Introducing a Sociomaterial Perspective to Investigate E-learning for Higher Educational Institutions in Developing Countries

E-learning projects in developing countries suffer enormous challenges because of various factors. Particularly, technologies that are designed and developed outside of a developing country context are causing significant problems when implemented in developing countries. So far e-learning studies in developing countries have examined utilization, acceptance, adoption, success and failure using the following factors: culture, human behaviour towards technology, and organizational influences. This paper reviews different theoretical perspectives used so far and determines that they are not capturing the complexity of the environment of e-learning implementations in developing countries. In particular, the inextricable entanglement of people, technology and the environment is under-appreciated. Furthermore, the complex design implications of that entanglement are not well managed. This paper explores the potentiality of ‘sociomateriality’ as a new lens to examine the uptake and design of the virtual learning environment in a developing country context. The framework proposed uses the concept of entanglement for examining technology uptake and the concept of sociomaterial imbrication to investigate the design considerations of the virtual learning environment. The proposed framework will be trialled in a forthcoming research project investigating virtual learning environment implementations in state-owned higher education institutions in a developing country

Developing Imbrications: A New Lens for Understanding Project Management Practice

As long as project failure rates are high, project management research remains an important research avenue for exploration. After decades of study we may have reached the limits of understanding with our current lenses – while small projects have higher success, larger projects remain extremely vulnerable to failure (Hastie and Wojewoda, 2015). The objective of this paper is to explore a new lens for understanding project management practice: the concept of imbrications as developed in sociomaterial perspective. Re-conceptualizing IT projects as locations for building imbrications allows us to theorize about how imbrications are built during the interplay of social agencies (such as carried out in project tasks and control activities) with material agencies (the developing technology and its features). We hope this theoretical contribution to IT project management research provides richer explanatory mechanisms with which, we can understand how to achieve IT project success

THE ROOTS OF THE SOCIOMATERIAL THINKING IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH: A VIEW ON HISTORY AND METHODOLOGY (47)

Researchers who want to adopt a sociomaterial approach often find themselves confused regarding research methods. The paper argues that this confusion can only be clarified through understanding the history and emergence of the sociomaterial thinking. The paper briefly reviews the roots of the sociomaterial thinking in the reference discipline of sociology and information systems. It invites researchers to seek methodological guidance from the wealth of knowledge that have been accumulated over the years

Disrupting Complex Systems with Emerging Technologies: A Study on United States Airport Operations

The number of United States domestic commercial flight passengers are growing every year, which means the number of people checking-in, dropping off their bags, and going through TSA within airports is equally growing. With the increasing number of passengers and aging airports, there are several areas of pain points within airports where passengers hit a bottleneck due to the current systems that airports have in place. There are three main areas that we are going to reference. First the check-in process, where customers have to get their tickets, input identification information, and check-in for their flight. Second, baggage-drop off, where customers get their baggage weighed and tagged. Lastly, is Transport Security Administration (TSA). This is where consumers get their carry-on bags scanned as well as their person. In each of these areas, there are some levels of inconvenience imposed on the customer by the current system. With technological advancements being used in other industries, the goal of this thesis is to look at what existing technologies can be modified and used within airport operations to reduce the long lines that customers face every time they travel

Inter-Organizational Information and Middleware System Projects: Success, Failure, Complexity, and Challenges

Managing projects is firmly driven by its business goals. Simplistically, considering a project as success, or failure, depends on it meeting its objectives and requirements within its resources. While traditional projects are well constructed, Information Systems projects tend to be complex and ill-defined. These problems are exacerbated in contexts of Inter-Organizational Information (IOIS) and Middleware Systems (IOMS). Such Inter-Enterprise System projects are likely to face challenges related to the non-homogeneity of project goals across partners, complexity of relationships within and across organizations, geographical dispersion, legal differences across boundaries, etc. In this paper we explore various approaches identifying outcomes of IS projects: Rational, Narrative, Organizational, and Performative. Furthermore, we identify the complexity and particular challenges of IOIS and IOMS projects and how such approaches towards identifying project success and/or failure are applicable or inapplicable. We conclude with a call for more research to be conducted in this nascent but vital area

Performing Continuity of/in Smart Infrastructure : Exploring Entanglements of Infrastructure and Actions

