Stakeholder theory for the E-government context: Framing a value-oriented normative core

Abstract

Despite substantial investments in ICT in the public sector over the past decades, it has been hard to achieve consistent benefits. One reason for the difficulties is the gap between the expectations of key stakeholders (such as governments, businesses and citizens) and project outcomes. Though normative, descriptive and instrumental aspects of stakeholder theory have been influential in explaining stakeholder interests and relationships in the management field, e-Government researchers have rather neglected the normative core of the theory. We show how value theory can improve normative foundations in this area to provide a focused analysis of four e-Government projects. We use a multiple case study approach to study the values of salient stakeholders, demonstrating how the combination of value theory and stakeholder theory provides greater explanatory power than either of the theories in isolation. Our work shows how stakeholders´ interests are bound to generic value positions and allow us to formulate implications for research and practice.