A Collective Action Perspective on Technological Innovation in Business/Government Networks

A major challenge for European governments is solving the dilemma of increasing security and control of international trade, while at the same time reducing the administrative overhead. The EU focuses on the introduction of paperless IS to tackle this. In order to really bring benefits for both parties and address the dilemma, it becomes increasingly important that governments and businesses look for alternative innovative solutions that go beyond simply replacing paper-based systems with IT. However the EU works with a predefined, long-term agenda which is linked to the EU legislation. Even if such alternative innovative solutions are developed, they are doomed to fail, if a network of powerful actors is not (or is inappropriately) mobilized to bring the desired change up to the legislative level. There is only limited understanding about how such networks can be mobilized. In this paper, we investigate the Beer Living Lab (Beer LL) pilot project applying the collective action model of institutional innovation of Hargrave and Van de Ven. The model appears to be an interesting lens to analyze the eCustoms developments.