Nearly everything we do in contemporary organizations and societies builds on some form of infrastructure. Our reliance on infrastructures underscores the importance of the continuity of these infrastructures. However, the infrastructures are inherently unreliable and unpredictable and achieve veneers of permanence and stability only through constant and ongoing efforts. In their functioning, they become established through complex and uncertain processes that involve a number of actors and factors. Consequently, understanding those processes is a key concern for organizations that are responsible for these infrastructures. Traditionally, the literature on the business continuity of organizational functions has emphasized the importance of planning and management approaches. Practitioners and academics have brought forth frameworks to aid organizations in planning and managing their continuity-related issues. The frameworks offer universally applicable processes and procedures that organizations should follow to improve their continuity. However, these frameworks tell little about continuity itself. Organizations rarely function as they document or as management describes organizational work. As such, the complex and uncertain processes of continuity cannot be directly inferred from the documents or from the managerial descriptions of work. If we wish to enact meaningful changes to those complex and uncertain processes through which infrastructure continuity becomes established, we need to understand how those processes unfold in practice. This dissertation focuses on infrastructure continuity in a smart infrastructure context. Smart infrastructures are traditional infrastructures that have been extended with digital technologies. In this research, infrastructure continuity is approached from the perspective of technicians working in the smart infrastructure context. The technicians’ work in these contexts is constitutively entangled with information systems and the technologies that form the infrastructures. As such, the smart infrastructures form an intriguing and fruitful yet rather unexplored context for information systems research. Theoretically, this research builds on sociomaterial theorizing and especially on Karen Barad’s agential realism. The purpose of this dissertation is to increase understanding on how the continuity of smart infrastructure becomes performed. This purpose is explored through six research articles that form the foundations of this dissertation. Methodologically, this research builds on conceptual and empirical research approaches. The conceptual research focuses on developing and clarifying business continuity- and sociomateriality-related concepts and approaches through argumentation and a literature review. The empirical research builds on a qualitative research approach and, more specifically, on ethnographic research. As is typical for ethnographic research, the empirical material was collected from a single organization that was studied extensively over a several-month participant observation. Reflecting the purpose of the study, the ethnography was conducted in a centralized operations center of a smart infrastructure (smart power grid) where technicians work with information systems and technologies. This dissertation contributes to the literature on infrastructure continuity and on sociomateriality. The primary contribution to the infrastructure continuity literature is a performative conceptualization of the infrastructure continuity. This conceptualization suggests that business continuity is not an attribute of any single measure but is an outcome of a joint accomplishment of sociomaterial networks of agencies that becomes established through recurrent actions. As such, the findings of this research challenge some of the taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the literature but also extend the earlier literature. In addition, this dissertation extends discussions on sociomaterial agency. In the light of the findings, when agency is situated in the context of a smart infrastructure, agency becomes historic, polycentric, dynamic, and discontinuous.Lähes kaikki mitä me teemme nyky-yhteiskunnassa nojaa infrastruktuureihin. Voimmekin sanoa elävämme keskellä infrastruktuurien verkostoa. Riippuvaisuutemme infrastruktuureista korostaa niiden toiminnan jatkuvuuden tärkeyttä. Nämä infrastruktuurit ovat kuitenkin perustaltaan epäluotettavia ja arvaamattomia. Niiden toimivuus syntyy monimutkaisten ja epävarmojen prosessien kautta, jotka sisältävät moninaisia toimijoita ja tekijöitä. Näiden prosessien ymmärtäminen on keskeistä organisaatioille, jotka vastaavat näistä infrastruktuureista. Perinteisesti kirjallisuudessa, joka keskittyy toiminnan jatkuvuuteen (eng. business continuity), on korostettu suunnitelmien ja hallinnoinnin merkitystä. Suunnitteluun ja hallinnointiin on kehitetty useita johtamisen viitekehyksiä. Ne tarjoavat universaaleiksi tarkoitettuja määrämuotoisia prosesseja ja menettelytapoja, joita organisaatioiden tulisi noudattaa. Nämä viitekehykset kertovat kuitenkin hyvin vähän siitä mitä tai miten toiminnan jatkuvuus itsessään käytännössä ilmenee. Organisaatiot harvoin toimivat kuten dokumentoivat tai kuten organisaatioiden johto kuvailee toimintaa, joten näistä ei voida suoraan päätellä organisaation toimintaa. Kuitenkin jos haluamme toteuttaa merkityksellisiä muutoksia niihin monimutkaisiin ja epävarmoihin prosesseihin, joiden kautta toiminnan jatkuvuus syntyy, meidän tulee ymmärtää paremmin näitä prosesseja käytännössä. Tässä tietojärjestelmätieteisiin sijoittuvassa väitöskirjassa keskitytään toiminnan jatkuvuuteen älykkäiden infrastruktuurien (eng. smart infrastructure) kontekstissa. Älykkäillä infrastruktuureilla tarkoitetaan tässä tutkimuksessa perinteisiä infrastruktuureja, kuten sähköverkkoja, vedenjakelua, ja tieverkostoa, jotka ovat digitalisoitu. Aihetta lähestytään erityisesti infrastruktuurin parissa toimivien teknikoiden työn kautta. Teknikoiden työ näissä ympäristöissä on nivoutunut kiinteästi yhteen tietojärjestelmien ja teknologioiden kanssa, jotka muodostavat infrastruktuurin. Älykkäät infrastruktuurit muodostavatkin näin erityisesti tietojärjestelmätieteiden tutkimukselle kiinnostavan, mutta vähän tutkitun kontekstin. Tutkimus pohjautuu teoreettisesti sosiomateriaalisuuteen ja nojaa erityisesti Karen Baradin filosofiseen ja teoreettiseen viitekehykseen toimijarealismista (eng. agential realism). Tutkimuksen tavoite on tuottaa ymmärrystä siitä, miten infrastruktuurien jatkuvuus toteutuu käytännössä. Tätä tavoitetta on tässä väitöskirjassa tutkittu kuuden vertaisarvioidun artikkelin kautta. Menetelmällisesti tutkimuksessa on nojattu sekä konseptuaaliseen että empiiriseen tutkimukseen. Konseptuaalinen tutkimus keskittyy toiminnan jatkuvuuden ja sosiomateriaalisuuden käsitteiden ja lähestymistapojen kehittämiseen sekä selventämiseen argumentoinnin ja kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla. Empiirinen tutkimuspohjautuu laadulliseen tutkimusotteeseen ja nojaa etnografiseen tutkimusmenetelmään. Kuten etnografiselle tutkimusmenetelmälle on luonnollista, aineisto pohjautuu pääosin osallistuvaan havainnointiin yhdessä organisaatiossa, jota on tutkittu intensiivisesti. Heijastaen tutkimuksen tavoitetta ja ongelmanasettelua, etnografinen tutkimus suoritettiin älykkään infrastruktuurin (sähköverkon) keskitetyssä valvomossa, jossa teknikoiden työtä tietojärjestelmien ja teknologioiden parissa seurattiin useiden kuukausien ajan. Tutkimuksen tulokset osallistuvat infrastruktuurien toiminnan jatkuvuuden ja sosiomaterialisuuden keskusteluihin. Tutkimuksen keskeisin tulos toiminnan jatkuvuuden tutkimukseen on toiminnan jatkuvuuden konseptualisointi suoritettuna toimintana. Tämän konseptualisoinnin mukaan toiminnan jatkuvuus ei ole jonkin menetelmän ominaisuus vaan jatkuvuus tuotetaan yhteisesti sosiomateriaalisessa toimijoiden verkossa toistuvien tekojen kautta. Tutkimuksen tulokset siis haastavat mutta myös edistävät aiempaa kirjallisuutta toiminnan jatkuvuudesta. Lisäksi, tutkimuksen tulokset edistävät keskusteluita toimijuuden sosiomateriaalisuudesta. Tulosten valossa, kun toimijuutta tarkastellaan infrastruktuurikontekstissa, on toimijuus historiallinen, polysentrinen, dynaaminen ja yllätyksellinen.Siirretty Doriast

