SOCIAL PRACTICE DESIGN (SPD), PATHOS, IMPROVISATION, MOOD, AND BRICOLAGE: THE MEDITERRANEAN WAY TO MAKE PLACE FOR IT?

Our proposal for Social Practice Design (SPD), i.e., the design of social practices – in itself a social design activity -, seeks to ensure that the potential benefits of envisioned novel technologies can be realized, by increasing the bias towards the social in Information Systems Development (ISD). SPD is a form of intervention research or action research based on counselling. It can be considered an extension of Participatory Design (PD) approaches to the implementation phase of information systems. It regards the concept and participative introduction of new things to do, or of new ways to do things, by humans, in order to make place for technology (Ehn 2006), and in order to resolve a variety of other pending social problems in organisations. In this paper we present SPD as a fully phenomenology-based approach, we reason about its stand in the IS discipline, and we briefly describe and point to an application for a European research project. What characterize our position in defining SPD are Claudio Ciborra’s Pathos, Improvisation, Caretaking, Bricolage, and other key concepts he puts forth in order to shift the ISD focus from ‘method’, and direct it ‘on human existence and everyday life’ (Ciborra 2002). We are motivated in this choice by the quest for more impact of ISD research on ISD practice, and our belief that phenomenology and counselling are the right recipe ingredients for this. The approach of Social Practice Design is based on the idea that problem solutions are in the hands of the organisation’s personnel, and that person centred counselling approaches are capable of empowering them and support them to success. It is well known that social practices cannot be ‘engineered’ but that they are evolving as part of people’s activities of integrating a new technology into their ways of doing. Using the word ‘design’ we wish to stress intentionality, proactiveness, creativity and planning as necessary ingredients of organisational innovation processes; i.e., we underline the usefulness of the cognition of the necessity of a conscious design approach to the development of innovative social practices. Thus, our choice of an oxymoron in the SPD title. In structure, SPD is similar to any methodology for the social, i.e., it includes multiple perspectives into the usual triad of scientific paradigms: observation, analysis, and synthesis. Its core actions reside in the two basic phases of the ‘design’ approach for innovating social practices: • an ethnographic analysis phase to identify outstanding problems in the area of social practice • a creative design phase for developing social practice innovations We judge the quality of the SPD approach by three requirements (Baskerville and Myers 2004): a contribution to practice (the action), a contribution to research (the theory), the criteria by which to judge the research, and we show explicitly how the research in the case meets these criteria

Information system development in a process management environment: the dynamics of improvisation and bricolage during embedded software design

The main objective of this thesis is to make a contribution to knowledge regarding the nature of improvisation and bricolage activities in the practice of embedded software design and how the tensional relationship between process management and improvisation and bricolage can be balanced. There is a lack of understanding embedded systems development in practice, and how the difficulties correspond to prescribed and emergent processes in this context. In order to address this knowledge gap I conducted an in‐depth case study of an embedded system development project in the German automobile context between December 2004 and November 2008. The research adopted an interpretive approach, which involved the collection and analysis of qualitative data. Empirical data that was derived through interviews and observation revealed new insights as to how embedded systems are developed in practice. I adopt the position that emergent processes occur not randomly, but as purposeful agents that navigate through a turbulent environment of ongoing need to improvise with the items at hand. The finding indicates that the success to achieve the aims is bound to the capabilities to be continuously reflexive and induce corrective actions as appropriate. A theoretical conceptualisation disclosed measures that may enhance the capacity to be reflexive. The findings implied that process management frameworks help as scaffolding in order to practice improvisation and bricolage as a coping strategy. Moreover, improving the capabilities to cope with challenges means enhancing reflexive capabilities. The original contribution of this research is founded on rich descriptions and interpretations as to how embedded systems are developed in practice, and the theoretical conceptualisation that can aid to balance the tension between process management and improvisation and bricolage

The Enactment of Methodology: The Case of Developing a Multimedia Information System

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the utilization and enactment of information systems development (ISD) methodologies in development projects. To contribute to the scientific documentation of methodology enactment, we provide an empirically grounded study of the practical use of development methodologies in a project, in which, on the basis of a defined systems development methodology, a process unfolded that resulted in the development of a multimedia information system (MMIS). On the basis of understanding the enactment of methodology as organizational innovation, we present an integrative framework, which allows us to investigate the relation between individual actors, structural elements, and the interactive process of systems development in practice. This results in a richer understanding, shows how the methodology emerged in practice, and provides a basis for reflecting on that emergence in order to draw lessons about systems development practice and theory

