Process Virtualization Theory in the Public Sector

Diploma Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Miscellaneous grade: 1.0 University of Mannheim course: E-Business & E-Government language: English abstract: The following diploma thesis is a scale development study in context of the public sector. A set of sound measurement models had to be developed for measuring an initially supplied not yet quantitatively evaluated conceptual model of Barth and Veit (2011). As the individual parts of the conceptual model are not of a directly observable nature scale development techniques had to be used to make them empirically manifest (e.g. DeVellis 2003; Gerbing and Anderson 1988). A stringent procedure based on literature recommendations and best practices was followed as the development of reliable and valid scales is not trivial. There- fore a generalized scale development procedure and its corresponding subparts were derived of a large amount of available publications from different fields of research like information systems operations management psychometrics etc. Two specific processes of the public sector namely the civil marriage and residency change were used as context for phrasing meaningful sentences and cap- turing a broad range of citizens' resistance towards conducting a public process virtually. Eventually the measurement models should be usable to easily apply the conceptual model to ideally any process of the public sector.After the creation of an initial pool of items resulting preliminary scales were qualitatively tested and refined in multiple steps ranging from expert opinions to comprehensiveness checks and particular sorting procedures. Notably 62 distinct qualitative interviews with citizens were accomplished to reduce the set of indicators from 150 to 64. In a following step a quantitative survey was employed which yielded around 350 responses as a basis for data preparation and statistical analyses. This statistical evaluation procedure was twofold. First ge