private enterprises.
2. Extensive disclosure of policy information improves policy-making efficiency.
3. I am suspicious about the benefits that ICT promised to bring about.
4. My supervisor and co-workers shares their work-related information.
5. Without top-down pressure (i.e. Presidential initiative), e-government would not have
advanced in Korea.
6. Individual performance is fairly evaluated in my agency.

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7. Performance is the important standard in determining promotion in my agency.

8. ICT use in government has been promoted to keep up with global demands initiated
by international organizations such as OECD, UN, and Transparency International.
9. There should be more calls for government reform.
10. Professional pressures led us to embrace e-government.
11. I am comfortable in asking co-workers to share their job-related information.
12. Extensive information disclosure causes conflicts among citizens.
13. Without legislative mandates, e-government would not have advanced in Korea.
14. The speed of adopting ICT has been very fast for public administrators.
15. ICT is necessary for public administrators to accomplish their job duties in my
agency.
16. Little use of ICT in doing my job is penalized.
17. Extensive information disclosure increases the citizen trust of government.
18. I frequently encounter great system difficulties in responding to online citizen
contacts.
19. Online citizen contacts are useful in communicating with citizens.
20. On-Nara BPS is easy for me to use.
21. On-Nara BPS is useful to me.
22. I have received extensive ICT training after joining the national public service

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23. My national service training has kept me up-to-date with latest ICT.
24. The level of training was very adequate given my use of OCC.
25. The level of training was very adequate given my use On-Nara BPS.

DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
1. What is your current ministry?
2. If you currently work in an agency under the ministry, please name that agency.
3. How is your current job classified? (i.e., administrative, social welfare, technical,
computing, etc)
4. If you have previously held different job classifications, please list them.
5. When did you first start working in the national government?
6. When did you first start working in the current ministry?
7. Have you worked for other ministries and agencies? If so, please list them.
8. How did you start your public service career? (i.e., entrance exam, contract, etc)
9. What is your rank?
10. My job is involved in dealing with citizen complaints and appeals.
11. I have experiences of working in a unit that has processed civil appeals and
complaints.
12. What is the highest level of degree you have completed?
13. If you completed your undergraduate (graduate) degree, what was your major field?

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14. Date of Birth

15. Gender

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CURRICULUM VITA
May 9, 2009

Hanjun Park
Doctoral Candidate
Public Affairs Program
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University at Bloomington

800 North Union St. 203

Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 857-4864
hanpark@umail.iu.edu

EDUCATION
2001-2009

Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

Ph.D. in Public Affairs
Advisor: Eugene B. McGregor, Ph.D.
Major: Public Management

1999-2001

Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

M.P.A. in Public Management

1997-1999

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), Seoul, Korea

M.A. in Public Administration
Advisor: In Chul Kim, Ph.D.
Thesis: A Study on the Institutional Reform and Functional
Change in the South Korean Government

1991-1997

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea

B.A. in Public Administration

DISSERTATION
Public Management Innovation Theory and Practice: Bureaucratic Attitudes toward ICT
in South Korean Government
Committee: Eugene B. McGregor (Chair), Roger B. Parks, James L. Perry, Alice Robbin.

PUBLICATIONS
Diffusing Information Technology Education in Korean Undergraduate Public Affairs
and Administration Programs: Driving Forces and Challenging Issues Journal of
Public Affairs Education 12(4), 537-555 with Hun Myoung Park (2006)

MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW

Exploring Three Referents of Trust: Relationship of Satisfaction and Commitment
Public Management Review with Yoon Jik Cho (2009)

CONFERENCES
Exploring Three Referents of Trust: Relationship of Satisfaction and Commitment The
69th American Society for Public Administration Annual Conference, Dallas, TX with
Yoon Jik Cho (2008)
Same Prescription and Different Effects: The Analysis of Recent Government Reform
The 69th American Society for Public Administration Annual Conference, Dallas, TX
with Jong Min Shon (2008)
Public Management and ICT-based Practices: Introduction The 4th Annual SPEA Young
Scholar Researchers Conference, Bloomington, IN (2004)
Evolving Information Technology Courses in the Undergraduate Public Administration
Programs of Korean Universities The 3rd Annual SPEA Young Scholar Researchers
Conference, Bloomington, IN with Hun Myoung Park (2003)

HONORS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

International Student Fellowship, Indiana University (2008)
SPEA Research Travel Grant, Indiana University (2008)
OIS Scholarship, Indiana University (2006, 2008)
GSPO Research Grant, Indiana University (2007-2008)
Tuition Scholarship, Indiana University (2001-2003)

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Lecturer, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (1999, 2009)
Student Research Colloquium Coordinator, SPEA, Indiana University (2003-2004)
Graduate Assistant to Professor Jon P. Gant, SPEA, Indiana University (2001-2002)
Research Assistant to Professor In Chul Kim, HUFS (1997-1999)