From IT fashion to governmental actions: juxtaposition of leaders’ sensemaking and social learning on IT-enabled senior-care services

Purpose The advancement of information technology (IT) offers opportunities for leveraging senior-care services, a unique public service. Understanding how government leaders translate IT fashions into governmental actions is critically important for both scholars and practitioners in the current digital governance landscape. Drawing on sensemaking and social learning literature, we propose that government leaders’ IT fashion-grabbing and social learning influence their IT beliefs and the consequent governmental actions, including structural governance specification for and material engagement in IT-enabled senior-care services. Design/methodology/approach This study combined a survey methodology and objective data collection about reginal characters. 285 valid observations of town-level local governments in Beijing, China, were obtained. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for model testing. Robustness checks were conducted. Findings The results validated the effects of government leaders’ grabbing and social learning practices on organizational actions on IT-enabled senior-care services and these effects were mediated by their meaning-construction on IT. Furthermore, leaders’ construction of IT beliefs exerted a larger effect on symbolic actions than on substantive actions of local governments. Practical implications Government leaders need more prospective sensemaking with insight on plausibility and future to adapt to the fast-changing IT fashion. Leaders’ social learning is important for their meaning-construction and governmental arrangement in IT-enabled senior-care service delivery. Originality/value This study contributes to juxtaposition of sensemaking and social learning for explaining the new IT-enabled senior-care service delivery.