Alfonso Morvillo, Alessandra Marasco, Marcella De Martino and Alice H.Y. Hon
Arthur Seakhoa-King, Marcjanna M Augustyn and Peter Mason
This study aims to explore how service delivery can be enhanced through digital transformation in the public sector in South Africa.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how service delivery can be enhanced through digital transformation in the public sector in South Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
This case study used a qualitative research approach to obtain data through semi-structured interviews. The units of analysis were made up of individual professionals limited to purposive sampling to select chief information officers, investigators and administrative officers from national government departments and state-owned enterprises. The collected data from 12 participants was thematically analysed. The findings revealed that the government lacks legislation and strategy for digital transformation, leading to inconsistent implementation of digital transformation that enhances service delivery in the public sector of South Africa.
Findings
The findings revealed that the government lacks legislation and strategy for digital transformation, leading to inconsistent implementation of digital transformation that enhances service delivery in the public sector of South Africa.
Research limitations/implications
The study was limited to the public sector of South Africa; however, its recommendations are applicable to all organisations that need to provide their services using digital transformation.
Practical implications
Practically, the implications of this study will serve as a resourceful benchmark for the public sector and other organisations.
Social implications
Socially, the implications of this study ensure proper implementation of its recommendations to enhance service delivery in the public sector and other organisations.
Originality/value
Regarding the value that this study brings, it proposes an amendment of the current legislative framework in favour of one that covers digital transformation, which has become dominant in today’s enhanced provision of service delivery.
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Bridget Harris and Delanie Woodlock
Technology increasingly features in intimate relationships and is used by domestic violence perpetrators to enact harm. In this chapter, we propose a theoretical and practical…
Abstract
Technology increasingly features in intimate relationships and is used by domestic violence perpetrators to enact harm. In this chapter, we propose a theoretical and practical framework for technology-facilitated harms in heterosexual relationships which we characterize as digital coercive control. Here, we include behaviors which can be classified as abuse and stalking and also individualized tactics which are less easy to categorize, but evoke fear and restrict the freedoms of a particular woman. Drawing on their knowledge of a victim/survivor's experiences and, in the context of patterns and dynamics of abuse, digital coercive control strategies are personalized by perpetrators and extend and exacerbate “real-world” violence.
Digital coercive control is unique because of its spacelessness and the ease, speed, and identity-shielding which technology affords. Victim/survivors describe how perpetrator use of technology creates a sense of omnipresence and omnipotence which can deter women from exiting violent relationships and weakens the (already tenuous) notion that abuse can be “escaped.” We contend that the ways that digital coercive control shifts temporal and geographic boundaries warrant attention. However, spatiality more broadly cannot be overlooked. The place and shape in which victim/survivors and perpetrators reside will shape both experiences of and response to violence. In this chapter, we explore these ideas, reporting on findings from a study on digital coercive control in regional, rural, and remote Australia. We adopt a feminist research methodology in regard to our ethos, research processes, analysis, and the outputs and outcomes of our project. Women's voices are foreground in this approach and the emphasis is on how research can be used to inform, guide, and develop responses to domestic violence.
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Rod Sheaff, Joyce Halliday, Mark Exworthy, Alex Gibson, Pauline W. Allen, Jonathan Clark, Sheena Asthana and Russell Mannion
Neo-liberal “reform” has in many countries shifted services across the boundary between the public and private sector. This policy re-opens the question of what structural and…
Abstract
Purpose
Neo-liberal “reform” has in many countries shifted services across the boundary between the public and private sector. This policy re-opens the question of what structural and managerial differences, if any, differences of ownership make to healthcare providers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the connections between ownership, organisational structure and managerial regime within an elaboration of Donabedian’s reasoning about organisational structures. Using new data from England, it considers: how do the internal managerial regimes of differently owned healthcare providers differ, or not? In what respects did any such differences arise from differences in ownership or for other reasons?
Design/methodology/approach
An observational systematic qualitative comparison of differently owned providers was the strongest feasible research design. The authors systematically compared a maximum variety (by ownership) sample of community health services; out-of-hours primary care; and hospital planned orthopaedics and ophthalmology providers (n=12 cases). The framework of comparison was the ownership theory mentioned above.
Findings
The connection between ownership (on the one hand) and organisation structures and managerial regimes (on the other) differed at different organisational levels. Top-level governance structures diverged by organisational ownership and objectives among the case-study organisations. All the case-study organisations irrespective of ownership had hierarchical, bureaucratic structures and managerial regimes for coordinating everyday service production, but to differing extents. In doctor-owned organisations, the doctors’, but not other occupations’, work was controlled and coordinated in a more-or-less democratic, self-governing ways.
Research limitations/implications
This study was empirically limited to just one sector in one country, although within that sector the case-study organisations were typical of their kinds. It focussed on formal structures, omitting to varying extents other technologies of power and the differences in care processes and patient experiences within differently owned organisations.
Practical implications
Type of ownership does appear, overall, to make a difference to at least some important aspects of an organisation’s governance structures and managerial regime. For the broader field of health organisational research, these findings highlight the importance of the owners’ agency in explaining organisational change. The findings also call into question the practice of copying managerial techniques (and “fads”) across the public–private boundary.
Originality/value
Ownership does make important differences to healthcare providers’ top-level governance structures and accountabilities and to work coordination activity, but with different patterns at different organisational levels. These findings have implications for understanding the legitimacy, governance and accountability of healthcare organisations, the distribution and use power within them, and system-wide policy interventions, for instance to improve care coordination and for the correspondingly required foci of healthcare organisational research.