Things you’re likely to see here …

By Michel Avital

Welcome to IMphd

This is a multi-authored community blog in which participants in the program can share conversation starters, ideas, and the likes. The adjacent tabs provide further information about upcoming seminars, the PhD program, and general overview. For pictures, see here http://bit.ly/imphd-pixs => Authors and contributors:

The paradox of empirical research in design

By Robin Effing.
After a big pause, with major life changes, I am back in the IMPHD class. I think I missed a lot of engaged talks and presentations.

While reading the articles from Stappers (Michel, 2007) and Sleeswijk Visser et al (2005) I started thinking again about the complexity of this type of research.

Language

Arviansyah

I am not really use modelling languages, but last time I learn UML and REA (resource event agent) model. REA also have four levels of details or abstractions, likewise, UML has nine basic diagram that can be used; Need something to be beneficial to switch from commonly use language to another, what would that be for this MEMO case? I am not quite sure what it means by including organizational context and culture in the modelling

Some notes and questions

By Ileana

In the reading for this seminar, the authors propose an enterprise modeling “that helps with the design of corporate information systems that are in line with a company’s organization and its long terms strategies” (Frank). The particular strength of the proposed enterprise model is that it integrates information systems with organizational context and organizational strategies into one multi-perspective model. As such, it moves away from previous models that focused on only one of these elements, be it information systems or organizational processes.

As enterprise modeling is not my field of study, I will focus this conversation starter on a more general topic. Particularly, I would like to raise a question related to the authors’ view on IT.  Reading the articles for this week, I couldn’t not notice that the authors write about IT as being 1. an organizational resource that can help an organization stay competitive and 2. a tool that facilitates particular organizational processes (see Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) for a critique on these views on IT). Despite the fact that the authors propose an enterprise model that aims to integrate IT and organizational processes, cultures and strategies into one framework, IT and organizational processes are still portrayed as independent, albeit influencing each other.

Mixed method and multiple paradigm research

Arviansyah

Myers & Avison argued in their book of qualitative research in IS that case study could be distinguished as positivist, interpretive or critical case study. Conducting mixed method research within one paradigm seems possible. However, is it considered acceptable in IS to use different kind of method in mixed method research, which have different underlying paradigm? For example Interpretive case study with positivist experiment.

Jansen & Brinkkemper (2009) described about the internal, external validity and empirical reliability for their case study. Would it be more appropriate to use the term of credibility, transferability and dependability? Or perhaps, it arises because of their stance on Yin’s positivistic principle?



Researcher & action..

Arviansyah

The articles provided for action research method are interesting. I believe that action research is really beneficial for illustrative and explanatory purpose. Several thoughts arise; referring last discussion concerning practical and rigour, how rigour is the action research? Are consultancy jobs also considered as action researches? And, how the researchers maintain their objectivity in interpreting or evaluating the final outcome since they also involved in prescribing the direction or “action” of organisations?

Finding and explaining relations of constructs which are statistically significant is consider interesting in quantitative approach, what are the events that consider interesting in action research? How this method deal with the issue of reproduce ability of the research process. It should be interesting to know how the action research might be applied in conducting evaluation of ICT investment in organisations.

Sociomateriality in the IS discipline – towards a seamless tapestry

by Saima Khan
The concept of Sociomateriality has been of widespread interest to researchers in disciplines as diverse as organizational studies, sociology of science & technology, and feminist studies, and has played a pivotal role in understanding the interplay between the social and the material in various aspects of everyday organizing. And yet, there still remains a scarcity of literature in the IS discipline in this domain. However, I do observe an increasing interest by IS researchers in the notion of sociomateriality and the recognition that new ways of theorizing IS by advancing and incorporating a sociomaterial schema in the IS discipline is very much needed.

 I believe that we, as IS researchers, also need to re-think beyond the ontological separation and duality between the social and the technical, the subject and the object, people and things etc. and recognize the increasing blurredness between these attributes which is in real life akin to more of a seamless tapestry. We also need to understand that focussing on the duality of these attributes poses conceptual difficulties to what is in reality a constitutive entanglement (Orlikowski, 2007), or a seamless tapestry. For example, sociomaterial practices of IS adoption, or the materiality of everyday IS mediated work (Leonardi and Barley, 2008) illustrate that the social and the material cannot be separated into two distinct entities. It is and remains a constitutive entanglement and any separation or distinction between the two should only be done for analytical purposes.

Challenging the notion of “organizational change”

By Ileana

My conversation starter is intended to raise a question concerning our conceptualization of the notion of “organizational change” and its usefulness when used together with the sociomateriality approach.

I deeply support the call for a theorization of people and technology (or any other non-human actors) as “constitutively entangled” (Orlikowski 2007), rather than viewing them as independent entities mutually influencing each other. Likewise, I do support the argument that the constitutive entanglements generated between human and non-human actors are at the heart of understanding how new forms of organizing come about and how they are negotiated and performed.