Hospitality Analysis of IS Innovation

The problematic nature of popular structured methodologies and methodological frames that ‘straightjacket’ the complex social and organizational processes encompassing system development have been widely reported but few theoretically informed analyses or remedies have been proposed. We draw upon Ciborra’s insightful concept of Xenia (i.e. hospitality) to reveal the intrinsic and heterogeneous nature of the socio-technical interplay underlying processes of organizational innovation mediated through technologies. Social processes of development and implementation are illuminated through the notion of hospitality which offers interesting insights into ‘messy’ socio-technical dynamics, often invisible and ignored by structured methodologies

Distributed development of large-scale distributed systems: the case of the particle physics grid

Developing a Grid within High Energy Physics for the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator is characterised as a highly collaborative, distributed and dynamic systems development effort. This research examines the way this distributed Grid is developed, deployed and provided as a service to the thousands of physicists analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider. The particle physics community has always been at the forefront of computing with a tradition of working in large distributed collaborations, therefore providing a "distinctive" case of distributed systems development practice. The focus of concern is the collaborative systems development practices employed by particle physicists in their attempt to develop a usable Grid. The research aims to offer lessons and practical recommendations to those involved in globally distributed systems development and to inform the information systems development literature. Global software development presents unaddressed challenges to organisations and it is argued that there is an urgent need for new systems development practices and strategies to be created that can facilitate and embrace the rapid changes of the environment and the complexities involved in such projects. The contribution of the study, therefore, is a framework of guidance towards engendering what the author defines as "Hybrid Experimental Agile Distributed Systems Development Communities" revealing a set of dynamic collaborative practices for those organisational contexts engaged in distributed systems development. The framework will allow them to reflect on their own practice and perhaps foster a similarly dynamic flexible community in order to manage their global software development effort. The research is in the form of an interpretative qualitative exploratory case study, which draws upon Activity Theory, and frames the Grid's distributed development activity as a complex overarching networked activity system influenced by the context, the community's tools, rules, norms, culture, history, past experiences, shared visions and collaborative way of working. Tensions and contradictions throughout the development of this Grid are explored and surfaced, with the research focusing on how these are resolved in order for the activity system to achieve stability. Such stability leads to the construction of new knowledge and learning and the formation of new systems development practices. In studying this, practices are considered as an emergent property linked to improvisation, bricolage and dynamic competences that unfold as large-scale projects evolve

Rethinking Systems Analysis in A New View of Organizations

The effectiveness of IT investments is known to depend on intangible assets such as work practices. However current systems analysis has no concern about them due to the mindset of rational organization and functionalism. We rethink systems analysis in a new view of organizations proposed by Kay and colleagues who apply autopoiesis and complex theories to reconstruct the basis of organizational theories, and we make theoretical clarifications of the problems and issues of the current systems analysis. Among others, the absence of a frame has prevented people from seeing their work practices and at the same time made it practically difficult to take them into consideration in systems analysis, leaving rational systems analysis and design to be still in use. There is a need to develop a practical frame that business professionals can use to see their work practices

Introducing Collective Identity into Information Systems Research: Collective Identity as a Bridge between IS Researches and Practitioners

In the turbulent economy an organization must often reconstruct itself with self-reference to its own practices. Many business and IS professionals need some approaches to understand their practices or social realities for self-reference. Researchers developed academic approaches or methodologies such as structuration theory and actor-network theory that enable people to make sense of their social realities. However, it is considered that the absence of some vocabularies has kept the practitioners away from the use of these approaches. On another front there are the increasing interest and use of collective identity in the related social sciences recently. We argue that a vocabulary “collective identity” can become a bridge between academic researches and the practitioners. Allowing the practitioners to look at multiple or alternative social realities among social forces rather than the single functional image of an organization, the vocabulary is expected to lead way to the possible use of existing approaches by the practitioners. To show its effectiveness we will incorporate collective identity into activity theory and apply it to a real case of IS implementation in an organizatio