Leaders as Mediators of Global Megatrends: A Diagnostic Framework

When overarching ideas such as that of eGovernment begin to travel (through different types of policy documents), this causes the operative leaders to play a specific role in translating the ideas into their own division’s “language” (Røvik, 2000; Latour, 1996; Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996). Local authorities are placed in the role of institutional mediators between global megatrends and local conditions (Anttiroikko, 2002; O’Toole, 2007). In the perspective of translation institutional entrepreneurs has an important role in organisational transformation processes (see Di Maggio, 1988; Lawrence & Phillips, 2004). Institutional entrepreneurs are described as “organised actors with sufficient resources” (Di Maggio, 1988, p.14) whom, by attributing their subjective and intersubjective meaning to the idea, construct meaningful means of using it, which also can be seen as an activity of sense making (Weick, 1995; Orlikowski & Gash, 1994). ABSTRACT