When innocence is no protection: governance failure of digitization and its impact on local level implementation

Purpose Governance of e-government is rarely discussed in the initial digitization stage, especially in developing countries where the government’s focus is mainly to pursue rapid proliferation of digital adoption rather than to implement governance. This study aims to explore the consequences of this absence of governance at local level conditions. Design/methodology/approach An in-depth exploratory case study is conducted at a municipal health government in a southern city in Kalimantan Island, Indonesia, examining the conditions of local actors in response to various nationwide health digitization imperatives. The postcolonial theory with the critical paradigm is used to interpret and conceptualize the empirical findings. Findings This study identifies two critical failures of digitization governance that represent the mainstream condition: horizontal sectoral ego and vertical asymmetry and misalignment. These failures have resulted in undesirable consequences at the subalterns indicated by diverse ambivalence and de-voiced constructs displayed by the local actors. Practical implications This paper suggests that various issues that emerge from local level implementation in nationwide digitization agenda might not always be issues of local technology adoption, but rather negative impacts due to the absence of governance practice at the strategic level. Originality/value Through a critical perspective, this study unearths the underlying power and structural inequity responsible for generating the various issues and undesirable consequences that emerge at local levels related to the nationwide digitization agenda.

Contextual and linguistic challenges for French business schools to achieve international accreditation: experts as boundary-spanners

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the contextual and linguistic challenges that French business schools face when preparing for international accreditation and to shed light on the different ways in which experts facilitate these accreditation processes, particularly with respect to how they capitalize on their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning competences. Design/methodology/approach The authors interviewed 12 key players at four business schools in France engaged in international accreditations and in three specific categories: senior management, tenured faculty and administrative staff. The interview-based case study design used semi-structured questions and an insider researcher approach to study an underexplored sector of analysis. Findings The findings suggest that French business schools have been particularly impacted by the colonizing effects of English as the mandatory language of the international accreditation bodies espousing a basically Anglophone higher education philosophy. Consequently, schools engage external experts for their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning expertise to facilitate accreditation processes. Originality/value The authors contribute to language-sensitive research through a critical perspective on marginalization within French business schools due to the use of English as the mandatory lingua franca of international accreditation processes and due to the underlying higher-education philosophy from the Anglophone academic sphere within these processes. As a result, French business schools resort to external experts to mediate their knowledge and competency gaps.

Determinants and Consequences of Citizens' E-Participation

This article aims to discuss the determinants of digital active citizenship behaviors such as the e-participation using reporting urban apps. The article makes a comparative analysis between two groups of citizens: a) 98 users of a reporting app (MyHomeCity) who were selected for the case study); and b) 148 non-users of reporting apps. Users of MyHomeCity revealed higher scores for the satisfaction for life in the city, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and perceived happiness, for all place attachment dimensions and all digital citizenship dimensions except for political activism (online and offline) and critical perspective. The probability of being an app user is predicted by satisfaction for living in the city, place identity (attachment), and digital citizenship dimensions. The implications for public decision makers, app developers, and citizens' organizations are discussed.

Heritage Education and Global Citizenship

Heritage education has been viewed as an aspect associated to the building of local and national identities, but there has been little exploration of the way it relates to Global Citizenship Education. This chapter explores this relationship in theoretical terms, through documentary review and analysis from a socio-critical perspective. One of the initial conclusions is that heritage education is associated with art history and is the work of formal and informal education institutions. Another more in-depth conclusion is that there are relationships between these two types of education that share the common thread of identity-building and participation, which ties in with recognition of the changes caused to societies through globalisation. The chapter concludes with a series of questions asking whether it is possible to conceive a global heritage or identity.