Yes / Public sector managers take much of the responsibility for selecting, commissioning, implementing and realising benefits from information technology (IT) projects. However, e-Government initiatives often suffer from complexity, vision failure, lack of goal clarity and insufficient commitment. These problems may stem from value traditions that are deeply ingrained in managers’ cultural environments but not always in harmony with each other. A first step towards working with value complexity is to understand it; we synthesise a model of value positions for e-Government derived from major traditions in the public administration literature. Four value positions relevant to e-Government together with their IT assumptions are identified; they reflect the ideals of professionalism, efficiency, service and engagement. A qualitative investigation of Danish local authority managers displays both value congruence and value divergence. The interpretive study results in a theoretical model that combines value positions and relationships, and the model’s implications for researchers and practitioners in focusing successful e-Government initiatives are outlined.

In recent years, the use of option pricing models to support IT investment decisions has been proposed in the MIS literature. In this paper, we discuss the practical advantages of such techniques for the selection of a software platform. First, we argue that traditional quantitative approaches to a cost-benefit analysis give only a partial picture of such decision situations: due to the long planning horizon required because of the time-consuming and resource-intensive implementation process, it is not possible to exactly predict which applications will, in fact, run on the system over time. Thus, the investor is faced with the problem of valuing "implementation opportunities". We then compare different valuation techniques for this task and discuss their respective advantages and drawbacks. The practical advantages of employing such models are demonstrated by describing a real-life case study where option pricing models were used for deciding whether to continue employing SAP R/2 or to switch to SAP R/3. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"