Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses Øystein Sæbø, Leif Skiftenes Flak ⁎, Maung K. Sein Department of Information Systems, University of Agder, Service Box 422, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway abstract article info Available online 10 May 2011 Keywords: e-Government Genre theory Stakeholder theory Analytic framework Conventionally, e-Participation initiatives are considered to be successful only if users use these services. While the growing body of e-Participation literature has listed and studied challenges and barriers to achieving this end, conceptual clarity on why such projects are considered as failures is yet to be achieved. We argue that this is due to the inadequate understanding of the complex stakeholder dynamics of an e-Participation project. In this paper, we seek to address this knowledge gap by proposing that using stakeholder theory complemented by genre theory provides an interpretive lens to understand the complexities in the development and use of such projects. To illustrate our proposed lens, we apply it to analyze an e-Participation project in Norway at its development and use phases. Our findings indicate that a key factor that influences the success of e-Participation initiatives is high saliency of at least one stakeholder group at various phases of the initiatives. The saliency of stakeholders changes over the life of a project and hence the salient stakeholder also varies. Consequently, it is not essential for the same stakeholder group to be salient throughout, only that some stakeholders remain salient. Our interpretive lens also extends the discourse on stakeholder theory. In traditional management literature stakeholder theory is meant as a tool to identify stakeholders' groups to which management or owner of an organization should pay attention. We show that it is also useful to identify which stakeholder groups will act to protect their interests. Based on our findings, we propose insights into studying and developing e-Participation projects. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In spite of a huge increase in the number of e-Participation service offerings, a number of studies indicate that, with some notable exceptions, the vast majority of projects have not yet delivered their promise (Sæbø, Rose, & Flak, 2008). Simply put, users do not seem to be using these services as intended (Esteves & Joseph, 2008). This is considered an indication of failure. In fact, this observation has been made about the broader area of e-Government in general (Sæbø et al., 2008). This state of affairs has been attributed to several reasons in the literature. A series of stakeholder consultations in the UK suggests that the sheer complexity of social and managerial issues provide formidable challenges for further development of e-Government initiatives (Irani, Elliman, & Jackson, 2007). Several specific challenges have been identified. These include the complexity in establishing and maintaining the integration of agencies necessary to develop seamless services to citizens (Strejcek & Theil, 2003), the lack of managerial innovation (Moon & Norris, 2005), privacy concerns related to sharing and exchanging data (Otjacques, Hitzelberger, & Feltz, 2007), and ordinary citizens' lack of awareness of available government infor- mation (Heeks, 2000). These studies have revealed key socio-organizational aspects that need to be incorporated in e-Participation initiatives. Yet, development of such initiatives is often characterized by a techno-centric approach with minimal citizen involvement (Olphert & Damodaran, 2007). While much effort is spent on developing more and more sophisticated systems and increasing the number of services to provide to citizens, inadequate attention is paid to the reason why the purported intended users—the citizens (C)—would adopt these services and interact with the government (G) through these systems (Carter & Belanger, 2005). The problem is arguably even more complex. In any e-Government initiative, a variety of entities other than citizens and government are involved. Even these entities are not homogeneous; they consist of a variety of categories that have different agendas and goals. For example, within government, there are administrators and politicians who differ in terms of what they aim to accomplish through an e-Government initiative. Such nuanced differences determine to a great extent the success or failure of such initiatives. For instance, in the realms of e- Participation, politicians have been identified as an inhibiting factor (Mahrer & Krimmer, 2005). Our lack of understanding of the political interactions of these entities hinders us from gaining a clearer perspective of e-Government efforts (Heeks & Stanforth, 2007). We argue in this paper that simply focusing on the citizen—and consequently, considering use by citizens as a success measure— Government Information Quarterly 28 (2011) 416–425 ⁎ Corresponding author. Fax: +47 38 14 10 29. E-mail address: Leif.Flak@uia.no (L.S. Flak). 0740-624X/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2010.10.005 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Government Information Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf