A SOCIAL ACTION PERSPECTIVE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

The purpose of this paper is to outline a social action perspective of information systems development (ISD) and provide some evidence for its fruitfulness. Earlier theories have looked upon ISD as a technical engineering process or as a technical process with behavioral consequences. These theories have not proved adequate for understanding the systems development process. The social action perspective as advocated in this paper leads one to realize that ISD is a social process which relies on technology. The paper introduces the following basic building blocks of the social action perspective for ISD. human interests, objective and subjective knowledge and meanings, power, conflict, resistance, and consensus formation. It is shown how these social action concepts contribute to our understanding of the systems development process. Evidence for this is presented from case studies. It is concluded that any theory of ISD which does not explicitly deal with the key phenomena of social action is inadequate. In practice, ISD is politics first, engineering second

Social dynamics of early human development

Journal ArticleI present the outlines of theory of social dynamics that combines a dynamic systems perspective and a Gibsonian ecological perspective to an understanding of the development of action (Fogel, in press). Different physical and social environments afford different opportunities for action. A rattle affords noise making, for example. To activate this affordance, the individual has to identify the specific microscopic movements necessary to evoke sound from the rattle: the arm and wrist movements related to shaking. How does a baby come to acquire this action? Partly by exploratory play, but at first this play is embedded in social interaction. A social dynamic perspective suggests that during adult-infant interaction, adults identify action affordances that the infant is potentially capable of doing. Then, development occurs by two processes. In the first, the adult engages a child in a joint construction of the action afforded by the situation, helping the child perform the action via a co-regulation of the relevant movement parameters (e. g., demonstrating rattle shaking then placing the object in the infant's hand, or moving the infant's hand. In the second process, the adult transmits or receives information that highlights the relevant parameters of movement related to action affordances

Building Community Sustainability with Geographic Information Systems

Conceptualization of Green IS must look beyond the limited horizon of profit-driven corporate sustainability to reframe the activities and policies of communities to produce adaptable, sustainable, and resilient practices. As web-enabled Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and low cost spatial analytic systems become accessible, communities gain a generative capacity to pursue community sustainability as they face increasing environmental and growth challenges. By expanding the boundaries of Design Science Research, we argue that information systems have a generative capacity, which enables reframing and recasting reality based upon alternative values. This surfaces the opportunity for the design and implementation of GIS to reduce information asymmetry, empower communities, and provide a history of decision-making, thereby enabling monitoring of the components of sustainability. Community members may incorporate local data, present alternative development/conservation scenarios, and gain a voice in the planning process. From this perspective the system design process itself represents an opportunity for situated social action in the formation and implementation of community values. Synthesizing these perspectives, we propose that GIS development and use at a community level is a potentially constructive social process of value formation which can enable communities to envision their own futures

