Conceptualizing I.S. Archetypes Through History: A Study of the Roman Curia

Many typologies of I.S. archetypes exist in the current literature. But very few rely on long term past perspectives, which could result in a precious opportunity to suggest innovative configurations related to specific institutional environments. On the other hand, historiography is a subject of growing interest in IS. Nonetheless, if many studies have already been carried out on the history of the technology or computer industries, very few have dealt with organizational IS history. This is regrettable, as it would give researchers a unique opportunity to understand long term IS dynamics and to grasp historical IS archetypes. Here, the author outlines a history of the IS of one of the oldest organizations in the world: the Roman Curia (the headquarters of the Catholic Church located within the Vatican). First, the specificities of the object of research (a missionary organization) are explained and methodological details are given. Then, a formal history (pointing out four chronological archetypal IS) is put forward. Lastly, the contributions, limitations and perspectives of this research are discussed

Strategic Alignment: What Else? A Practice Based View of IS Value

Literature about IS strategic management or IS strategic value is abundant. Nonetheless, the bulk of existing studies are focused on the concept of alignment. They do not make sense of a strategic value in practice and still draw on notions such as activity or process to make sense of alignment. By means of a practice-based view of technology, three praxis are suggested here for the modeling of strategic value: legitimacy-related (based on adoption praxis), assimilative (related to design and acceptance praxis) and appropriative (linked to local adaptation and improvisation praxis). They are introduced by means of a thought experiment (a short story about a rifle)

A New Theoretical Framework for Artifact-Mediated Regulation

In this paper, we attempt to integrate the traditionally disparate concepts of technology design, use and organizational practice in organizational studies. Using Jean-Daniel Reynaud’s joint-regulation theory, we demonstrate how these traditionally separate perspectives on ICT-related practice and organizational change process can be brought together under the umbrella of a practice-based view emphasizing rule-setting in organizations. Further, we synthesize existing accounts of practice-based view on organizational processes to introduce the notion of artifact-mediated regulation. It is argued that combined with Reynaud’s joint-regulation theory, the proposed notion of artifact-mediated regulation provides a tool for holistic analysis of the dynamics between ICT design and use and organizational practice.ou

Theories of ICT Design: Where Social Studies of Technology Meet the Distributed Cognitive Perspective

In this paper we examine the possibility to bridge theory of Distributed Cognition with popular theories of Social Studies of Technology (in particular, Actor-Network Theory and Social Construction of Technology). Responding to a recent call for revisiting the design metaphor, in this paper we aim to obtain more precise terminology for describing the phenomena of ICT design in theoretical terms. We argue that establishing correlations between the two bodies of literature adds new knowledge to a community of scholars caters for betterment of managerial practice in complex design tasks

Implementation of weakly structured systems: moving from local practices to common organizational rules

The traditional implementation of an information system assumes that the IT system to be implemented is highly structured (HSS), carrying out regulatory functions expressed in organizational rules scripted into the system. Subsequent implementation seeks users’ compliance with stated regulatory needs. We propose an alternative view of implementing IT systems when such systems are weakly structured (WSS). In these systems, most scripted rules express the composition and behavior of digital objects, which organizational members tend to voluntarily enact as part of their tasks. By using analytical inference and illustrative examples, this work extends the Trifecta model of organizational regulation by developing a vocabulary and a process model for the evolution of the rule system during the implementation of WSS. The offered model depicts IT implementation as a movement from local practices, where system uses are discovered as affordances, to wider rule sets that regulate and enforce the shared deployment of such affordances

Applying Institutional Theoretical Frameworks in MIS Research

This article investigates how Information Systems researchers apply institutional theoretical frameworks. We include theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects to explore modalities of use. After an overview of institutional concepts, we carry out a thematic analysis of journal papers on IS and institutional theory indexed in EBSCO and ABI databases from 1999 to 2009. This consists of descriptive, thematic coding and cluster analysis of this textual database. On the basis of thematic coding and cluster analysis, our findings suggest three groups of publications which represent different methodological approaches and empirical foci: descriptive exploratory approaches, generalizing approaches, and sociological approaches. We suggest that these three groups represent possible patterns of the use of meta social theories in IS research, reflecting a search for disciplinary legitimacy. This helps us analyze papers according to how they use and apply theories. We identify the organizing vision and the regulatory approach as two institutionalist intermediary concepts developed by IS researchers. Furthermore, we find that institutional theoretical frameworks have been used in direct, intermediary or combined conceptualizations. As a conclusion, we make suggestions to blend different conceptualizations, methodologies and empirical foci to enrich the use of institutionalist theories in IS empirical research. A comparison with the use of, for instance, structuration theory in IS research would also further insights into how researchers apply meta theories and may help develop IS theorization further

The Espoused Theories of IS: A Study of General Editorial Statements

In the IS field there has been the ongoing debate about a potential identity crisis, which has led researchers to study the output of the community in order to evaluate where IS research currently is and where it could potentially be. This has resulted in various proposals for IS research ‘in practice’. This research follows a different strategy and studies what IS research is claimed to be (the espoused theories of IS). The section of IS journals’ General Editorials Statements (GES), that is, the informative section offered by most journals where they position themselves with regard to potential authors, already contains the answer. Basing our study on the AISWorld journal ranking, we collected GES for a sample of 30 IS journals for the years 1997 and 2007. We applied thematic, lexicometric, and factor analyses to the datasets of the 1997 and the 2007 GES. The results of the analyses show how the institutionalized discourse about IS research has changed over the last decade

A new theoretical framework for artifact - mediated regulation

In this paper, we attempt to integrate the traditionally disparate concepts of technology design, use and organizational practice in organizational studies. Using Jean-Daniel Reynaud’s joint-regulation theory, we demonstrate how these traditionally separate perspectives on ICT-related practice and organizational change process can be brought together under the umbrella of a practice-based view emphasizing rule-setting in organizations. Further, we synthesize existing accounts of practice-based view on organizational processes to introduce the notion of artifact-mediated regulation. It is argued that combined with Reynaud’s joint-regulation theory, the proposed notion of artifact-mediated regulation provides a tool for holistic analysis of the dynamics between ICT design and use and organizational practiceVytauto Didžiojo universiteta

The espoused theories of IS : a study of general editorial statements

In the IS field there has been the ongoing debate about a potential identity crisis, which has led researchers to study the output of the community in order to evaluate where IS research currently is and where it could potentially be. This has resulted in various proposals for IS research ‘in practice’. This research follows a different strategy and studies what IS research is claimed to be (the espoused theories of IS). The section of IS journals’ General Editorials Statements (GES), that is, the informative section offered by most journals where they position themselves with regard to potential authors, already contains the answer. Basing our study on the AISWorld journal ranking, we collected GES for a sample of 30 IS journals for the years 1997 and 2007. We applied thematic, lexicometric, and factor analyses to the datasets of the 1997 and the 2007 GES. The results of the analyses show how the institutionalized discourse about IS research has changed over the last decadeVytauto Didžiojo universiteta