Generative mechanisms for innovation in information infrastructures

This paper investigates how innovation of ICT based services takes place within existing infrastructures, including the whole network of technology, vendors and customers. Our research question is, how can an information infrastructure provide generative mechanisms for innovation of ICT based services? Building on a critical realist approach, our empirical evidence was a case study within an international airline, aiming to diversify its services. From our analysis we propose that there are two self-reinforcement mechanisms in information infrastructures. First, we identified the innovation reinforcement mechanism, resulting in new services. Second, there is the service reinforcement mechanism, resulting in more users and profits. The practical implication of our framework is to show that although ICT-based innovation cannot be planned and managed in detail, the innovation mechanism may help organisations to facilitate the innovation process in a structured way

Generative Mechanisms of Technology Enabled Transformation: A Critical Realist Evaluation of a Hospital Laboratory Unit Transformation

Digital transformation success remains elusive and therefore a domain worthy of developing better evidence. Advancing understanding of generative mechanisms – the underlying causal powers that explain digital transformation – would be extremely valuable insight for practice. Substantial opportunity continues to exist to explore how exactly a transformation process unfolds and how organizational structural objects that inscribe social and technological agency, intertwine with each other and with the action of actors to cause transformation. Focusing on generative mechanisms, this research used grounded theory to study a hospital laboratory unit involved in transformation efforts. Using critical realism ontology, preliminary analysis uncovered five plausible key generative mechanisms: Framing of need; Forming the need; Materializing critical thinking; Validating; and Actualizing affordances. Follow-up data and analysis will formalize a generative mechanism model of transformation. The article concludes with expected contributions and suggested future work of this study

Researching Irish health inequalities in England: a case study of first and second generation Irish men and women in Coventry

Background. Despite consistent evidence that the Irish people living in Britain face a significant health disadvantage, when compared to white British people on a range of health indicators, the reasons and underlying generative mechanisms, need further uncovering. Design and Objectives. This research uses a mixed strategy design compatible with a critical realist perspective. The extensive/quantitative research component aims to evaluate the demi-regularity that Irish people in England have poorer health than the British general population. It engages in a secondary analysis of data from the Census 2001 Individual Licensed SARs, using self-reported Irish ethnicity and self-reported general health. The intensive/qualitative research component explores the generative mechanisms shaping Irish health experiences and inequalities in England, and Coventry in particular, including the contribution of, and interaction between, generative mechanisms of structural and identity/cultural aspects of ethnicity. It carries out an in-depth primary analysis of thirty-two semi-structured interview accounts from two generations of Irish men and women in Coventry, using a framework analytical approach. This is elaborated within a model of ethnicity as structure and identity developed in accordance with a critical realist and sociohistorical perspective. The research is realized through a collaborative community based participatory approach. Results and Conclusions. The extensive findings provide further evidence for an Irish health disadvantage in England, with some differences by country of birth, and provide clues to generative mechanisms for the demi-regularity found. The intensive findings concur with the extensive analysis and show that generative mechanisms from structural and identity dimensions of ethnicity 1) contribute to the health inequalities and/or experiences of first and second generation Irish people in England, 2) interact in complex ways, 3) are impacted by the socio-political context, i.e., British colonialism and a world capitalist economy, and 4) are shaped by interweaving forces of structure and agency

Where constructionism and critical realism converge: interrogating the domain of epistemological relativism

The paper interrogates the status, nature and significance of epistemological relativism as a key element of constructionism and critical realism. It finds that epistemological relativism is espoused by authorities in critical realism and marginalized or displaced in the field of management and organization studies, resulting in forms of analysis that are empirically, but not fully critically, realist. This evaluation prompts reflection on the question of whether, how and with what implications epistemological relativism might be recast at the heart of critical realist studies of management and organization

Including Generative Mechanisms in Project scheduling using Hybrid Simulation

Scheduling is central to the practice of project management and a topic of significant interest for the operations research and management science academic communities. However, a rigour-relevance gap has developed between the research and practice of scheduling that mirrors similar concerns current in management science. Closing this gap requires a more accommodative philosophy that can integrate both hard and soft factors in the construction of project schedules. This paper outlines one interpretation of how this can be achieved through the combination of discrete event simulation for schedule construction and system dynamics for variable resource productivity. An implementation was built in a readily available modelling environment and its scheduling capabilities tested. They compare well with published results for commercial project scheduling packages. The use of system dynamics in schedule construction allows for the inclusion of generative mechanisms, models that describe the process by which some observed phenomenon is produced. They are powerful tools for answering questions about why things happen the way they do, a type of question very relevant to practic

Modeling Life as Cognitive Info-Computation

This article presents a naturalist approach to cognition understood as a network of info-computational, autopoietic processes in living systems. It provides a conceptual framework for the unified view of cognition as evolved from the simplest to the most complex organisms, based on new empirical and theoretical results. It addresses three fundamental questions: what cognition is, how cognition works and what cognition does at different levels of complexity of living organisms. By explicating the info-computational character of cognition, its evolution, agent-dependency and generative mechanisms we can better understand its life-sustaining and life-propagating role. The info-computational approach contributes to rethinking cognition as a process of natural computation in living beings that can be applied for cognitive computation in artificial systems.Comment: Manuscript submitted to Computability in Europe CiE 201

Building Digital Infrastructures: Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Contextual Triggers

Past IS research suggests it is challenging to build digital infrastructures and then make sure they grow. While more users, innovative services, and new partners spur infrastructure evolution, we know little of the specific contextual triggers that set these generative mechanisms in motion. To this end, we conduct a case study of a digitalized public transport infrastructure to identify such triggers and explore their impact on its evolution. Our study contributes to the extant literature on digital infrastructure evolution in two distinct ways. First, we analyze, define, and propose three contextual triggers that improve our understanding of the generative mechanisms behind infrastructure development and growth. Second, we rely on this conceptual basis to sketch out the initial contours of a novel evolutionary theory of digital infrastructure triggers.

Improving the relevance of management research By developing tested and grounded technologiCAL RULES

management research, technological rules