Proceedings of the Inaugural Meeting ofAIS SIGPrag

The Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS Research (SIGPrag) was approved by the Association for InformationSystems (AIS) council at its June 2008 meeting in Gallway. The motivation for this initiative is the growingrecognition of the importance of theorizing the IT artifact and its organizational and societal context from apragmatic and action-oriented perspective. SIGPrag\u27s mission is to provide a much-needed centre of gravity and tofacilitate exchange of ideas and further development of this area of IS scholarship.In summary, pragmatist IS research rests on the following set of assumptions: * Human life is a life of activity.* Humans do things that effect changes in their environment and/or within themselves.* Doing permeates thinking, conceptualizations and language use.* Human consciousness is a practical one that is in constant interplay with interventive, investigative, andevaluative actions.* Practical consciousness is formed by experience from previous actions and participation in social contexts.* IT and information systems are fundamentally symbolic language systems.* Linguistically expressed collective presuppositions, norms and categories (such as those embedded in ITand information systems) serve human activity and life.* The true value of IT and information systems lies in their potential to support human communication andcollaboration central to human activity and life.For more information about SIGPrag, its mission and current activities, please visit http://www.sigprag.org/The inaugural meeting of SIGPrag is to be held in Paris on Dec 14, 2008, in conjunction with the InternationalConference on Information Systems (ICIS). The meeting will consist of two parts, a scientific meeting and abusiness meeting. For the scientific meeting a call for position papers was issued in the summer of 2008, whichresulted in the following papers being selected for presentation:• What Kind of Pragmatism in Information Systems Research? by Göran Goldkuhl.• Pragmatic Approach in IS Projects Grounded on Recognised Frameworks by Raija Halonen.• Co-Design as Social Constructive Pragmatism by Mikael Lind, Ulf Seigerroth, Olov Forsgren, and AndersHjalmarsson.• Pragmatism and Information Systems (IS): Neurophilosophical approach by Garikoitz Lerma Usabiagaand Francesc Miralles.• Sustainability Communication: A role for IT and IS in relating business and Society by Mark Aakhus andPaul Ziek.• Managing Ambiguity while Reducing Uncertainty by Gianni Jacucci and Mike Martin.• A Pragmatic Conception of Service Encounters by Mikael Lind and Nicklas Salomonson.• Making the Web More Pragmatic: Exploring the Potential Of Some Pragmatic Concepts For IS ResearchAnd Development by Jens Allwood and Mikael Lind.• Introducing Human in Complex System: A Cognitive Pragmatics Based Model by G. Lortal.• The Pragmatic Web: An Application View by Mareike Schoop.• Design Research from a Communicative Perspective: How to Design Things with Words by Hans Weigand.• Representation and Correspondence: On the Validity of the Representation Assumption in InformationSystem Design by Pär J. Ågerfalk and Owen Eriksson.• Habermas’ theory in action by Jan L.G. Dietz.• Challenges to Information Systems Development by Roland Kaschek.The idea behind this inaugural meeting was to bring together people that share an affinity with pragmatist ISresearch and to initiate a scientific discussion about the role of pragmatist research in IS. We certainly hope that thisdiscussion will continue over the years to come. The papers are freely available for download athttp://www.sigprag.org

Triple Task and the Philosophers Stone: discovering a methodology for systemic and reflective participation

The European Union Framework Package 7 project POINT (Policy Influence of Indicators) is exploring the use of indicators in several domains (most specifically sustainable development) in order to see how their value and ultimate usefulness can be maximised. One key aspect of POINT is to assess the ways in which groups and communities work to gain greatest use of information. Using an innovative methodology called 'Triple Task', the authors are applying a three cornered approach in order to gain an understanding as to how groups work, how they assesses themselves and how they appear to function from an external perspective. In this paper, the three stages of Triple Task are described and explored. Task One is effectively an adapted 'soft systems' approach, encouraging a group to work together on problem identification and action planning. Task 2 is a reflective, 'outside in', external review of group dynamics which makes use of the 'BECM' matrix for group systemic assessment first developed by the Systems Group at the UK Open University. Task 3 is an 'inside-out' self-reflective group analysis applying the well-known SYMLOG method. By use of a tri-analysis involving both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the authors show how during Triple Task managed events a 'story' emerges of group learning and development and, how a potential diagnostic tool for educing purposeful group behaviour has emerged. The research is in its early stages, but following the analysis of numerous groups from a range of sectors from across the European Union the authors are gaining clarity over what features are most consistent between purposeful group behaviour and group makeup. This is leading towards the development of a 'Triple Task' heuristic device for measuring and even predicting the systemic and reflective capacities of specific groups and communities and this could in turn result in means for improving participative effectiveness in a wide range of social engagements.

