New Technologies, Embedded Values, and Strategic Change: Evidence From the U.K. Voluntary Sector

Abstract

Advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the capability to support strategic innovation within voluntary organizations as they seek to respond to shifts in their environments. Evidence from this study of two U.K. voluntary organizations demonstrates that they are using ICTs to reconfigure key information flows in support of enhanced campaigning and more effective user services. The study also reveals that adherence to embedded values and relationships tempers the extent to which the organizations are able to exploit opportunities for radical shifts in organizational arrangements that the transformational potential of the technologies makes possible. This article describes the way in which emergent tensions have been reconciled as both organizations seek to exploit the transformational capability of ICTs in ways that accommodate, and largely sustain, their organizational values.