Performative Actions in E-Adoption Processes: Strategic Efforts in a Local Government

In this paper the concept of performative action is introduced to address how individuals can engage in IT adoption processes. The study investigates how local government employees adopt and localize ideas from a Danish National IT initiative called eDay3. Particularly the actions of a project manager are highlighted to portray how individuals can engage with historically produced discourses making them performative. The case study presented spans a two-year time period and demonstrates a double loop adoption process. First, a localization-process as discourse is used to support the specificity and variance of the specific local government. Second, a feedback loop re-attaching the localized project to the national reform program in order to maintain and protect the newly formed local practices. The study concludes that individuals actively struggle for social positions in IT adoption processes. Through the use of performative actions the positions are never stable and firm but constantly enacted and changed in discursive practices.