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The American Review of Public Administration
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Organizational Fields and the Diffusion of Information Technologies Within and Across the Nonprofit and Public Sectors

A Preliminary Theory

Jason Bennett Thatcher

Clemson University, South Carolina

Ralph S. Brower

Florida State University, Tallahassee

Robert M. Mason

University of Washington, Seattle

This qualitative-inductive study examines the diffusion of information technologies across service providers that contract to provide public services for a state human service agency. The researchers were struck by extensive data that illustrated salient "ruptures," inconsistencies, and contradictions in the information systems that stand in stark contrast to the touted characteristics of the ostensible systems. The analysis draws attention to the extensive political symbolism attached to the actual information systems and to contradictory institutional logics that different participants impose on the collecting and valuing of various parcels of information. The researchers provide a preliminary theory about the isomorphic diffusion of technologies into and across the nonprofit sector and argue that these institutional dynamics imply a structuration process at a level that is much more macro institutional than the structuration of information technology artifacts that has been emphasized by recent scholars who write in the adaptive structuration perspective.

Key Words: nonprofit sector • technology diffusion • qualitative methods • organizational fields • adaptive structuration theory

The American Review of Public Administration, Vol. 36, No. 4, 437-454 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0275074006286704
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