Factors that influence information sharing,collaboration, and coordination across administrative agencies at a Chinese university

Information and communications technology (ICT) improves the effectiveness and efficiency of government affairs. However, studies on the application of ICT in the educational administrative field are scarce. Through a mixed method approach, the current study focused on the application of ICT in educational administration to enhance collaborative work across different administrative agencies in an university. A Chinese university was taken as an example. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 194 staff members of the student affairs office and the academic affairs office. The results of the structural equation modeling were explained by analyzing interviews with nine leaders from the aforementioned departments. We found that institution authority and information security exert a significantly positive effect on the degree of information sharing and the effect of agency collaboration, whereas cost has a significantly negative effect. Inter-organizational trust and organizational compatibility have a significant positive influence on the effect of agency collaboration. However, these factors do not have a significant influence on the degree of information sharing because of difficulties in differentiating them in the information sharing stage. The “operational abilities” factor does not have a significant influence on the degree of information sharing and agency collaboration, which can be attributed to the background of this study. Information sharing has a negative influence on agency collaboration, which contradicts our hypotheses. The nature and characteristics of information and departments may be acceptable explanations to this phenomenon, which we obtained from the qualitative analysis.