Maddalena Sorrentino

University of Milan | UNIMI · Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods DEMM

This qualitative study examines how the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) influences organizational design, particularly within corporate headquarters (HQs) during digital transformations. The primary thesis is that AI adoption reshapes HQs by enhancing their dual roles in integration—coordinating and guiding business units—and en...

In this introductory article to our PPA special issue we argue that the relation between wicked problems and collaborative governance is fraught with difficulties. Doing so, we take four steps: we maintain that wicked problems are better understood as wicked actor constellations; we delve into the collaborative governance-approach and posit that it...

The qualitative paper explores an alternative lens, that is, informed by a complexity perspective, through which to frame the adaptive role of local implementers in multi-level governance systems. It argues that three key tenets of complexity thinking – emergence, self-organisation and co-evolution – can help better explain that role. The re-concep...

The paper selectively overviews extant research on coworking in order to illustrate: i) the role assigned to technology in coworking settings; and ii) how a more comprehensive account of technology could provide a richer interpretation of the future of work. Drawing on the framework originally proposed by Orlikowski and Iacono (2001), the article i...

IMPACT Making the context and trajectory of reforms more comprehensible is essential for public decision-makers when it comes to assessing programme robustness and strengthening future efforts. The article argues for a shift from ‘reducing complexity’ to ‘embracing complexity’ to be adopted by local decision-makers to develop a more pragmatic imple...

Citizen science, i.e. citizens’ involvement in research activities, is achieving an increasing re-levance across disparate scientific domains. However, literature is not consistent in arguing citizen science’s attributes and implications when large-scale projects are concerned. The paper systematizes extant scientific knowledge in this field and id...

This qualitative paper sets out to build upon recent developments in public management and service science literatures to better understand the increasing engagement of individuals and communities in the co-production of knowledge within Citizen Science (CS) projects, i.e., research collaborations where tasks are performed by members of the public....

Co-working is an exemplary case for exploring the organisation and significance of work. Two main thrusts prompt co-working arrangements: the idea of exploiting information and communication technology (ICT) to share experiences and knowledge, and the idea of joining forces to survive economically. Drawing upon a scoping review, this qualitative pa...

Co-production and nudging reflect the new paths taken by governments in the digital transformation age. Both are behaviour-based tools of public action. Both are premised on the idea that citizen engagement in public services is essential for problem solving. Thus far, however, these topics of debate have been addressed in isolation. The aim of thi...

The paper applies a ‘context-aware’ research approach to explore Italy’s digital government trajectory, using the information and communication technology -enabled programme that introduced the One-Stop Business Shop to exemplify its analytical potential. The interpretive lens captures the political, institutional and external forces at play to ill...

We must ask critical questions regarding what actors are gaining influence, and regarding why the centrality of government is to be preserved in a dataintensive society. The article recognizes that the transformative capacity of big data—and its artificial intelligence (AI)-based companion data analytics— does not deterministically result from the...

Organizational efficiency and economic development has benefited significantly from the ubiquitous nature of information technology in today’s governmental machinery and in society, but what of its serious implications at the macro and micro level? The argument of the paper is that technology-driven social changes require—and facilitate—a policy re...

What is “public” about the mission of public enterprises? This should be a central question in research and practice, not least because many of the boundaries of the world’s “publicness map” have undergone significant shifts since the recession. The query is fundamental for the organizational level of analysis and, indeed, to understand the true me...

Health and social care services are under increasing pressure to come up with adequate solutions to manage the demand and supply equation. Integrated care is one way to deal with this wicked problem, but new approaches and service implementation strategies are necessary to realize its full value and quality of outcome. Focusing on the four relevant...

Co-production has become a buzzword for both scholars and practitioners in the past decade. This introduction to the thematic issue ‘Co-production: Implementation problems, new technologies and new designs’ unpacks the concept of co-production and illustrates how it has been operationalized on the ground in diverse country-specific contexts. To fac...

This qualitative study explores the widely recognized role of the informal caregivers (ICGs) as key co-producers in the delivery of effective and sustainable healthcare systems. The central argument is that to enhance the quality of care in non-clinical settings and the healthcare ecosystem as a whole, developers of Health Information Technology (H...

