3 new scientific publications to discover !

A collaborative ecosystem of diverse stakeholders is seen as critical in Smart Cities for solving complex public problems and overcoming socio-technical hurdles. However, little is known about the factors that may increase collaboration amongst smart city stakeholders.

 

Through a digital government lens, we first elaborate the nature of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the smart city. Then, we adopt a contingency approach to unpack the factors that affect the intensity of collaboration between the stakeholders in the smart city ecosystem. To characterize the ecosystem, we use the quadruple-helix framework.

 

Through the perspective of the local government, we derive hypotheses on whether certain factors lead to more intensive collaboration, which are tested on a sample of Belgian municipalities. Our findings reveal the importance of smart city strategies for intensifying collaboration between the local government and stakeholders in the ecosystem. Moreover, we also find that for large ecosystems, a smart city manager or department may facilitate collaboration amongst stakeholders. Taken together, our findings indicate that there are certain configurational approaches to increasing collaboration in smart cities, which will depend on the context of a city.

 

 

This paper aims to understand the different resilience pathways local governments may take during moments of crisis, specifically focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. Through survey responses from local administrations in Wallonia, Belgium, we consider how varied contexts led to different strategic resilience pathways. These pathways range from static (i.e., no strategy) to innovative change. Our findings highlight that digital technology solutions may play a role in supporting resilience across the different pathways. Therefore, we adopt strategic public management literature to suggest propositions for future research to test the specific role that digital technologies play in supporting resilience within local administrations.

Working within the theoretical framework set by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) literature, this paper clarifies how psychological factors (emotions, attitudes, beliefs, and information-seeking) affect skill development in the context of smart farming technologies.

Interviews with multiple stakeholders from the agriculture sectors of three European countries (Belgium, Italy, and the United Kingdom) were used to develop a new conceptual model that attempts to generalize the complex interplay existing between skills and psychological factors in the context of smart technology adoption. This conceptualization provides a systematic view of the correlation between skills and psychological factors, complements the TAM by introducing the new concept of attitude to learning, and clarifies how the interplay between cognitive and emotional components influences the decisions to adopt and use smart technologies.

In addition to these theoretical contributions, the paper emphasizes the importance of designing policy initiatives that tackle both cognitive and emotional barriers to the adoption of smart technologies, urging decision makers to move away from the simplistic assumption that increasing the digital skills of potential users automatically leads to growth in the adoption and implementation of smart technologies.