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When Ambiguity Rules: The Emergence of Adaptive Governance from (In)Congruent Frames of Knowledge Sharing Technology

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Abstract

As increasingly diverse stakeholders engage in technology-mediated knowledge sharing, the establishment of appropriate forms of governance becomes a challenge. Existing research highlights that successful governance is a result of congruence between different stakeholders’ views and uses of technology, but the way suitable governance can emerge in the presence of incongruent or ambiguous framings of technology is still unclear. In this article, we present a case study of a collaboration between government, industry and university stakeholders, where the social media platform WeChat is used for knowledge sharing. Using the theoretical lens of the technological frames of reference (TFR), we investigate how views and uses of technology among different stakeholders shape the emergence of governance arrangements. We find that patterns of congruence and incongruence in the stakeholders’ framings of technology for knowledge sharing lead to emergent adaptive governance practices, which are characterized by selective participation, role and capability identification, and ad-hoc decision-making.

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Notes

  1. The participants of the SODA contest need to solve a particular theme of challenge for the Shanghai Municipality using the dataset provided by local government agencies and companies. The winners are selected based on various criteria. For example, the theme of the challenge for SODA 2015 was “smart transport”. The datasets were provided by Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission and public service companies such as Shanghai Public Transport Card CO., Shanghai Pudong New District Public Transport CO., and Shanghai Qiangsheng Intelligence Navigation Technology Satellite CO. There were 823 teams participated in the contest and 15 were selected as winners (Gao 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business IT, IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Cancan Wang

  2. Department of Digitalization, Copenhagen Business School, Howitzvej 60, DK-2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Rony Medaglia & Tina Blegind Jensen

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  1. Cancan Wang
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Wang, C., Medaglia, R. & Jensen, T.B. When Ambiguity Rules: The Emergence of Adaptive Governance from (In)Congruent Frames of Knowledge Sharing Technology. Inf Syst Front 23, 1573–1591 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-020-10050-3

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