In this article, which investigates the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its ongoing advances, China is seen as a kind of gigantic laboratory in which a new family of information technologies is applied to contemporary problems of major import, such as climate change, medical diagnostics, the prevention of natural disasters, and the...

This qualitative study analyzes an Italian hospital’s endeavor to introduce a coproduction practice and the critical factors that affect its efficacy and efficiency. The empirical evidence shows that the meaningful engagement of the patient can be achieved only by factoring in the socio organizational conditions of all stakeholders; that no divide...

The heuristic device of a complexity-based lens is applied to the local implementation of a public programme to understand the possible misalignment of its outcomes with the central planners’ goals. The authors supersede the dominant use in complexity theory of simplifying or ambiguous metaphors to focus, instead, on the core concepts of emergence,...

The study advances the debate on the co-creation of value in healthcare by treating the informal caregivers as a key organizational resource for the providers. Using the Dialogue, Access, Risk, and Transparency (DART) model developed by Prahalad and Ramaswamy as an interpretative key, this qualitative paper frames the role of the informal caregiver...

The paper applies a ‘context-aware’ research approach to explore Italy’s digital government trajectory, using the information and communication technology-enabled programme that introduced the One-Stop Business Shop to exemplify its analytical potential. The interpretive lens captures the political, institutional and external forces at play to illu...

The present paper analyzes the top ten Italian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) over the period 2004-2013, after both their corporate organization and their markets have been deeply reformed. We question whether SOEs’ strategies are more profit or public oriented. The authors find that, on average, the management and performance of the Italian SOEs h...

The setting up of municipal One-Stop Business Shops (SUAPs) plays a vital role in the Italian legislator’s work to simplify government relations with business and industry. The paper analyzes the outcome of the SUAP simplification programme launched in 1998 and, using secondary data sources, shows that not all the targets have been achieved. The pa...

The article investigates the ICT policies of characteristically political instable Italy in the wake of the (dis)continuous flood of government reforms that began in the early 1990s. Using the case of the Italian digital agency, the research amplifies the scope of the current discussions on national e-Government trajectories, providing evidence for...

The pressure toward co-produced health services is increasing as an answer to quality improvement and system sustainability. However, the reflection and the empirical knowledge on the nature of co-production and on how healthcare practices change in order to manage effective partnerships between clients and professionals remain scant. The chapter a...

Mounting pressure on governments to understand how well they can promote the health of their population is forcing national health systems to reconfigure their service delivery processes. The latest piece in the organisational puzzle is co-production: a concept that co-opts patients and informal caregivers in the self-management, realization and de...

The paper investigates the implementation of One-stop government in Italy and the Lebanon. The Italian government’s One-Stop Business Shop (‘SUAP’) programme is first analyzed to discover why it has taken 12 years of legislation to get Italy’s municipalities fully on board, and whether it has returned the expected benefits by effectively lightening...

The paper uses a longitudinal case study of Italy’s digital agency to investigate eGovernment and a subject that hovers at the far edge of the academic radar: agencification, or the setting up of semi-autonomous organisations that operate at arm’s length from the relative ministry. The aim is to make a threefold contribution of international scope...

The paper investigates the implementation of One-stop government in Italy and the Lebanon. The Italian government’s One-Stop Business Shop (‘SUAP’) programme is first analyzed to discover why it has taken 12 years of legislation to get Italy’s municipalities fully on board, and whether it has returned the expected benefits by effectively lightening...

The big squeeze on public spending and the need to get Italy’s small local councils fully on board the e-government agenda is forcing both the public and the private sector to think of new ways to source and deliver public services. The sharing of services is one solution that goes beyond the traditional insourcing/outsourcing model to cast the SSO...

The local governments of the OECD countries have attempted a number of sourcing practices over the past decades, including corporatization and collaborative arrangements. Sharing services is one of the latest options to emerge to cast a new actor, the shared service organization (SSO), in a lead role. To deliver services to the client councils thes...

The need to reconcile effectiveness with shrinking budgets is pushing contemporary health services to develop co-production practices. But the patient is often an unwilling client and patient engagement with both their therapy and the relative organizational system remains largely unexplored. The article analyzes an Italian hospital’s co-production...

The article aims to contribute to the debate on the role of e-government in spurring the reorganisation of the public sector and broader economic development in a period when financial austerity reduces the public resources available to drive change. The overarching argument here is that the past constrains what can be done in the future. In other...

