Shifting boundaries and new technologies: a case study in the UK banking sector.

This paper describes case study based research on the use of innovative computer-based decision support systems introduced into corporate lending processes in a major UK bank. It describes how the new technology was implicated in shifting boundaries: within the sector as a whole and in specific organizational de-layering; between local/global dimensions of the loans process; and in the status of expertise and personal/professional risk. The case study is connected to broader debates in IS and social transformation through an analysis that relates aspects of the empirical material to themes from social theories of reflexive modernization. Some implications and conclusions are drawn for both the banking sector and IS research.

The Emergence of Electronic Trading in Global Financial Markets: Envisioning the Role of Futures Exchanges in the Next Millennium

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of case study based research exploring the shift from traditional ‘open-outcry’ to electronic trading in the major futures Markets in London and Chicago. We outline the emergence of electronic trading in these Markets, with the aim of examining the influences that will shape the operation and interaction between major global futures exchanges in the electronic markets of the new millennium. Our empirical work has sensitised us to the usefulness of conceptual ideas on the local/global dialectic in the process of globalization, and the shifting nature of risk in analysing the emergence of electronic trading in major global futures markets. In our discussion of the current status of the project we seek to connect the local issues concerning electronic trading to their broader social, economic and political context. We conclude by suggesting how our findings can be expected to contribute to IS theory and practice

The fine structure constant and the speed of light

Recently, Davies, Davis and Lineweaver have concluded that a possible detection of a cosmological variation in the fine structure constant, a = e[superscript 2] /ħc (where e is the electronic charge, ħ is the reduced Planck constant and c is the speed of light) implies that the speed of light decreases as the Universe expands. In examining the two competing reasons for the variation of this fundamental parameter – an increase in the electronic charge or a decrease in the speed of light – they argued against the former by considering the thermodynamics of charged black holes. However, their argument is based upon a misapplication of the principles of black hole thermodynamics. A possible variation in α does not mandate a changing speed of light

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 and institutional displacement: a sociomaterial approach

As “the digital” becomes pervasive within organizations and industries, it is increasingly evident that how we live, work, connect, coordinate, and govern are being significantly changed by digitalization. Many of these digital transformations are highly visible and dramatic, involving a purposeful repositioning and restructuring of organizations and industries. But in addition to these direct and visible changes, we argue that processes of digitalization are also producing less visible transformations in core institutional values, norms, and rules, which are indirectly, yet more fundamentally, reconfiguring how organizations and industries perform. Referencing findings from two different sectors, we posit that the corollary effects of waves of digitalization — what we conceptualize as the “digital undertow” — are generating a set of dynamics that are displacing institutional apparatuses from their positions of primacy and authority within industries. We further suggest that our conventional toolkits for studying organizational phenomena are not well equipped to examining such corollary effects of digitalization. In addressing this challenge, we consider how the relational and performative theorizing of strong sociomateriality provides a powerful analytic for investigating these effects and we highlight how it offers valuable insights into the institutional displacements arising in the digital undertow

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

Numerical wave optics and the lensing of gravitational waves by globular clusters

We consider the possible effects of gravitational lensing by globular clusters on gravitational waves from asymmetric neutron stars in our galaxy. In the lensing of gravitational waves, the long wavelength, compared with the usual case of optical lensing, can lead to the geometrical optics approximation being invalid, in which case a wave optical solution is necessary. In general, wave optical solutions can only be obtained numerically. We describe a computational method that is particularly well suited to numerical wave optics. This method enables us to compare the properties of several lens models for globular clusters without ever calling upon the geometrical optics approximation, though that approximation would sometimes have been valid. Finally, we estimate the probability that lensing by a globular cluster will significantly affect the detection, by ground-based laser interferometer detectors such as LIGO, of gravitational waves from an asymmetric neutron star in our galaxy, finding that the probability is insignificantly small.Comment: To appear in: Proceedings of the Eleventh Marcel Grossmann Meetin

Knowledge management as an image of the organization: industry standards and processes of knowing in credit risk management

There is often a discrepancy between an organization’s theory of its work and its practices. Drawing on evidence from credit risk management in a major international bank we show that management-led knowledge management (KM) initiatives have reinforced this tendency. We show that, in a direct reflection of the rational economic image of financial markets, training programmes and KM projects focus on technical mechanisms to manage credit risk and under-emphasise the way in which these standard approaches are situated in processes of knowing. Using a conceptual scheme developed from Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety we maintain that the assessment and management of risk involves both the attenuation and amplification of variety. Information intensive infrastructure-based businesses need processes of standardization (as attenuation) that facilitate globalizing business flows and the creative capacity (as amplification) to respond to uncertainty and innovation. In conclusion, we present further evidence to suggest that standard, technology-based solutions to knowledge management should be part of a broader portfolio of (dis-) organizing practices designed to support knowledge workers in a community of practice

Strategy Sort of Died Around April of Last Year for a lot of Us

The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is one of facilitating executive decisions regarding the innovation, provision and use of state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The aim of this paper is to investigate CIO perceptions of strategy and ICT investment through qualitative interviews with CIOs from leading UK financial sector organisations. We were keen to find out how these executives strategise while coping with the increasing ubiquity and complexity of ICT on one hand and hyper business pressures on the other. As the title suggests, we found that recent changes in the market conditions, as well as in the trust bestowed technology as an agent for radical change, have had serious consequences for the perceptions of risk, strategy and ICT investment. CIOs expressed the dot-com boom to bust transition in terms of a shift from a higher-risk, top-down technology led strategy centred on killer applications towards a lower-risk, bottom-up, organic approach to strategy with the purpose of providing open, user driven enabling infrastructures for competitive advantage. We also note the implications of these trends for the value assessment activity and the enhanced value skill base which information age professionals would increasingly need

The long-term effect of digital innovation on bank performance: An empirical study of SWIFT adoption in financial services

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of 6,848 banks in 29 countries in Europe and the Americas with the full history of adoption since SWIFT’s initial operations in 1977. Our results suggest that the adoption of SWIFT (i) has large effects on profitability in the long-term; (ii) is greater for small than for large banks; and (iii) exhibits significant network effects on performance. We use an in-depth field study to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effects on profitability