Architecting IT governance: A value-alignment model for IT-enabled public innovation

Abstract

While digital transformation is a primary catalyst for change in the public sector, achieving positive outcomes requires continuous governance innovation and strategic alignment between public managers and their authorizing environments. However, current models of IT-enabled value creation generally fail to account for the deeply political mandates, inter-organizational coordination challenges, and legitimacy requirements inherent to digital government, and do not sufficiently theorize the strategic proactivity of managers navigating complex authorizing environments. To address this theoretical gap, this paper proposes a novel value-alignment model for IT-enabled public innovation, drawing upon Moore’s public value framework and integrating Venkatraman’s strategic orientation construct. The model is developed through an abductive theory-building design combining a literature review, exploratory interviews with e-government professionals, and secondary survey data on digital readiness across public sector organizations. The resulting framework posits three core relationships: public value alignment drives operational capacity, political legitimacy ensures resource sustainability, and strategic proactivity directly generates public value creation. By providing a robust theoretical architecture grounded in rigorous construct development, this paper contributes a new conceptual lens for understanding how strategic alignment and political legitimacy interact to foster governance innovation in inter-organizational networks. The proposed model establishes the necessary theoretical foundation for future empirical validation, with subsequent research aiming to test these constructs and their relationships through formal exploratory factor analysis and a comprehensive, pan-European, large-n survey study.