As public organizations continue a path of digitalization, a central, yet often ignored, component of this change are public sector’s employees. Digitalization may ease their workload, simplify the administrative process, and allow for more flexible working conditions, however, digitalization also can lead to the fear of redundancies, a lack of reskilling, technophobia, or even professional alienation as jobs begin to shift towards the digital era – leaving some behind.
An instrument that is used in practice more often in recent years to overcome resistance to digital change, is the role of change agents. Change agents are individuals who take an active role in driving digitalization in large organizations also coined as digital agents or digital champions. Current research, however, examines digital champions as individuals in traditional roles of the Chief Information Officer, managers, and ICT experts mirroring the common top-down hierarchical nature of public sector organizations. This project challenges this understanding by incorporating the active roles of employees interested in driving the process from the ground up. Using theories of social support and learning from role models, we want to examine co-worker support (both availability and enacted support by the change agents) and its impact on change readiness and acceptance, digital literacy, self-efficacy, and public employees’ trust related to digitalization and their future workplace. See: article
This research receives funding from the BMS strategic research fund, the European Academy of Management and the (https://euram.academy/) and Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation (https://www.freiheit.org/).
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