One approach to dealing with complexity in a public policy context is horizontality, the act of working across the various ministries and divisions of a government in order to harness the organization’s capacity and resources and direct them towards the addressing of complex problems. And one prominent mechanism for promoting horizontality is greater organization-wide collaboration, knowledge sharing and active knowledge seeking amongst a network of government knowledge workers commonly referred to as policy analysts. The emergent use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches within organizations has raised the possibility that we have entered a new knowledge era - Enterprise 2.0 - that can address the horizontality problem, facilitate the sharing of knowledge between policy analysts and across organizations, and promote transformative governance. This research investigated how policy formulation processes in the government of the Canadian province of British Columbia are being affected by the adoption of Web 2.0 tools internally within the organization as a way to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst government policy analysts. Semi-structured interviews with members of corporate policy units in the Government of British Columbia were conducted (n = 14), and an on-line questionnaire was completed by Government of British Columbia policy analysts (n = 129). These mixed methods form the basis for a triangulation approach to assessing the research questions. Respondents conceptualized policy analysis as rooted in an apolitical synthesis of evidence and best practices from a variety of sources, leading to a recommendation designed to support decision-making. The diversity and reach of the policy analyst’s organizational social network is related to their length of service in the organization and is an important supplement to the analyst’s knowledge base. There was little evidence that technology networks generally, and Web 2.0 tools specifically, play a prominent role in facilitating the knowledge organization; in fact, policy analysts may refrain from sharing knowledge with colleagues using technology networks in order to avoid contributing to their colleagues' information overload. Following the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), attitudes, followed by subjective norms, were the strongest and most consistent predictors of the policy analyst’s intention to collaborate and share knowledge with their colleagues. Perceived behavioural control was not a factor, leading to the possibility that while policy analysts may believe and be told that knowledge sharing and collaboration are advantageous, they may not feel they have the authority, latitude or ability to do so. A significant gender result was consistently revealed, that women were found to be less supportive of knowledge sharing and collaboration than men, a result possibly due to a culture dominated by masculine characteristics. The findings have implications for public sector organizations seeking to provide support for knowledge workers to make effective use of the organizational social network, new collaboration technologies and organizational capacity to address complex public policy problems. Interested readers should consult http://jlphdcand.wordpress.com for updated versions of this research, and related work. / Graduate

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:48:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 71050100664.pdf.jpg: 18109 bytes, checksum: c8f1523ddf05d4e0352902a8823c3c96 (MD5) 71050100664.pdf: 5116443 bytes, checksum: 51c8dc175894dd42ccdc8750a11da13d (MD5) 71050100664.pdf.txt: 576147 bytes, checksum: 7aa40d72fa7a6f3213c88b416396695b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-03-03T00:00:00Z / The goal of this research is to identify if the process of negotiation for the installation of two multinational companies in the state of Paraná had influence in the development of the companies' relationship with their suppliers. The negotiation processes were analyzed, taking into account the literature on Foreign Direct Investment, in particular the Bargain Model. Two essential differences were found in the processes. Globalization and the consequent opening up of the Brazilian Market, meant that the country and the state of Paraná had less bargaining power in the negotiation that occurred in the 1990's. The change in the political regime and the fiscal decentralization, that had as consequence the fiscal war, determined that Paraná's bargaining power was weaker in that decade. Volvo's smaller bargaining power in relation to Brazil and the state of Paraná in the 1970's, meant that the company developed more relationships with local suppliers. On the other hand, in the 1990's, Renault was not influenced in the same way. Therefore, as the relationship of the two companies with their suppliers was analyzed, the data showed that a significant difference was found only relating to the relationships with national and multinational suppliers. Volvo has a higher proportion of national suppliers than Renault, especially when using the control variable 'being installed in the state of Paraná'. These results make evident another of the consequences of the fiscal war, that is, a lesser degree of integration with the local organizations. Within the Social Embeddedness perspective, this lesser degree of integration with the local organizations may lead to less exchange of information between the company and the aforementioned organizations, and therefore, to a smaller degree of competence development of that subsidiary and less possibility of economical growth in the region. / A adoção de tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC), em especial aquelas associadas à institucionalização da Internet como meio de relacionamento social e de negócios, tem provocado mudanças profundas e globais. Nos programas de governo eletrônico (e-gov), as TIC têm impactos econômicos, sociais e políticos, que devem ser monitorados para orientar a elaboração de políticas públicas eficazes. Avaliar esses impactos implica na condução de um processo complexo, baseado em modelos de medição de desempenho que deveriam ser definidos considerando o cidadão como elemento-chave na rede sociotécnica criada pelos programas de governo eletrônico. Contudo, existe uma lacuna nos modelos teóricos que definem as dimensões de desempenho a partir da perspectiva do cidadão. Apoiada em abordagem empírica e quadro teórico que compreende conceitos-chave provenientes da sociologia, da tecnologia de informação e de teorias do construtivismo social, a presente tese identifica os grupos sociais relevantes no processo de construção do e-gov e as dimensões de desempenho percebidas como relevantes por eles. O principal resultado desta pesquisa é o “Modelo (7+2)”, que consolida nove dimensões de desempenho emergentes da análise aprofundada de entrevistas a respeito da percepção dos artefatos tecnológicos do e-gov (canais de acesso e entrega de serviços públicos, serviços públicos eletrônicos e portal) pelos grupos sociais relevantes.