The purpose of this exploratory research is to show how incentive policies have helped to shape the scenario of inter-municipal partnerships in the Italian region of Lombardy. Do these policies really work? Have they been the driver of greater collaboration among municipalities? Overall, the impact of the financial subsidies can be seen mainly when...

The higher resources needed to provide a service portfolio that responds to the rapid growth of an ageing population is a concern for many governments in the developed countries. The paper explores the convergent insights of three conceptual frameworks to identify where age-aware eGovernment is more likely to be developed effectively. The paper sho...

Two main reasons spur us to explore the nexus between e-government and economic crisis. The first, more general, is due to the fact that this relationship has been relatively little researched. The second, more pressing reason is the fact that in a time of recession no government can escape the tough new challenges posed by the design of stimulus p...

Current research tells little about how to assess the public incentive policies designed to persuade local governments to set up partnerships. This first paper of ongoing research illustrates an evaluation method based on the ‘realist approach’, the tenets of which assign a key role to the context in which the mechanisms of a public programme work...

To say that the trends to develop collaboration to deliver public services derive from global macrotrends inspired by the principles of New Public Management is a commonplace. This paper applies the lenses of institutional theory to the study of voluntary inter-municipal partnerships and counter-argues that collaboration initiatives are shaped by t...

The paper addresses theory-based e-government assessments and reviews the limitations of current methods based on summative evaluation and delivery benchmarking. It proposes the use of in itinere formative evaluation as a tool to better understand complex programs that involve various constituencies and to provide feedback on the design, adoption a...

This paper discusses the importance of evaluating the implementation of public programs as an integral component of organizational actions performed by public administrations. Drawing on contributions from policy studies and organization theory, the authors assign a dual role to evaluation: valuable cognitive resource and accountability tool for th...

Current research tells little about how to assess the public incentive policies designed to persuade local governments to set up partnerships. This first paper of ongoing research illustrates an evaluation method based on the 'realist approach', the tenets of which assign a key role to the context in which the mechanisms of a public programme work...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess, from an organisational perspective, the internal efficacy of public policies designed to stimulate voluntary inter‐municipal partnerships. In particular, it sets out to assess the capacity of such incentive‐based policies to push the councils in the direction desired by the legislator, i.e. service sh...

Based on the preliminary results of a case study, this qualitative research explores the meaning of the technological decisions implemented by a voluntary care association, which we will call Gamma. A provider of home assistance to terminally ill patients living in Lombardy (Italy), Gamma recently introduced an IT artefact to support its socio-care...

To our knowledge, no frameworks currently exist to address the evaluation of public policies to incentivise the setting up of local government partnerships. This paper, the first in an ongoing research, aims to delineate an evaluation model based on the principles of the 'realist approach', which assigns a key analysis role to the context in which...

We examine the basic issues concerning the interplay of ICT-IS with an ageing society and the ‘e-Inclusion’ strategy de-veloped by the European Union (EU). We claim that, because of their innovative traits, Italian industrial districts represent appropriate environments for the imple-mentation of public policies in support of an ageing information...

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has helped to drive increasingly intense global competition. In turn, this intensity increases the need for flexibility and rapid changeability in ICT to support strategies that depend on organisational agility. We report a comparative, cross-cultural case study of the implementation of Service-Oriente...

This study presents a grounded theory analysis of a case study in the banking industry with a view to showing the enabling role of “Web services” technology in information system development practices. The grounded theory analysis of the Cashier Management System development project at the Central Europe Bank (a pseudonym) shows that Web services t...

The development of socially-aware eGovernment policies requires the implementation of multiple delivery channels to give the different user categories the choice of which service access alternatives (physical and electronic) to use each time. The paper claims that new intermediaries play a potentially significant role in inclusive eGovernment strat...

This paper analyzes the implementation of new intermunicipal structures in Italy to support the development of E-Government in the country's peripheral areas. Our exploratory case study, conducted in the Piedmont Region, shows that intermunicipal collaborations can facilitate the coordination of interdependent subjects, rationalize existing resourc...

This paper discusses the importance of evaluating the implementation of public programs as an integral component of organizational actions performed by public administrations. Drawing on contributions from policy studies and organization theory, the authors assign a dual role to evaluation: valuable cognitive resource and accountability tool for th...