Enacting Accountability in IS Research after the Sociomaterial Turn(ing)

Sociomateriality represents an emergent philosophical stance that instantiates an ontological turn towards relationality and materiality in information systems (IS) research. As an emergent perspective or way of seeing, sociomateriality has significant implications for researchers and the practices they employ. If we accept that the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions we enact in our research shape the realities we perceive and create, questions around researchers’ accountability for the realities they produce need to be addressed. The sociomaterial turn(ing) in IS challenges our deeply held assumptions about what constitutes reality. What are these challenges, and how are they being addressed in sociomaterial research? And what implications for accountability in IS research more generally does a turn towards relationality and materiality hold? The objectives of this editorial are: (1) to sensitize IS researchers, irrespective of their ontological and epistemological persuasions, to the field’s turn(ing) toward relationality and materiality; (2) to provide insight into the practices of data generation, analysis, and presentation through which this turn(ing) is being enacted in sociomaterial theorizing; and (3) to contemplate the implications of this turn(ing) for the accountability of IS research more generally

Technology and Sociomaterial Performation

Part 1: IS/IT Implementation and AppropriationInternational audienceOrganizational researchers have acknowledged that understanding the relationship between technology and organization is crucial to understanding modern organizing and organizational change [1]. There has been a significant amount of debate concerning the theoretical foundation of this relationship. Our research draws and extends Deleuze and DeLanda’s work on assemblages and Callon’s concept of performation to investigate how different sociomaterial practices are changed and stabilized after the implementation of new technology. Our findings from an in-depth study of two ambulatory clinics within a hospital system indicate that “perform-ing” of constituting, counter-performing, calibrating, and stratifying explained the process of sociomaterial change and that this process is governed by an overarching principle of “performative exigency”. Future studies on sociomateriality and change may benefit from a deeper understanding of how sociomaterial assemblages are rendered performative