Material Works: Exploring the Situated Entanglement of Technological Performativity and Human Agency

Abstract not available

TUTORIAL 1 HOW STRUCTURATION THEORY CAN INFORM THE SOCIAL STUDY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

In the mid-seventies a new approach to social science was proposed by a British social theorist, Anthony Giddens. Over the past decade, this approach - known as structuration theory - has emerged as a particularly powerful and useful way of studying social phenomena, overcoming some of the serious obstacles posed by other existing approaches. Today, structuration theory is increasingly being drawn on to study many different aspects of social and organizational life. Within the Information Systems community likewise, use of structuration theory appears to be growing. This tutorial will attempt to convey why structuration theory can be a useful framework for studying the social aspects of information technology, and how it can be applied in particular studies. This is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive treatment of all of structuration theory or the many ways in which it has been and could be applied. Rather, the focus is on elaborating - through the use of a few illustrative studies - why and how a structurational framework can inform IS research at the level of theory, research design, analysis, and interpretation of results. This tutorial will begin with a discussion of the origins and basic premises of structuration theory, and then trace the history of application of structuration theory to studies of organizations and IT. The tutorial will focus largely on examining the use of structuration theory in a few specific research studies of the social aspects of information technology. The tutorial will be concluded with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of this theory to IS research

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible, and acceptable; otherwise, breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but they could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant #IIS - 0085725)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Microphotonics Center (MIT Communications Technology Roadmap Project)Wharton School. Center for Leadership and Change Managemen

THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROFESSION: MYTH OR REALITY?

Much of the prior research into information systems (IS) workers has assumed that they are professionals. In this paper we examine the characteristics of IS workers, IS work and the IS workplace, and suggest that this perspective is mistaken. Drawing on the sociological theory of professions as a reference discipline we contend that IS professionalism is an inappropriate categorization, and that such a portrayal limits our understanding of IS workers and their work. We argue in this paper that a more faithful and potentially useful characterization is to view IS workers as members of an occupational group. Within this perspective, an understanding of the occupational culture, context and history of IS workers is essential to an understanding of the IS occupation. We examine and challenge some common myths regarding IS work, technology and the IS workplace. We conclude by making some recommendations for future research are provided, which should enhance our understanding of IS workers as members of an occupation.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A SHORT FORM MEASURE OF USER INFORMATION SATISFACTION: A PSYCHOMETRIC EVALUATION AND NOTES ON USE

This study examines the psychometric properties of the short form measure of user information satisfaction (UIS) proposed by Ives, Olson and Baroudi [1983]. Based on extensive testing the questionnaire appears to be a reasonably valid and reliable measure. A framework for how this measure can be used to detect and diagnose problems with user satisfaction is presented, and illustrated via two case studies. Finally, recommendations and suggestions are made regarding the future use of this and other measures of user information satisfaction.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

The sociomateriality of organisational life: considering technology in management research

Drawing on a specific scenario from a contemporary workplace, I review some of the dominant ways that management scholars have addressed technology over the past five decades. I will demonstrate that while materiality is an integral aspect of organisational activity, it has either been ignored by management research or investigated through an ontology of separateness that cannot account for the multiple and dynamic ways in which the social and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life. I will end by pointing to some possible alternative perspectives that may have the potential to help management scholars take seriously the distributed and complex sociomaterial configurations that form and perform contemporary organisations

The algorithm and the crowd: considering the materiality of service innovation

This special issue acknowledges important innovations in the world of service and within this domain we are particularly interested in exploring the rise and influence of web-based crowd-sourcing and algorithmic rating and ranking mechanisms. We suggest that a useful way to make sense of these digital service innovations and their novel implications is to recognize that they are materialized in practice. We thus need effective conceptual and analytical tools that allow us to take materiality seriously in our studies of service innovation. To this end, we propose some theoretical ideas relating to a sociomaterial perspective, and then highlight empirically how this perspective helps us analyze the specific service materializations enacted through the algorithmic configuring of crowd-sourced data, and how these make a difference in practice to the outcomes produced

The digital undertow: how the corollary effects of digital transformation affect industry standards

Scholarship on digital transformation has centered on how waves of digitalization have moved through industries, producing strategic changes within and across firms and enabling new forms of value creation. In this paper, we argue that different but no less important processes of digital transformation are generated by the undertow produced by these waves. This digital undertow, a corollary effect of waves of digitalization, profoundly influences how firms operate by transforming the industry standards that coordinate and regulate their core business activities. Using a genealogical approach, we draw on findings from a longitudinal field study in book publishing to theorize the tensions and processes that constitute the digital undertow. We explain that when waves of digitalization transform firms’ core activities, they unwittingly affect how industry standards correspond with materializations of the phenomena they structure, thus influencing how standards perform in practice. A significant outcome of recent waves of digitalization in the book industry is the loss in correspondence between industry standards and novel digital materializations of the book. This is producing what we refer to as digital displacement, a process that is engendering an existential challenge to the capacity of standards to effectively coordinate and regulate industry operations in the digital age