A Research On Dynamic Process Of Commitment Transformation In Cross-Sector E-Government Project Implementation

Since the introduction of IT application in Chinese government in 1980s, E-government has been developing rapidly, especially in recent years. According to CCID report, the annual input in Chinese E-government construction in 2005 reached 47.86 billion RMB. Contrarily, the negative or ambiguous return in government performance improvement is often reported on newspaper.Based on broad literature review, this paper found that, research about the definition of e-government" and its development stage is fully developed. Papers focus on government portal adoption and implementation is also fruitful. While analysis about why e-government project, complex cross-sector e-government project in particular, failed or partly failed is comparatively rare. Through the view of process and change management, this paper intends to discuss the phenomenon of de-escalation of commitment (which tends to be target decline outwardly) and its possible causes in cross-sector e-government project.The implementation of e-government actually is the process of IT application in government affairs. According to Leavitt's diamond model, when implementing e-government, there must have different problems arise. As Fountain's technology enactment framework depicted, in public sector organizations, IT will be enacted according to particular structure, institution or social network factors. Thus, the outcome of e-government implementation will be diverse. Based on agency theory, approach-avoidance theory and research about escalation/de-escalation of commitment, the paper analyzed the reasons of different conflicts between actors involved in e-government project implementation. Then, we raised the research framework of e-government project target decline. And 2 cases with Shanghai background is chosen to discuss within the framework. The paper carefully analyzed the process of cross-sector e-government project implementation and interactive factors as well.Through empirical study, we found that e-government implementation is certainly the process of target transformation. The whole process of e-government implementation can be regarded as a sequence of problem between IT and task, strucgture and people through time, which finally caused the result of fail or partly fail. Further, organizational factors in project are important to success implementation, and the institutional factors are crucial as insurmountable obstacle or incentive. In detail, service-oriented government vision would have positive effects on project implementation, while factors like current government structure function and policy would have negative effects on project promotion. Factors like social network, expert and champion would mediate institutional pressure. Finally, managerial implications and suggestions are given according to those findings.