Bringing the community back in…

By Wietske

Since my previous conversation starter was already about sociomateriality, it is not  very relevant to write another two page conversation starter about this topic. And as was already clear from my previous conversation starter, I am a big fan of the topic, so instead I will direct my attention to a critical discussion of the literature of today. More particularly, I want to raise one concern that hit me while I was studying the readings for Marleen’s seminar.

These readings focus on using the concepts of sociomateriality and affordances for studying processes in organizations that are changing in conjunction with developments in information technology (Zammuto et al. 2007, Leonardi and Barley, 2008; Orlikowski, 2007/2010). However, I would like to suggest that the term “organization” in organization studies should be interpreted much broader.

Action research and design science

Arjan Knol

With the upcoming seminar of Jaap Boonstra about action inquiry and research in mind, this conversation starter is about action research and design science.

Both the design science and action research methods aim to achieve more relevant research in the IS research field while contributing to academia also (e.g. Hevner & Chatterjee, 2010; Baskerville & Wood-Harper, 1996). According to Hevner & Chatterjee (2010), design research and action research methods are closely related. They clarify that criteria of action research are also found in design science research, and, vice versa, criteria of design science research are also found in action research (see table 1 and 2 below). They conclude that it is intriguing that in the IS field the two research approaches have taken no note of the other, while so many similarities are identified.

Loaded paper..

Arviansyah

The first noticeable part for me who embarks the evaluation of ICT topic is that this study brings up the object-based belief and the object-based attitude to assess and predict the e-Government service quality. This last purpose statement made me wish that this article would be one of the evaluations related which can inspire me somehow or something regarding the evaluation theme, but it has more than I actually expected . The first statement that the study takes perspective from other field, i.e. goal perspective-customer satisfaction from the field of marketing, highlights an important degree of interdisciplinary approach in IS field. As it says, the study contributes by recontextualizing the existed model of service content quality and by adding the theory through a differentiation between the service content quality and the service delivery quality using a pleasant rationale.

Two questions about managing knowledge

Sanneke:

After going through the readings for this seminar I have two questions. In some of the reading boundary issues are considered ‘across’ organizations. Some of the issues in the case studies (for example “From IT leveraging competence to competitive advantage in turbulent environments: the case of new product deveopment by Pavlou and Sawy” and “The impact of information technologies on coordination: evidence from B2 stealth bomber by Argyres”) could also be present within an organization. Are boundary issues between organizations different from those in organizations?

Some of readings are about (product) development in organizations. I wonder if the same approach and insights are applicable to ‘service organizations’, for example financial institutions and municipalities. Service organizations are probably less ‘technical oriented’, so technical grammar for communication is less applicable. Does this make a difference?

Sanneke

Role of trust in overcoming knowledge-sharing glitches

by Saima Khan
Hoopes and Postrel (1999) propose an interesting way of looking at the “costly errors” that arise from knowledge-gaps in the process of knowledge sharing during product development, and term it “glitches”. A set of syndromes are identified that can lead to such knowledge-gaps. Glitches help in measuring the marginal benefits of shared knowledge, and this is illustrated through a case study in the article. However what seems to be overlooked in the study, and yet critical in studying and measuring such knowledge-gaps, is the role of trust. The level of trust plays a significant role in influencing such knowledge-sharing gaps, and can be treated as another syndrome in itself, or as embedded, to an extent, within the syndromes identified. A higher degree of trust between team members in the process of product development endeavors can be hypothesized as reducing such knowledge-gaps or glitches.

 

Boundery problem or learning and sensemaking

By Eric:

After going through some of the reading for the next seminar it strikes me that Innovation is described as a crossing borders problem by the authors. I personnaly would have expected some Boland or Weick readings as well. In that case Innovation is not crossing borders but people sharing insights and learning. The learning and better understanding of the total requires new words as well. Some perhaps borrowed form one of the domains, but some probably compltely new because of relationships discovered that did noet exist in any of the domains that are now combined for Innovation.

Eric

Just an observation I would like to share

Arjan Knol

This is not so much a conversation starter, but more an observation I would like to share.

Tan & Benbasat (2009) prescribe six interface design principles of how to design high quality e-government web sites. They start with a theoretical basis about service quality and e-government. Based on this they develop the six interface design principles. And finally they evaluate these principles with different e-government web sites. In my opinion this is a nice example of a research that provides explicit prescriptions of how to construct artefacts that is both scientifically and practically relevant.

Socio/materiality or sociomateriality in new product development

By Wietske

Orlikowski (2008, 2010) recently remarked that while technology is everywhere in organizational life and an integral part of organizational practices, it is largely absent from the recent management literature. In particular in the context of online communities and social media, analyzing technology as an essential, yet, largely invisible part of organizing practices becomes increasingly important.

The readings for this Ph.D. seminar gave us some very interesting examples of studies that do view technology (and more specifically information technology) as an integral part of organizational practices. However, although these studies acknowledge the important role of technology, they adopt very different perspectives on technology.