Balancing McLuhan With Williams

The article titled “Realising Virtual Reality: A Reflection on the Continuing Evolution of New Media,” presented a technological deterministic analysis on the evolution of virtual reality. A major criticism of the technological deterministic viewpoint is that it does not consider context of use and human agency. Looking specifically at the work of Raymond Williams and other British Cultural Studies researchers, this response argues for a more balanced viewpoint of technology, determined more so by cultural use than by technological enforcement.

Strengthening and Enriching Audit Practice

The audit profession has been facing reassessment and repositioning for the past decade. Enquiry has been an integral part of an audit; however, its reliability as a source of audit evidence is questioned. To legitimize enquiry in the face of audit complexity and ensure sufficiency, relevance, and reliability, the introduction of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) into theory and practice has been recommended by a number of authors. In this paper, a variant on previous VSM-based audit work is introduced to perfect auditing assessment of accountability and compliance. This variant is termed the “VSM/NVA variant” and is applicable when the VSM model is in use for an audit. This variant is based on application of Network Visualization Analysis (NVA) to a VSM-modeled organization. Using NVA, “decision leaders” can be identified and their socio-technical relevance to VSM systems explored. This paper shows how the concepts of decision leaders and their networks can enrich and clarify practical applications of audit theory and practice. The approach provides an enhanced real-world understanding of how various VSM systems and network layers of an organization coalesce, and how they relate to the aims of the VSM model at micro and macro levels.

Review of Regional Workplace Development Cases

The labour-intensive manufacturing industry faces many working-life challenges in the rural, sparsely populated northern areas of Finland at both operational and strategic levels. These challenges vary, being in interaction with both technical and social systems and their combinations. In this paper, the authors review and evaluate needs, actions and results carried out to improve work and productivity in three regional industrial development cases. The actions discussed in this paper, such as work environment management, change management in general and the sociotechnical approach, are essential for the success of enterprises. Using the results of this research as a basis for developing design knowledge, two guidelines for strategic management purposes are proposed. These guidelines implement sociotechnical aspects into the work environment and its management, and recognise that it is important to focus on human and organisational factors in addition to technical end environmental aspects. A proposal for a specific, unique self-assessment tool for evaluating the level of the quality of the work environment in SMEs is also suggested.

Boundaries of Socio-Technical Systems and IT for Knowledge Development in Military Environments

This article explores the boundaries of socio-technical IT systems for knowledge development, using military environments in a case study approach. The need to examine the effects of socio-technical convergence of human systems and computer systems is emerging in many fields. The article examines both the risks and the potential in military critical-environments for early adoption of socio-technical systems. The author addresses risks for creative knowledge creation by too-early adoption of information technology and the effects on socio-technical systems and sense-making. Such risks are more easily highlighted in a critical, stressful environment (stressful for man, machine, and their co-operation) with high-stakes. However, examined military environments are proposed as point of reference leading to further research in other sectors. The author argues for a socio-technical analysis before, during, and after adoption of new systems, especially those relating to knowledge development, reviewing boundaries created. Finally, the author discusses the future promise of socio-technical convergence of man-machine for knowledge development.

Towards a Conceptual Knowledge Management System Based on Systems Thinking and Sociotechnical Thinking

This paper contributes to the field of knowledge management arguing that knowledge management research should be grounded in both systems thinking and sociotechnical thinking. Systems thinking enables the treating of knowledge management broadly, as a complex system, not limited to knowledge management processes, but encompassing other essential elements related to managing knowledge at an organization. Sociotechnical thinking considers both social elements and technology equally important in managing knowledge. The two above mentioned approaches are used to support the idea that, in order to successfully manage knowledge, a balanced sociotechnical knowledge management system should be designed at an organization. The article seeks to investigate the main elements of such a system and to show how these elements relate to each other demonstrating that a strong correlation exists between the knowledge management process and strategic leadership.

Identifying Issues of the Chief Information Officer Role through Qualitative Interviews

The role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) is emerging and evolving. This paper presents the results of conducting in-depth qualitative interviews with currently practicing CIOs. The approach taken in the interviews allowed for flexibility within each interview while promoting consistency across a number of interviews. Further, this approach facilitated the designation of management issues related to the CIO role at the unit and corporate levels as well as information technology related issues. Strategic issues were also identified relating to industry, culture, and alignment. It is necessary for both the CIO and senior management to understand and agree on role expectations and interpretations.

Socio-Technical Systems

Meta-design of socio-technical systems complies with the need to integrate two types of structures and processes: technical systems, which are engineered to provide anticipatable and reliable interactions between users and systems, and social systems, which are contingent in their interactions and a subject of evolution. Meta-design is focused on objectives, techniques, and processes to allow users to act as designers. It provides, rather than fixed solutions, frameworks within which all stakeholders can contribute to the development of technical functionality and the evolution of the social side, such as organizational change, knowledge construction, and collaborative learning. This paper combines the theoretical framework of meta-design and its underlying principles with the consideration of methodological aspects and practical cases. Five different principles are explored: (1) cultures of participation, (2) empowerment for adaptation and evolution, (3) seeding and evolutionary growth, (4) underdesign of models of socio-technical processes, and (5) structuring of communication. Design collaboratories and knowledge management are used as examples to analyze meta-designed systems representing socio-technical solutions as well as frameworks within which socio-technical solutions can be developed. The combination of theoretical and methodological considerations leads to a set of practical guidelines for meta-designers.

The Impact of Organisational Politics on the Implementation of IT Strategy

Through IT strategy, many organisations intend to set out key directions and objectives for the use and management of information, communication and technologies. A shared view among these organisations is that IT strategy allows all parts of the organisation to gain a shared understanding of priorities, goals and objectives for both current and future states as defined in the strategy. It would therefore seem that IT strategy, for the foreseeable future will remain a key aspect of development within organisations. As a result, there has been more focus on how IT strategy is articulated and formulated. What is missing is that there has been less attention on the implementation of the strategy. Also, in most organisations, technical issues are minor compared to the relationship issues. There are many factors which influence the implementation of the IT strategy. This paper focuses on how organisational politics as examined by two underpinning theories, Structuration Theory and Actor-Network Theory, impact the implementation of IT strategy.

Telemedicine and Development

This study is based on an ethnographic study of a telemedicine system implemented in Northeastern Peru. This system connects a hospital in the Upper Amazon with health care facilities scattered throughout that area of the jungle. Patients’ transport through the physical nodes of the public health care system relied on rivers and wooden boats, but voice and data can now flow directly through channels apart from the existing health care organization. The time required to reach a doctor might previously have been the travel distance for different medicines served as a justification for people not to follow new ways to recovery. After the implementation of telemedicine, the effectiveness of medical talks depends on the ability to understand each other. Locally there is no single health care practice that is believed to be the right one: patients follow different paths for recovery through traditional and biomedical treatments. Thus, the diverse social environment affects both directly and indirectly the use of the telemedicine system, which evolves accordingly with how public healthcare service is perceived and used.

Engineering Organisational Behaviour with Design Research

Can Design Research be used to develop process models of organisational behavior? The question is significant given the desirability of finding ways to optimise organisational performance. It is also significant because the precursor of such process models have been largely restricted to the software engineering domain. This paper examines (a) whether Design Research is an effective tool for developing such models, and (b) asks, can process models be more broadly defined to include organisational behavior generally? The study concludes that Design Research is an excellent tool for developers of process models in general, and that there appears to be no good reason why such models cannot be used to describe optimal organisational behavior in a broad range of domains.