The Diffusion of Digital Services in the Public Administration: The Leadership Role of Mayors

This paper examines how various characteristics of top executives influence the decision to digitalize, focusing particularly on the leader's human capital, tenure, and personal relationships. While existing evidence on technology diffusion primarily centers on private organizations, this study takes a novel approach by investigating public institutions, specifically the public administration of Italian municipalities and their mayors. We employ a time-to-event model, analyzing the adoption of the e-payment service provider (PagoPA) by Italian municipalities from 2012 to 2021. The findings reveal that the speed of adoption of digital technologies by the PA of Italian municipalities does not depend on the human capital of the mayor. Aligning with existing literature in the strategy domain, we find that mayor's tenure has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the adoption of new technologies. Finally, we observe that personal ties with high-ranking supervisors significantly accelerate the adoption of digital technologies.