Meeting the challenge of technology-driven change within an institutional context: The Greek case

Propelled by the driving forces of globalization and technology explosion, public institutions face the challenge of rapid and discontinuous change. Such change has come to undermine the relevance of traditional approaches on how an institution should be managed. We analyse a technology-driven change effort, the implementation of an Integrated Information System (IIS), that unfolds within the boundaries of the institutional context of the Hellenic Parliament. The purpose of our research, which reports on a qualitative field study, is to explore and understand how the particularities of technology-driven change on the one hand, and institutional change on the other, can be integrated, paying particular attention to how the different actors involved in the process interact and affect the unfolding of such a change effort. Our findings show that strong friction did indeed occur between old and new institutional factors, but that the key factor enabling the change effort to advance and finally gain legitimation was the encouragement and support in the institutional change process of opportunity-based and emerging changes, as proposed by the technological change literature.