Inter-organisational information sharing in the public sector: A longitudinal case study on the reshaping of success factors

Highlights

• Investigates information sharing in a network of public organisations.

• Investigates social and organisational factors of information sharing.

• Results reveal these factors are reshaped over time.

• Results extend an existing model on information sharing.

Abstract

Today, public organisations need to share information in order to complete their tasks. Over the years, scholars have mapped out the social and organisational factors that affect the success or failure of these kinds of endeavours. However, few of the suggested models have sought to address the temporal aspect of inter-organisational information sharing. The aim of this paper is to investigate the reshaping of social and organisational factors of inter-organisational information sharing in the public sector over time. We analysed four years' worth of information sharing in an inter-organisational reference group on copper corrosion in the context of nuclear waste management. We could trace how factors in the model proposed by Yang and Maxwell (2011) were reshaped over time. Two factors in the model – concerns of information misuse and trust – are frequently assessed by organisations and are the most likely to change. In the long run we also found that legislation and policies can change.

Introduction

Today, public organisations face business tasks of ever-increasing complexity (Zhang, Dawes, & Sarkis, 2005). Such complexity means that these tasks span public organisational boundaries (Luna-Reyes et al., 2007, Ryan and Walsh, 2004). Consequently, public organisations need to engage with other organisations in a networked fashion. Gil-Garcia, Chengalur-Smith, and Duchessi (2007) have argued that inter-organisational information sharing has increased in importance in these settings, offering important benefits such as higher information quality, improved decision-making, increased productivity, and more integrated services (Caffrey, 1998, Gil-Garcia and Helbig, 2006, Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001). As a consequence, many public organisations have shifted from favouring a “silos” model (Gil-Garcia, Chun, & Janssen, 2009) that emphasizes information protection towards one that focuses on inter-organisational information sharing (Yang & Maxwell, 2011).

In principle, such a shift does seem sound, given the tasks at hand. However, an easy transition from one model to the other is not necessarily guaranteed. Sharing information between organisations often involves complex interactions, during which a myriad of challenges is faced. Even though management in public organisations increasingly recognises the importance of inter-organisational information sharing (Pardo, Cresswell, Dawes, & Burke, 2004) and noting that it has been on the agenda for quite some time (Dawes, 1996, Gil-García et al., 2005, Gil-Garcia et al., 2009, Klischewski and Scholl, 2006, Yang et al., 2012), existing research has shown that such initiatives often fail (Dawes, 1996, Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001, Scholl and Klischewski, 2007, Schooley and Horan, 2007).

With the advancement of information technology, it is close at hand to attribute these failures to a lack of interoperability between technical frameworks and platforms. Although inter-organisational information sharing is dependent on technological interoperability to different degrees, scholars (Atabakhsh et al., 2004, Brazelton and Gorry, 2003, Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001) have shown that social and organisational challenges are just as complex as technological ones. Thus, the former have attracted increased attention in recent years (Drake et al., 2004, Gil-Garcia et al., 2009, Luna-Reyes et al., 2007, Pardo et al., 2004, Scholl et al., 2012). Valuable work has been carried out to increase our knowledge of the social and organisational factors that impact on the success or failure of this kind of endeavour (e.g., Akbulut et al., 2009, Dahlan et al., 2013, Lam, 2005, Yang, 2012, Zhang et al., 2005).

Yang and Maxwell (2011) made an attempt to summarise existing research on these factors in a combined model “for practitioners to use when assessing or implementing information sharing projects”; they showed that, over the years, the wisdom concerning these kind of factors has increased. However, their model and many other studies do not address the temporal aspect of information sharing, despite the fact that several scholars acknowledged that inter-organisational information sharing results in lessons learned for the organisations involved (Dawes, 1996, Gil-Garcia et al., 2007, Scholl et al., 2012, Zhang and Dawes, 2006). Temporal aspects of information sharing are important to understand because inter-organisational collaborations tend to develop over time. Thus, our understanding of inter-organisational information sharing, and any models proposed, are at risk of becoming static unless temporality is given analytical weight. Whilst less attention has been paid to this particular aspect, this does not mean that researchers who have investigated social and organisational factors have not undertaken the pertinent research. Indeed, the converse may be true. Still, there exists an asymmetry with regard to what is known when it comes to the temporal aspect. It limits the guidance provided to practitioners as well as researchers when assessing information sharing projects.

Thus, the aim of this paper is to investigate the reshaping of social and organisational factors of inter-organisational information sharing in the public sector over time. To this end, we analysed information sharing in an inter-organisational reference group, using the factors found in the model put forward by Yang and Maxwell (2011). Based on our findings, we contribute to the development of this theoretical model by adding a complementary reciprocal perspective that emphasizes an active and on-going reshaping of the factors in the model. Furthermore, we elaborate on the temporal aspect in existing models, such as those presented by Dawes (1996) and Scholl et al. (2012).

The remaining part of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section we address existing research on information sharing in public organisations. The third section presents the research method adopted. In the fourth section, we carry out the analysis. In the fifth section, we propose an extension of the model put forward by Yang and Maxwell (2011) and discuss the implications for research and practice. In addition, we discuss the limitations of the present study and avenues for future research. Finally, the paper ends with a short conclusion.