This paper perceives e-government evaluation as a field of social research where interdisciplinary inputs can enlighten not only the results, but also the process of implementing the e-services. Drawing on contributions from organization theory, we propose an interpretive key that assigns a dual role to e-government evaluation: valuable cognitive r...

This article investigates joined-up government, especially the policies designed to incentivise partnering between municipalities, adopting an as yet under-explored perspective of the organizational type. A recent survey conducted in the Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) shows that, despite the financial incentives allocated by the regional administ...

This article aims to shed light on the evaluation of public policies designed to incentivize partnering between municipalities. The increasing use of interorganisational arrangements to implement public programs poses yet another challenge for public managers and academics: that of developing an evaluation method for these initiatives. The variety...

The emergence of digital government (or e-government) has sparked debates on its consequences. Despite a certain rhetoric on the changes envisioned, it is not yet clear to what extent this kind of initiative can help provide solutions to problems of public import. In this chapter, we adopt a theoretical approach to analyze why it is so difficult an...

The eGovernment stage is being populated by a cast of intermediary actors from both the private and the not-for-profit sectors, as a result of the multichannel strategies with which many countries are seeking to give new impulse to their eGovernment plans. This paper claims that a fuller understanding of these players' role is crucial in developing...

This paper perceives e-government evaluation as a research field that can produce the cognitive input to help us understand the causal nexus that should attribute the effects of an e-government programme to its implementation and transform this learning into an effective intervention tool. Drawing on contributions from Organization Theory and Polic...

Purpose Understanding how value is actually generated in e‐government projects is one of the most challenging, and relevant, issues in e‐government research. This paper aims to investigate the contribution of service‐based information technology (IT) integration for generating value in the public sector, proposing a theoretical framework based on t...

Can we assess the results of an e-government program in terms of its capacity to provide solutions to problems of public import? While interest in the evaluation of public IT investments is growing world-wide, there is also a widespread perception of the inadequacy of the knowledge that informs concrete practices. This chapter adopts a perspective...

Can we assess the results of an e-government program in terms of its capacity to provide solutions to problems of public import? While interest in the evaluation of public IT investments is growing worldwide, there is also a widespread perception of the inadequacy of the knowledge that informs concrete practices. This chapter adopts a perspective t...

The paper analyses Italy’s recent attempt to build new intermunicipal structures to support eGovernment development also in peripheral areas of the country. Preliminary findings for an individual region (the Piedmont Region) show that intermunicipal collaborations can facilitate the coordination of interdependent subjects, rationalize existing reso...

What do we mean by implementation, defined as the conversion into concrete actions of an e-government programme? Is it possible to assess the results in terms of the capacity to offer solutions to problems of public import? Literature suggests the need to evaluate the outputs, outcomes and impacts of public programmes. Nevertheless, these principle...

Based on the preliminary results of a case study, this qualitative research explores the meaning of the technological decisions implemented by a voluntary care association, which we will call Gamma. A provider of home assistance to terminally ill patients living in Lombardy (Italy), Gamma recently introduced an IT artefact to support its socio-care...

The dematerialisation of the document flows received and sent by the public administrations (PAs) is one of the main cornerstones of the Italian e-government programme. The empirical data relative to the diffusion of the new document management systems reveal that today less than half of Italy’s central PAs have attained an adequate level of projec...

This paper aims to highlight the relevance of a cultivation approach with the goal of exploring the concrete implications it may have for public administrations (PA) involved in projects of organisational change. We suggest that adopting an approach to change that reflects the cultivation perspective is an unavoidable choice for PA, much more so th...

This paper discusses Claudio Ciborra's critique of traditional economic rationality. It recounts his account of the Mann Gulch Disaster. The important aspect of his reading of the disaster is that apparently irrational actions may provide appropriate ...

Information and communication technology (ICT) has helped to drive increasingly intense global competition. In turn, this intensity increases the need for flexibility and rapid changeability in ICT to support strategies that depend on organizational agility. We report a comparative, cross-cultural case study of the implementation of Service Oriente...

The IT value generation process in the public sector is still far from being well- understood and managed, both at the scientific level and in established practices. This paper investigates the enabling role of Web services technology in IT integration processes and its effects on IT value generation in the public sector. We advance the hypothesis...

