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Challenging Organizational Issues When Municipal Contact Centers are Implemented in Sweden
University West, School of Business, Economics and IT, Division of Media and Design. (LINA)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2118-2152
University West, School of Business, Economics and IT, Divison of Informatics. (LINA)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3914-3212
2013 (English)In: Electronic Journal of e-Government, E-ISSN 1479-439X, Vol. 11, no 2, p. 198-209Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Two case studies of the implementation of Contact Centres(CCs) in Swedish municipalities were compared and discussed from anorganizational perspective. The research method was semi-structured qualitative interviews with different personnel categories in both municipalities. Several challenging organizational issues for management and employees were identified:the implementation strategies varied among the cases and affected the pace of implementation, attitudes and motivation, the mental construct and understanding of the implementation. The financing of the CC and recruitment strategies created problems, but in somewhat different ways and in phases of the process in each case. The potential of using registered information as asource for planning and decision-making was not fully utilized, although somestatistics were produced. In both cases there was a combination of formal andinformal learning strategies and flexible co-operation among the employees inthe CCs which contributed to continuous learning processes and a good,co-operative working climate. There was a need for continuous updating ofskills in both cases, but with slightly different focus, related to theorganization of the work. The organization in response groups required morespecialist competence, compared with the organization without response groups,which required more general competence. Some challenges for the caseadministrators in the back offices were to adapt to a more process-oriented organizationof their work, and to co-operate more with their colleagues both in the backoffice and at the CC. They now had the possibility to plan their administrativework in a better way than before, but some administrators missed the previousspontaneous contacts with citizens. Initially, many case administrators wereafraid of losing their jobs and work tasks to CC, contributing to negativeattitudes towards CC and hampering the learning process in taking part in theimplementation process.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2013. Vol. 11, no 2, p. 198-209
Keywords [en]
Contact Centers, New Public Management, Implementation, e-government, municipalities, MOA-model, Work-integrated Learning, WIL
Keywords [sv]
AIL
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Research subject
SOCIAL SCIENCE, Informatics; SOCIAL SCIENCE, Public administration; Work Integrated Learning
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hv:diva-5780OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hv-5780DiVA, id: diva2:677255
Available from: 2013-12-09 Created: 2013-12-09 Last updated: 2022-02-10Bibliographically approved

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Bernhard, IreneGrunden, Kerstin

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