Boundary objects, power, and learning: The matter of developing sustainable practice in organizations

This article develops an understanding of the agential role of boundary objects in generating and politicizing learning in organizations, as it emerges from the entangled actions of humans and non-humans. We offer two empirical vignettes in which middle managers seek to develop more sustainable ways of working. Informed by Foucault’s writing on power, our work highlights how power relations enable and foreclose the affordances, or possibilities for action, associated with boundary objects. Our data demonstrate how this impacts the learning that emerges as boundary objects are configured and unraveled over time. In so doing, we illustrate how boundary objects are not fixed entities, but are mutable, relational, and politicized in nature. Connecting boundary objects to affordances within a Foucauldian perspective on power offers a more nuanced understanding of how ‘the material’ plays an agential role in consolidating and disrupting understandings in the accomplishment of learning

An Analytic Framework for Design-Oriented Research Concepts

Over the last few decades, the field of information systems has shown a steadily increasing interest in design-oriented research. This is manifested through the emergence of different ontological and epistemological positions among IS researchers. Some challenges arise from this development, such as (a) a need to understand design-oriented IS research in relation to design-oriented approaches in other disciplines, and (b) a need for design theory representation that targets and is useful to stakeholders in both research and practice. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding designoriented research, and its implications for research with a focus on meeting the two challenges mentioned above

Designing Collaborative Systems to Enhance Team Performance

Collaborative technologies are widely used to enable teams to function effectively in today’s competitive business environment. However, prior research has been inconclusive regarding the impacts of collaborative technologies on team performance. To address the inconsistencies in prior work, this paper seeks to understand the mediational mechanisms that transmit the effect of collaborative technologies on team performance. Specifically, we theorize that there is a relationship between design features and knowledge contextualization. We further theorize relationships between knowledge contextualization and a team’s capability for collaboration, specifically examining collaboration know-how and absorptive capacity, both of which are expected to influence team performance. We conduct a field study including 190 software project teams from a large organization in China. The results support our theoretical model and demonstrate that design features have an impact on performance outcomes, mediated by collaboration know-how and absorptive capacity

Introduction: Casting new light on old stones

The purpose of this monograph is to take a new look at various aspects of stone artefact analysis that reveal important and exciting new information about the past. This invovles reorienting our methodological approach to stone artefacts as well as the questions asked of them. The papers making up this volume tackle a number of issues that have long been at the heart of archaeology’s problematic relationship with stone artefacts, including our understanding of the dynamic nature of past stoneworking practices, the utility of traditional classificatory schemes, and ways to unlock the vast amount of information about the strategic role of lithic technology that resides in stone artefact assemblages

An Information Systems Design Theory for Service Network Effects

Service platforms make software applications available as a service to end users. Platforms enable noticeable economic benefits for scaling and transforming a business. Their long-term competitiveness is ensured in controlled cooperation with channel intermediaries and network partners. Hence, service platforms must be designed to harness self-enforcing effects of value generation, so-called network effects. In an exaptation of existing knowledge, we present an information systems design theory to inform the design of methods that analyze, describe, and guide the design of service platforms through the means of causal loops and control methods. We describe the theory’s purpose and scope as well as the underlying justificatory knowledge behind the constructs and principles of form and function. The design theory covers the design of all service platform participants and activities as well as their transactions and influences in areas of staged platform authority, using enforcing and incentivizing control methods. We demonstrate the principles of implementation with an expository instantiation and apply it to the M-Engineering service platform, which offers surveillance, control, and data acquisition solutions. Furthermore, we present and discuss testable propositions and a study design to evaluate our design principles

SUPPORTING THE CHALLENGES OF CROSS- BOUNDARY TEAMWORK THROUGH DESIGN SCIENCE RESEARCH

In this doctoral dissertation, I relate six studies I have performed to address three challenges that cross-boundary teams (teams with great knowledge diversity) face: the challenge of coordinating knowledge and contributions, the challenge of forming cooperative attitudes, and the challenge of solving wicked management problems. These studies are inscribed in design science research, which is a paradigm of research aiming to develop prescriptive knowledge through artificial and theoretical contributions for practical problems. The artificial contributions in this research project are (1) the Coopilot App which addresses the coordination challenges by allowing individuals to evaluate how much shared understanding there is between them on the four requirements for coordination (joint objectives, joint commitments, joint resources, and joint risks), and (2) the Team Alignment Map which addresses the cooperation challenges by supporting the emergence of shared leadership through a process of cooperative joint inquiry into the four requirements. Design principles for managing coordination and supporting cooperation (the two first cross-boundary challenges) are drawn from the two artifacts. This manuscript also provides a design theory for managing the third cross-boundary challenge, i.e. wicked problem solving. By comparing the Team Alignment Map with two other similar design science research projects (the Business Model Canvas and the Data Excellence Model), I develop a design theory for visual inquiry tools that help practitioners inquire into specific wicked problems. The theoretical contributions of my research project consist in prescriptions on how team members should interact between them to collaborate effectively and overcome the three cross-boundary challenges. I propose a new conceptualization of cross-boundary teamwork as a process of joint inquiry. The view I propose is different from traditional accounts, in that I stress the importance of language. I highlight the cognitive conditions that should be met through communication to done down the boundaries between cross-boundary team members

Towards a Design Theory for Customer Satisfaction-Oriented IT Vendor Management

IT vendor management (ITVM) plays an increasingly relevant role for IT organizations; many companies already spend more than half their IT budgets on services from external providers. These providers are often in direct contact with internal IT and business staff, thus significantly impacting their satisfaction. Although recent studies reveal that companies are often dissatisfied with external IT suppliers, the ITVM literature does not propose practices that directly address customer satisfaction. We extend the ITVM literature by developing a design theory for customer satisfaction-oriented ITVM. To answer our research question, we have been conducting an action research study at a professional service company. Our work makes a twofold contribution. First, we present generalized design principles (DP) for implementing customer satisfaction-oriented ITVM. Second, we explain why these DPs should be considered by organizations seeking to enhance customer satisfaction and how these DPs should be implemented