Designing an information system for updating land records in Bangladesh: action design ethnographic research (ADER)

Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Information Systems (IS) has developed through adapting, generating and applying diverse methodologies, methods, and techniques from reference disciplines. Further, Action Design Research (ADR) has recently developed as a broad research method that focuses on designing and redesigning IT and IS in organizational contexts. This paper reflects on applying ADR in a complex organizational context in a developing country. It shows that ADR requires additional lens for designing IS in such a complex organizational context. Through conducting ADR, it is seen that an ethnographic framework has potential complementarities for understanding complex contexts thereby enhancing the ADR processes. This paper argues that conducting ADR with an ethnographic approach enhances design of IS and organizational contexts. Finally, this paper aims presents a broader methodological framework, Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER), for designing artefacts as well as IS. This is illustrated through the case of a land records updating service in Bangladesh

Human and value sensitive aspects of mobile app design: a Foucauldian perspective

Value sensitive concerns remain relatively neglected by software design processes leading to potential failure of technology acceptance. By drawing upon an inter-disciplinary study that employed participatory design methods to develop mobile apps in the domain of youth justice, this paper examines a critical example of an unintended consequence that created user concerns around Focauldian concepts including power, authority, surveillance and governmentality. The primary aim of this study was to design, deploy and evaluate social technology that may help to promote better engagement between case workers and young people to help reduce recidivism, and support young people’s transition towards social inclusion in society. A total of 140 participants including practitioners (n=79), and young people (n=61) contributed to the data collection via surveys, focus groups and one-one interviews. The paper contributes an important theoretically located discussion around both how co-design is helpful in giving ‘voice’ to key stakeholders in the research process and observing the risk that competing voices may lead to tensions and unintended outcomes. In doing so, software developers are exposed to theories from social science that have significant impact on their product

Socializing accountability for improving primary healthcare: an action research program in rural Karnataka

The Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 invoked a socialising form of accountability through which communities and health workers participated in and were jointly accountable for primary healthcare. Aside from a few experiments, by the 1990s these ideals were quickly replaced by policy prescriptions based on increasing efficiency in data quality and reporting through the introduction of health information systems. More recently, there has been a revival of interest in community participation as a mechanism for improving the poor status of primary healthcare in developing countries through the constitution of village health committees. This paper documents and reflects on nine years of research on interventions aimed at improving primary healthcare accountability in rural Karnataka. Over this period, our focus has shifted from studying how computerised health information systems can strengthen conventional accountability systems to a period of extended participatory action research aimed at socialising accountability practices at village level. The findings from this study constitute vital knowledge for reforming the primary healthcare sector through different policy measures including the design of appropriate technology-based solutions

Digital Platforms in the Global South: Foundations and Research Agenda

Digital platforms have become integral to many of the everyday activities that people across the globe encounter in areas like transportation, commerce and social interactions. Research on the topic has largely concentrated on the general functioning of these platforms in terms of platform governance, business strategies and consumer behaviour. Despite their significant presence in the global South, the developmental implications of digital platforms remain largely understudied. In part, this is because digital platforms are a challenging research object due to their lack of conceptual definition, their spread across different regions and industries, and their intertwined nature with institutions, actors and digital technologies. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: to provide a conceptual definition of digital platforms, and to identify research strands in international development contexts. To do so, we draw from digital platforms literature, differentiate between transaction and innovation platforms and expose their main characteristics. We the present four strands in the form of research questions, illustrated with concrete examples, that can assist to pursue relevant studies on digital platforms and international development in the future

Southern theories in ICT4D

This paper suggests that the dominance of northern research paradigms in ICT4D may be viewed as a continuation of colonial sway over the endeavors of the global South. The notion of Southern Theory - as introduced in the work of Raewyn Connell, the Comaroffs, and others - may be a route by which re-searchers in the global South can reclaim the intellectual territory of ICT4D, with indigenous and regional research paradigms and theories rather than those simply absorbed from the global North

Enhancing organisational competitiveness via social media - a strategy as practice perspective

The affordances, popularity and pervasive use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have made these platforms attractive to organisations for enhancing their competitiveness and creating business value. Despite this apparent significance of social media for businesses, they are struggling with the development of a social media strategy as well as understanding the implications of social media on practice within their organisations. This paper explores how social media has become a tool for competitiveness and its influence on organisational strategy and practice. Using the 'strategy as practice' lens and guided by the interpretivist philosophy, this paper uses the empirical case of a telecom organisation in Tanzania. The findings show that social media is influencing competitiveness through imitation and product development. Also, the findings indicate how social media affects the practices within an organisation, consequently making the social media strategy an emergent phenomenon