Recognising the challenge: how to realise the potential benefits of ICT use in SME’s

There is evidence to suggest that small businesses often start with innovative business ideas but fail within the first 3 years because the proprietors lack the expertise to make them thrive. In this context, it has been suggested that SMEs would benefit from support to select suitable ICTs that can help them to make the most of their business potential. Such suggestions tend to overlook a need to design a system for use of these ICTs within the context of a particular business. Technology alone solves no problems. Managers need to develop relevant expertise to exploit all the assembled resources available to them, and design of an Information System that will be experienced as useful is a prerequisite for successful development of business opportunities. While the technical aspects of e.g. data processing and storage can be consigned to a contractor, responsibility for a customer’s experience in interacting with the business cannot. It is necessary to design business processes and technologies in synergy, paying as much attention to design of effective use of ICTs as to the technologies themselves. The authors believe it is vital for the proprietors of small to medium-sized enterprises to consider what may be the unintended consequences of investment in ICTs and to devote due time and effort to development of effective systems for use

Professional desire, competence and engagement in IS context

This paper attempts to address the failings of a predominant paradigm in IS research and practice that emphasises technological determinism. This paradigm makes use of a false belief in the power of rationality in organizational decision-making, and a mythology in which organizational actors can be viewed as passive ‘users’ of technology. We wish to create a discussion of the nature and role of professionalism as an expression of more than technical competence. Both system analysts and organizational stakeholders (e.g. ‘users’) are to be viewed as professionals. We discuss desire, exercise of will and their role in professional judgment in relation to transcendent values espoused within communities of practice. We go on to relate this to the environments of Information Systems research and practice. It is pointed out that many researchers, over a number of years, have dealt with these issues in relation to effective management of technological development and organizational change. The paper attempts to encourage renewed attention to interpretivist perspectives on IS development and organizational change, including recognition of the importance of contextual dependencies

Lattice QCD meets experiment in hadron physics

We review recent results in lattice QCD from numerical simulations that allow for a much more realistic QCD vacuum than has been possible before. Comparison with experiment for a variety of hadronic quantities gives agreement to within statistical and systematic errors of 3%. We discuss the implications of this for future calculations in lattice QCD, particularly those which will provide input for B factory experiments.Comment: Review talk at HADRON2003, Aschaffenberg, Germany, September 200

Crisis! what crisis?

Abstract There is a crisis discussed in the discipline of Information Systems. Those who perceive such a crisis to exist are by no means agreed, as to its nature and origins. Our inquiry shows that there are a three distinct “crises” being debated. The first of these relates to the Substance and boundaries of the discipline itself and if it is even a discipline at all. Another “crisis” relates to higher education and a fall in demand for IS courses from new students. Commentators perceive this to threaten the existence of IS departments in Universities, and to have potentially serious consequences for both research strategies and career paths of academics. Thirdly, there is perception of a crisis in the wider world, characterised by fewer vacancies in IS-relevant occupations whilst, at the same time, employers complain of a shortage of suitably skilled applicants for the vacancies available. This paper examines evidence for the three “crises,” real or imagined, suggested above, in the Information Systems field

Creating shareable representations of practice

This paper reports work on the use of asynchronous multimedia conferencing (AMC) to support collaborative continuing professional development. In particular it explores how we may use multimedia communications technologies to enable key elements of real‐world working knowledge, that are tacit and embedded in working practices, to be rendered into shareable forms for professional learning. We believe multimedia communications technology can offer innovative ways of capturing rich examples of working practices and tacit knowledge, and for sharing and subjecting these artefacts to scrutiny, debate and refinement within a community of learners. More explicitly, we see participants in a geographically distributed community of practice being able to create, annotate, discuss and reflect upon videoclips of their working practices within the multimedia conferencing environment. This paper summarizes some studies that cast light on how representations of practice may be captured for use in an AMC environment

Sustainability in IS: the case for an open systems approach

Common sense tells us that cost cutting leads to saving, and spending should therefore be minimized. However, a little reflection tells us that this sometimes leads to false economies. In an organizational context, these can lead on to a downward spiral of organizational ‘suicide’. Examples of false economies may include: saving on maintenance; saving on research and development expenditure; saving on margins (waste or just-in-time management); and saving on ‘how’ we do things, as opposed to ‘what’ we do. Common sense cost cutting makes ‘how’ invisible, and only recognizes ‘what’. It is vital that we also remember to consider ‘why’ activities are undertaken. Professional competence implies not only skill/knowledge in a particular field, but also desire to apply that knowledge in accordance with certain values, and engagement with the context of application so that learning through reflection may take place. Professional work therefore includes scope for extra-role behaviour, such as suggesting innovative methods or identifying and developing new opportunities (Bednar and Welch, 2010). We suggest that a naïve pursuit of ‘efficiency’ is likely to constrict and curtail possibilities for extra-role behaviour, with disastrous consequences for the development and growth of the business. Creation of systems experienced as sustainable therefore requires us to focus attention on perceived usefulness, rather than efficiency