Including Work System Co-Existence, Alignment, and Coordination in Systems Analysis and Design

Interactions between systems constitute a common source of difficulty and complication in building, implementing, and maintaining IT-reliant work systems in organizations. Although a great deal has been published about systems analysis and design, most of the attention in that literature focuses on creating software specifications for a specific IT system. Relatively little attention focuses on direct and/or indirect interactions and conflicts between the IT-reliant work systems through which organizations operate. This paper proposes that work system co-existence, alignment, and coordination should receive more attention in systems analysis and design. Its main contribution is an initial set of taxonomies related to work system co-existence, alignment, and coordination. Key concepts include system interactions, intentionality of interactions, directness of interactions, explicitness of interactions, persistence of interactions, alignment of work systems, and congruence of work systems

Sociotechnical Systems through a Work System Lens :A Possible Path for Reconciling System Conceptualizations, Business Realities, and Humanist Values in IS Development

This position paper describes an approach that might increase the likelihood that the sociotechnical perspective will take its proper place in today’s world. This paper questions the clarity of the traditional STS notion of joint optimization of a social system and technical system. It explains how the integrated system view in work system theory (WST) and the work system method (WSM) might provide a more straightforward way to describe, discuss, and negotiate about sociotechnical systems. Using WST/WSM to bypass the effort of separately describing and jointly optimizing social and technical systems might make it easier to engage effectively in discussions that reconcile system conceptualizations, business realities, and humanist values in IS development

Work System Perspective on Service, Service Systems, IT Services, and Service Science

This document explains how a “work system” perspective on systems in organizations illuminates many service topics in an understandable and broadly applicable way. It contributes to ISSIP (International Society of Service Innovation Professionals) by providing frameworks and concepts that can be used in describing, evaluating, analyzing, designing, and improving services, service systems, and IT systems

How Facets of Work Illuminate Sociotechnical Challenges of Industry 5.0

This conceptual contribution explains how the idea of “facets of work” can refocus traditional sociotechnical concerns to increase their relevance in increasingly automated and digitalized workplaces far removed from situations studied by early sociotechnical researchers. A background section summarizes how the sociotechnical approach seems pervasive but possibly outdated in some ways. It explains how the idea of “facets of work” emerged from attempting to bring richer, more evocative ide-as to systems analysis and design. Focusing on facets of work during initial discussions of requirements could provide guidance without jumping prematurely to precision and notation needed for producing technical artifacts. Tables with one row for each of 18 facets or one row for the first 9 (reflect-ing length restrictions) illustrates that the 18 facets 1) point to areas where the coexistence of people and robots in workplaces poses challenging sociotechnical issues, 2) apply to both sociotechnical and totally automated systems, 3) are associated with specific sets of concepts, 4) bring evaluation criteria and design trade-offs, 5) have useful sub-facets, and 6) imply open-ended questions for starting discussions. The conclusion summarizes this paper’s contribution to understanding challenges of Industry 5.0 and discusses next steps in developing and applying its ideas

Sidestepping the IT Artifact, Scrapping the IS Silo, and Laying Claim to Systems in Organizations

The IT artifact and debates about the core of the IS field received a lot of attention in the last several years. This paper is a response to Benbasat and Zmud\u27s June 2003 MISQ paper The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline\u27s Core Properties, which argues that the IT artifact and its immediate nomological net constitutes a natural ensemble of entities, structures, and processes that serves to bind together the IS subdisciplines and to communicate the distinctive nature of the IS discipline. This paper starts by examining the meaning of IT artifact and concluding that this term is too unclear to serve as a basic concept for delineating the field. Next it examines and disputes aspects of Benbasat and Zmud\u27s prescription for being more faithful to the discipline\u27s core. It suggests that their vision of tighter focus on variables intimately related to the IT artifact creates problems and provides few of the benefits of an alternative vision centered on systems in organizations. This alternative vision provides an understandable umbrella for most existing IS research and treats the discipline\u27s diversity as a strength rather a weakness. It provides a rationale for building on current knowledge and expertise, exploiting the discipline\u27s areas of competitive advantage in academia and business, defusing the IS discipline\u27s identity crisis, and helping increase its long-term contributions to academia, business, and society

How Well Do Service Concepts Apply to Digital Services and Service Digitalization?

This paper explores the extent to which typical service concepts apply to digital service (DS) and service digitalization. It defines service, service systems, digital, digitalization, digital objects, digital agents, digital service, and service digitalization. Application of those definitions to four real world cases explores how well concepts from the service literature describe DS and service digitalization

Viewing Systems as Services: A Fresh Approach in the IS Field

Despite wide agreement that we are in a service-dominated economy, there has been little movement toward treating service and service metaphors as core aspects of the IS field. This tutorial proposes that viewing systems as services is a potentially fruitful but generally unexplored approach for thinking about systems in organizations, systems analysis, and numerous applications of IT. An extension of past research in several areas, viewing systems as services proves to be an umbrella for developing new systems analysis and design methods, improving business/IT communication, and finding practical paths toward greater relevance and significance in business and society

Recognizing the Relevance of IS Research and Broadening the Appeal and Applicability of Future Publications

Highly applicable research is done not only by some IS faculty members, but also by software firms, consulting firms, and other organizations whose products and services depend on IS research they perform. The applicability of IS research done by academics is evident in the concepts and explanations in many textbooks. There should be little surprise, however, that practitioners who expect readability and direct applicability have little patience for IS publications shaped by the concerns and expectations of academia. It might be possible to broaden the acceptance and relevance of IS research publications by distributing them in both a short version designed to demonstrate relevance and a long version designed to demonstrate rigor and provide supporting detail

Is Work System Theory a Practical Theory of Practice?

This paper describes an exploration of whether ideas related to pragmatism, practical theory, and practice theory provide potentially useful directions for extending work system theory (WST), which is an outgrowth of an attempt to develop the work system method (WSM), a flexible systems analysis method for business professionals. After summarizing WST’s basic premises and its two central frameworks, this paper uses a positioning map to explain reasons for considering relationships between WST and a number of topics related to practical issues and practice theory. Based on that positioning map, the subsequent sections discuss relation-ships between WST and UML, Goldkuhl’s workpractice theory, and the more general notion of practice theory. A concluding section briefly addresses a set of questions related to whether WST is a practical theory of practice. This paper\u27s comparisons of WST with the three theoret-ical perspectives for describing and understanding systems could be a step toward greater practical application of IS research related to the nature and evolution of activities, processes, routines, and practices involving the use of technology in organizational settings

How Should Business Informatics Integrate Service, Process, Work System, and Enterprise Orientations?

Current research related to the subject matter of business informatics reflects divergent orientations that are fundamentally about representing, analyzing, and designing services or processes or work systems or enterprises. After summarizing those four orientations and citing typical exemplars, this paper identifies a variety of paths toward greater integration between different orientations within business informatics. It identifies central topics for each orientation along with areas in which each orientation provides ideas that complement other orientations and reveal possible synergies. Both the approach for identifying potential synergies and the proposed synergies themselves could encourage greater integration within business informatics