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.