This study in progress presents a grounded theory analysis of a case study in the banking industry with a view to showing the role of "Web services" technology in information systems development practices. The case study relates to the implementation in the Central Europe Bank (a pseudonym) of a new software application based on Web services techno...

In the past decade the notion that modern technology with the internet, mobile computing and enhanced communication technology at its heart, can transform the administrative procedures of government at all levels and at the same time enhance the democratic opportunities of all citizens, has taken hold. Many countries have rolled out extensive progr...

Two basic questions are investigated in this contribution: 1) How can we explain the value generation process in the public sector? 2) What is the potential role of Web services technology in this process? Our approach has been to make use of the process theory on business value generation developed by Soh and Markus (1993), adapting the original f...

In each industrialized country, the public administration (PA) has significantly shifted its interests to reach the innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), undergoing important Business Processes Reengineering (BPR) as a result of e-Government projects. The new challenge for public administrations is based on the exploitation...

ICTs are intended to be a powerful tool in support of government transition to the "Digital Age". The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of integrating a socio-technical perspective into the body of eGovernment practices. The current realisation in Italy of an "Action plan for eGovernment" is a source of interesting preliminary ev...

The Silk Road was an important trade route between Europe and Asia a thousand years ago. It connected locations in Central and Eastern Europe with those scattered around West, Central and Eastern Asia. In more recent times, it has been neglected commercially, with the development of other ports and routes. In this paper, the potential rejuvenation...

IT-Outsourcing entwickelt sich für immer mehr Banken zu einem wesentlichen Bestandteil der IS-Beschaffungsstrategie. Das Transaktionskosten-Konzept wird oft als Grundlage für Managemententscheidungen zum IT-Outsourcing herangezogen. Der vorliegende Beitrag kommt jedoch zu dem Schluss, dass das IT-Outsourcing im Bankgewerbe nicht nur nach den ökonom...

Public administration (PA) has significantly shifted its interests to reach the innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), as a result of e-Government projects. The new challenge for public administrations is based on the exploitation of their knowledge resources in order to improve their processes and to offer better services to...

A new technological standard, called 'Web services' has recently made its first appearance in the Web technologies arena. Our question here is: what is the role of Web services for eGovernment? In the present contribution, the concept of 'political value chain' is introduced and the process of value re- configuration is illustrated, evidencing one...

We are living in exciting times, in which technological innovation and new forms of organization are advancing at a very fast pace. On the organizational side, the lack of stability of the so-called "emergent" organizations, those that are in continuous evolution and transformation, represents a big challenge for Information Systems Development pra...

IT outsourcing is becoming an integral part of the IS sourcing strategy for an increasing number of banks. It is often claimed that the Transaction Cost Framework provides a basis for sourcing decisions. Further the IT-department's capability to manage long-term relationships with its IT-suppliers should be considered.

Kreditkarten sind wohl eines der erfolgreichsten Finanzprodukte im Privatkundengeschäft, das in diesem Jahrhundert eingeführt wurde. Das Geschäftsumfeld für Kreditkartengesellschaften hat sich unlängst erheblich geändert. 1996 sank die Rentabilität dieser Branche unter 1,3 Prozent, nachdem sie in den vier vorangehenden Jahre durchschnittlich bei 3,...

The growth of the public Internet and enterprise intranets as a digital distribution mechanism for information has exploded and today one of the most promising developments is the so-called push technology. Current push technology-based packages deliver customised news to users’ desktops, reducing the burden of acquiring and integrating data from m...

Signed, among more than 100 researchers and practitioners, by: Public Governance in the 21 st Century The concept of E-Government has become a great success, adding momentum to the long ongoing process, in the industrialized countries, of informatisation of the public sector. The emergence of the Internet has in many respects changed the rules of t...

This paper seeks to assess the internal efficacy of the public policies designed to stimulate inter-municipal partnerships, adopting a perspective of the organisational type. Empirical data for the Lombardy Region in Italy shows that, despite the availability of funding and support from the regional administration to promote collaboration at local...

Taking as a starting point the recent approval of 138 co-financing proposals put forward by numerous Italian public bodies within the context of a national e-government plan, the article poses the question of whether these types of initiatives are really likely to unleash mechanisms capable of improving organisational performance. The evaluation cr...