Incentives for nature conservation in urban landscapes

The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of ecological-economic incentives in conservation policy. Our approach uses strategies for establishing habitat networks as an example to develop spatially-oriented incentives in urban landscapes. The incentives should ideally consider aspects both of ecological effectiveness and economic efficiency. Our understanding of ecological-economic incentives reaches beyond this stage: not only must economic incentives in environmental policy be based on ecological knowledge, but also, they have to consider social aspects of implementation and acceptance. The ecological analysis of strategies for species protection in urban landscapes leads to management recommendations as a basis for the specification of environmental policy goals. Based on ecological knowledge, which shows where to invest scarce resources, the economic perspective aims at analysing and evaluating environmental policy instruments for their suitability and efficiency. The ecological and economic research is to be combined with a sociological approach, which investigates the choice and application of environmental policy measures as a system of social action. The analysis of problems of implementation and acceptance will be used to support the introduction of new instruments or to improve existing incentive systems related to nature conservation in urban landscapes. For this purpose, a survey was carried out on the use of environmental policy instruments (regulation, planning, economic incentives, communication, information) in German cities in 1997. Furthermore, two existing economic instruments in German nature protection policy are analysed in detail: the compensation charge as part of the impact regulation and incentive programmes on the level of the German federal states that offer financial incentive measures for nature protection. --

The value chain approach in one health: Conceptual framing and focus on present applications and challenges

The value chain (VC) is a major operational concept for socioeconomic analysis at meso level. Widely mobilized in development practice, it is still undergoing conceptual and practical refining, e.g., to take account of environmental and social sustainability. Briefly, VC refers to a system of value creation through the full set of actors, links, technical and commercial activities and flows involved in the provision of a good or service on a market. In the past decade, this concept has been promoted in the management of animal health. In particular, the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has triggered an interdisciplinary dynamic including VC analysis as a central tool. These efforts promoted participatory investigation methods in the analysis of health systems. Using qualitative and quantitative data, these methods acknowledge the usefulness of actors' involvement and knowledge, hence facilitating the transdisciplinarity needed for effective action. They fit into adaptive and action-oriented strategies, fostering stakeholders' participation. Recent research on HPAI surveillance in South-East Asia merged VC and participatory approaches to develop innovative tools for analyzing constraints to information flow. On-going interventions for HPAI prevention and control as well as the prevention of other emerging zoonotic risks in Africa are presently building on this VC framework to develop strategies for its application at national and regional scales. Based on the latter experiences, this article proposes a field-based perspective on VC applications to animal and public health systems, within a One Health approach responding to the overall challenge of complexity

How do Narratives and Brains Mutually Influence each other? Taking both the ‘Neuroscientific Turn’ and the ‘Narrative Turn’ in Explaining Bio-Political Orders

Introduction: the neuroscientific turn in political science The observation that brains and political orders are interdependent is almost trivial. Obviously, political orders require brain processes in order to emerge and to remain in place, as these processes enable action and cognition. Conversely, every since Aristotle coined man as “by nature a political animal” (Aristotle, Pol.: 1252a 3; cf. Eth. Nic.: 1097b 11), this also suggests that the political engagements of this animal has likely consequences for its natural development, including the development of its psychological functions. Given these mutual interdependencies, it is remarkable that only since the 1960s, the more general domain of ‘biopolitics’ has attracted attention though first particularly in the form of behavioral politics (Alford and Hibbing). Since then biopolitics has gained in interest, so much so that different subdomains can be identified. Indeed, a 2008 review of the field of biopolitics identified five ‘headings’ of it: “(1) the case for a ‘more biologically oriented political science’, (2) ‘biologically related’ public policy issues, (3) physiological measures of political attitudes and behaviour, (4) the influence of physiological factors on actual political behaviour, and (5) the manner in which our species’ evolutionary history has left homo sapiens genetically endowed with certain social and political behavioural tendencies” (Somit and Peterson 43). Striking is how the relation between biology and politics is taken here in a rather unidirectional way, emphasizing particularly the decisive power of biology upon politics. The reverse relation is not mentioned specifically, reflecting the field of biopolitics, perhaps until quite recently. This absence of studies of political influences on our biology may have to do with the difficulty in investigating such influences. Empirical studies in biopolitics have two foci, broadly speaking: genetics and the brain, both of which have turned out to be complex and dynamic phenomena (Alford and Hibbing). Yet the studies of genetics and brain processes have made much progress in the last few decades, thanks to the development of research instruments - like fMRI brain scanners and TMS brain stimulation instruments - and of computational tools for data analysis and the simulation of explanatory models. For the field of biopolitics it is particularly relevant that within cognitive neuroscience the study of social and political issues has witnessed an increasing interest of researchers even more recently. Indeed, aware of the enabling and mediating role of the brain regarding those issues, a truly ‘neuroscientific turn’ can be observed in the social sciences, testified for example by the emergence of the field of ‘neuropolitics’ (Connolly; Vandervalk). Developing a systematic neuropolitics or biopolitics in general is a difficult challenge because of the wealth of causal influences on and interdependencies between biological, brain, cognitive and socio-political factors. Taking a somewhat more abstract perspective, this paper focuses on the process of emerging complexity in adaptive systems, enabling those to conduct ever more complex processes. Yet, parallel to that development can be observed that such systems, or organisms, are also capable in reducing the complexity of the information they are to process. Once they’re capable of developing and adjusting such compressed and complex representations of information, those systems or organisms can handle more information faster and more efficient and adaptive, yielding important benefits to the organism in navigating its environment (Halford, Wilson and Phillips). Before focusing on the role of narrative as a cognitive strategy for such a reduction of informational complexity, I will discuss the development of stable structures and increasing complexity in dynamic systems. Such a more general perspective prepares our discussion of the structures of both narratives and politics and in doing so contributes to the explanation of their interaction

