Organizational and Social Perspectives on Information Technology

The articles in this book constitute the proceedings papers from the IFIP WG 8.2 Working Conference, "IS2000: The Social and Organizational Perspective on Research and Practice in Information Technology," held June 1 0-12, 2000, in Aalborg, Denmark. The focus of the conference, and therefore this book, is on the basic aim of the working group, namely, the investigation of the interrelationships among four major components: information systems (IS), information technology (IT), organizations, and society. This basic social and organizational perspective on research and practice in information technology may have evolved substantially since the founding ofthe group, for example, increasing the emphasis on IS development. The plan for the conference was partially rooted in the early WG 8.2 traditions, in which working conferences were substantially composed of invited papers. For IS2000, roughly half of the paper presentations were planned to be invited; the remaining half were planned to be double-blind refereed in response to a "Call For Papers." Invited papers were single-blind reviewed in order to provide the authors with pre-publication feedback and comments, along with the opportunity to revise their papers prior to its final incorporation in this book.

Klappentext

This book is intended to mark the turn of the first century of the information age. The purpose of the book is to denote the transition from past to current to future investigations of the relationships and interactions among four major components: information systems (IS), information technology (IT), organizations, and society. These investigations share a primary focus on the interrelationships, not on the components themselves. The contributions to the book deal with the history of IS theory and technology, with the directions faced by those sharing the concerns of the field in its future research, and with attempts to draw these two views together. Five discourses collectively answer the key question: `What is the status of IS, as related to organizations and society, now that we stand at the juncture of the new century?' These discourses deal with the fundamental concepts, the classical and novel challenges, the conceptualization processes, automation, and new technology. br/ What is our story as we turn the first century of the information age? We believe that IT is even more critical in social interaction in organizations, that human language barriers form fundamental roadblocks to IT implementation, that newer forms of IS integrate horizontally rather than vertically, and that the mix of skills and knowledge is changing. We also find that we lack integrated approaches to risk management, that new social costs are being unleashed on people by the wiring of society, and we are rushing headlong into globalized systems with our eyes closed. br/ We reveal how the old end-user tension between central control and innovation has reappeared in the intranet world, how IT has been converted into a cultural commodity, and explore how the video screen has become the central means for discovering our relevance to our universe. We explore the surprising ways that machines have acquired human status, not through robotics, but rather through social construction. We discover new norms for defining the relationships and exchanges between human beings and computers. For example, gender defines IS success and web design defines social relationships. Consequently, we show how systems must now be developed interpretively, rather than through rational&endash;technical IS design principles used in the last century.

Inhalt
1 Discourses on the Interaction of Information Systems, Organizations, and Society: Reformation and Transformation.- 1: Reforming the Fundamentals.- 2 The Moving Finger: The Use of Social Theory in WG 8.2 Conference Papers, 19751999.- 3 Socio-technical Design: An Unfulfilled Promise or a Future Opportunity.- 4 The Limits of Language in Doing Systems Work.- 2: Transforming the Fundamentals.- 5 Information Systems Conceptual Foundations: Looking Backward and Forward.- 6 Horizontal Information Systems: Emergent Trends and Perspectives.- 7 Expanding the Horizons of Information Systems Development.- 3: Reforming the Classical Challenges.- 8 Evaluation in a Socio-technical Context.- 9 Collaborative Practice Research.- 10 Process as Theory in Information Systems Research.- 4: Transforming Toward New Challenges.- 11 Toward an Integrated Theory of IT-related Risk Control.- 12 Individual, Organizational, and Societal Perspectives on Information Delivery Systems: Bright and Dark Sides to Push and Pull Technologies.- 13 Globalization and IT: Agenda for Research.- 5: Reformation of Conceptualizations.- 14 Studying Organizational Computing Infrastructures: Multi-method Approaches.- 15 Information Systems Research at the Crossroads: External Versus Internal Views.- 16 The New Computing Archipelago: Intranet Islands of Practice.- 6: Transformation of Conceptualizations.- 17 Information Technology and the Cultural Reproduction of Social Order: A Research Paradigm.- 18 The Screen and the World: A Phenomenological Investigation into Screens and Our Engagement in the World.- 19 Developing a Virtual Community-based Information Systems Digital Library: A Proposal and Research Program.- 7: Reforming Automation.- 20 Representing Human and Non-human Stakeholders: On Speaking with Authority.-21 Implementing Open Network Technologies in Complex Work Practices: A Case from Telemedicine.- 22 Machine Agency as Perceived Autonomy: An Action Perspective.- 8: Transforming Automation.- 23 Some Challenges Facing Virtually Colocated Teams.- 24 MOA-S: A Scenario Model for Integrating Work Organization Aspects into the Design Process of CSCW Systems.- 25 Constructing Interdependencies with Collaborative Information Technology.- 9: Transforming into New Shapes of Technology.- 26 The Role of Gender in User Resistance and Information Systems Failure.- 27 Limitations and Opportunities of System Development Methods in Web Information System Design.- 28 Lessons from a Dinosaur: Mediating IS Research Through an Analysis of the Medical Record.- 10: Panels on Research Methods and Distributed Organizations.- 29 Addressing the Shortcomings of Interpretive Field Research: Reflecting Social Construction in the Write-up.- 30 Learning and Teaching Qualitative Research: A View from the Reference Disciplines of Anthropology and History.- 31 Successful Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of Information Systems: Does Healthcare Serve as a Model for Networked Organizations?.- 32 Standardization, Network Economics, and IT.- Index of Contributors.