Constructing IT Markets: How Industry Analysis Organise Technological Fields

This paper considers how specialist forms of consultants classify and organise new and emerging technology markets. It demonstrates how industry analysts and IT research firms have taken centre stage in the IT procurement market where they draw up signposts about the state of the industry and its future development – what we are describing as a ‘technological field’. Through discussing the emergence of a now well established technology – what has become widely known as Customer Relationship Management solutions - we show how these experts define the boundaries of a technological field. This article points to the process of categorisation applied to emerging artefacts and asks the question: What is at stake in these classifications and reclassifications? The classification of a technology is far from trivial. It proposes boundaries that link a class of often quite various artefacts whilst differentiating them from others. These categories do not simply allow industry analysts to order (and represent) the market/technology but also shape it. Analysts view and constitute markets through its various classifications. We show how this has both positive and negative consequences for technology adopters and software vendors alike. In doing so we draw (as well as build) on the notion from Information Systems (IS) research of ‘organizing vision’ developed by Swanson & Ramiller (1997) as well as recent scholarship within Economic Sociology on ‘product classifications’. The material for this paper was gathered in two related phases: during an ethnographic study of a local authority and its attempts to procure a new packaged software solution; and is part of an ongoing investigation into the nature and practice of industry analysts

From Artefacts to Infrastructures

In their initial articulation of the direction of the CSCW field, scholars advanced an open-ended agenda. This continuing commitment to open-ness to different contexts and approaches is not, however, reflected in the contents of the major CSCW outlets. The field appears to privilege particular forms of cooperative work. We find many examples of what could be described as ‘localist studies’, restricted to particular settings and timeframes. This focus on the ‘here and now’ is particularly problematic when one considers the kinds of large-scale, integrated and interconnected workplace information technologies—or what we are calling Information Infrastructures—increasingly found within and across organisations today. CSCW appears unable (or unwilling) to grapple with these technologies—which were at the outset envisaged as falling within the scope of the field. Our paper hopes to facilitate greater CSCW attention to Information Infrastructures through offering a re-conceptualisation of the role and nature of ‘design’. Design within an Information Infrastructures perspective needs to accommodate non-local constraints. We discuss two such forms of constraint: standardisation (how local fitting entails unfitting at other sites) and embeddedness (the entanglement of one technology with other apparently unrelated ones). We illustrate these themes through introducing case material drawn on from a number of previous studies

Industry analysts – how to conceptualise the distinctive new forms of IT Market Expertise?

Depuis la berge, vue du fleuve et de la rive opposée

Method matters in the social study of technology:Investigating the biographies of artifacts and practices

Science and Technology Studies understandings of technological change are at odds with its own dominant research designs and methodological guidelines. A key insight from social shaping of technology research, for instance, has been that new technologies are formed in multiple, particular (albeit interlinked) settings, by many di erent groups of actors over long periods of time. Nonetheless, common research designs have not kept pace with these conceptual advances, continuing instead to resort to either intensive localised ethnographic engagements or broad stroke historical studies, unable to address both the intricacy and extent of the process in tandem. There has consequently been increasing interest in extending current methodological and analytical approaches through longitudinal and multi-site research templates. We discuss this fundamentally methodological critique and its implications through one of these approaches: the ‘biographies of artifacts and practices’ (BOAP) framework, which by now o ers a twenty years body of studies to re ect upon methodological choices in di erent sociomaterial settings. This paper outlines the basic principles of BOAP and its signi cant variations, and discusses its contribution to STS understandings of innovation, especially user roles in innovation. We nish by arguing that if STS is to continue to provide insight around innovation this will require a reconceptualisation of research design, to move from simple ‘snap shot’ studies to the linking together of a string of studies.Peer reviewe

Skepticism Motivated: On the Skeptical Import of Motivated Reasoning

Empirical work on motivated reasoning suggests that our judgments are influenced to a surprising extent by our wants, desires and preferences (Kahan 2016; Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Molden and Higgins 2012; Taber and Lodge 2006). How should we evaluate the epistemic status of beliefs formed through motivated reasoning? For example, are such beliefs epistemically justified? Are they candidates for knowledge? In liberal democracies, these questions are increasingly controversial as well as politically timely (Beebe et al. 2018; Lynch forthcoming, 2018; Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). And yet, the epistemological significance of motivated reasoning has been almost entirely ignored by those working in mainstream epistemology. We aim to rectify this oversight. Using politically motivated reasoning as a case study, we show how motivated reasoning gives rise to three distinct kinds of skeptical challenges. We conclude by showing how the skeptical import of motivated reasoning has some important ramifications for how we should think about the demands of intellectual humility