A critical approach to the development of a framework to support the evaluation of information strategies in UK Higher Education Institutions

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of LutonThe objective of this thesis has been to develop a framework to support the evaluation of information strategies of UK higher education institutions (REIs). For this study the theoretical and empirical literature was extensively reviewed and four substantial pieces of empirical research were conducted. These included action research CAR), two pieces of ethnographic research, and a case study. The AR analysed problems encountered with a Student Records System at a UK university and identified both immediate and deeper causes for these problems. Ethnography I involved the researcher's participation in the information strategy development process at the same university: This included consideration of the development processes adopted and also the way that decisions were taken. Ethnography II consisted of participant observation at a range of workshops and conferences organised by the Joint Information Systems Committee on information strategy development at UK REIs. These provided a broad picture of information strategy development procedures being adopted across these HEls. The case study investigated in detail the implementation of an information strategy at a university different from that examined in AR and Ethnography I. These empirical investigations all included in-depth interviews. In total 117 people of various levels and backgrounds involved in information strategies and associated information systems within UK HEIs were interviewed. Key findings from the empirical research were: Many HErs in the process of developing an information strate!:,,),, or about to do so, were not fully sure how this should be achieved nor the extent of the likely benefits. Most HEIs implementing information strategies were using top-down directed system approaches, leaving little room for more inclusive bottom-up emergent planning. Information strategies need to be developed and evaluated using strongly human-centred methods, primarily because it became apparent that the successful functioning of such a strategy is dependent on the motivation and competencies of the people who create and use the information. Investigations into aspects of information strategy development and implementation need to focus on people's perceptions of the situation rather than seeking an objective truth independent of the participants. This reflects a Kantian perspective of knowledge. Overall, the empirical findings supported the use of a Critical Systems Thinking approach in the evaluation of information strategies at higher education institutions. The development of the evaluative framework, the main objective of the thesis, took place in two phases: developing the framework based on the literature review and revising the framework from the empirical research investigations involving a process of critical iteration. The first phase identified a range of elements associated with an HErs information strategy, and for each element highlighted the relevant theoretical andlor empirical literature that bears on the issues being addressed. In particular, the framework is strongly influenced by insights drawn from the work of three key social theorists: Kant, Habermas and Foucault. In addition, the framework includes 'guidelines for evaluation', where these are more practical questions to ask and areas to investigate when evaluating a given element ofthe strategy. The second phase took the framework through a series of reflections and revisions based on the findings from the empirical investigations. In each case, insights were gained that related to the use or applicability ofthe framework. By combining the findings from the theoretical and empirical literature with those from the empirical research, the final framework, which is believed to have filled a gap in the theoretical literature, aims to encompass the complexity of information strategy development and implementation within HEIs. The framework reflects a human-centred and Critical Systems Thinking approach, and is designed to allow potential evaluators to identify underlying causes for the success or failure of an information strategy that is implemented at an HEI