Systems Design Meets Habermas, Foucault and Latour

This chapter begins with a review of the theoretical foundations that are common in the systems design literature, before moving to draw upon the work of three prominent social theorists to analyse and critique a particular case of information systems design. It is argued that in different, but complimentary ways, each theorist offers systems designers compelling insights to guide their work. In particular, it is argued that Habermas’ understanding of “Ideal speech”; Foucault’s understanding of “power/knowledge” and “discipline”; and Latour’s understanding of systems as “networks”; confirms that social theory is able to offer systems designers concrete recommendations to guide their work.

Bringing the Social and Organisational Issues into Information Systems Development

Multiview is a framework to support the information systems development process. It was formulated originally in 1985, but has been developed and changed since that time. It was originally defined to take into account the human and organisational aspects of information systems development, as the alternative methodologies of the time–and most since that time–took a very technology-oriented approach. Furthermore, it is a contingency approach, and again this compares with the alternative bureaucratic and prescriptive methodologies. In this chapter, we describe the history of Multiview, and we reflect on the experiences of using it in action in many organisations.

Conflict and Politics and Information Systems Failure

Managing the power, politics and organizational conflict inherent in information systems is increasingly recognized as being of critical importance to successful information systems development. The focus of this chapter is the extent to which conflict among participants in an information systems development may be said to contribute to project failure. The chapter describes a research study that explores the nature of conflict in an information systems development and the extent to which conflict may be perceived to impact on the successful progress of a project. In particular, the study was designed to determine which type of conflict (i.e., conflict between which type of stakeholders) may pose the most risk to an information systems development and to determine to what extent conflict can be said to be a contributing factor to information systems failure. The study was structured into three distinct stages. The first stage was a major case study conducted to explore the nature of conflict in a prematurely terminated information systems development and to probe the extent to which conflict was perceived to pose a risk to information systems projects. The second stage involved surveying IT Managers to test the wider applicability of the case study findings. The third and final stage involved developing a predictive model of conflict showing the relative weighting of each of the variables investigated, using logistic regression. The most significant outcome of the study was that information systems developments can be detrimentally affected by the impact of conflict among users who have commissioned or will use the system. Managing and resolving conflict in an information systems environment is clearly a difficult, challenging and time-consuming exercise, but the findings of this research study suggest that the rewards, in terms of higher success rates, should be worth the commitment.

Information Technology and Privacy

With the rising popularity of the Internet and some widely publicized occurrences of privacy loss due to information technology, many individuals have recently become more concerned with the privacy and security of sensitive information. These concerns have special relevance within work organizations because of the substantial amounts of data that organizations typically collect about the work and non-work activities of their employees. This chapter presents a new theoretical perspective called Information Boundary Theory, that describes whether, when, and why employees care about the privacy and security of sensitive information at work. Analysis of interview data from N=25 non-managerial U.S. workers provided preliminary support for four of the new theory’s research propositions. The chapter describes implications of the theory and the research findings for the design and deployment of information technology systems within organizations and maps a research agenda for future uses of the theory.

From the Technical Change to Socio-Technical Change

The organisational application of information technology commonly evokes a wide variety of impacts upon the enterprise as a whole, and the individual members of staff affected by it. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the identification and management of such impacts, which is typically referred to as the treatment of organisational issues, is poorly handled in practice. The primary aim of the research project, described in this chapter, was to develop a proactive approach to the analysis of organisational impacts. The aim of the approach, which is presented as a flow diagram, is to clearly articulate the sequence of activities that have to be undertaken and the decisions that need to be addressed to ensure that all organisational issues are treated effectively. This approach has been formulated from an extensive review of the literature, and the authors’ experience working in this domain for the past six years. It is argued that this approach may well succeed, where many of its predecessors have failed, as it complements, rather than replaces, existing development tools and methods. Moreover, as this approach adopts a common-sense perspective, it should be relatively easy to learn and apply. Finally, it benefits from adopting a proactive, flexible and coherent approach to the treatment of organisational issues.

A Social Perspective on Information Security

Information security has become a largely rule-based domain, substantially focusing on issues of confidentiality. But the standards developed to achieve this, both in the U.S. and in the UK, have not been adopted as widely as had been hoped. By casting information security as a human-centred domain, this chapter, by means of a critique fom a social theoretical perspective, seeks to offer a way forward to a more widely acceptable approach. Social philosophy, social theory, and empirical evidence all suggest a basis in critical social theory as a potential way forward, and an initial framework based on this, is developed within this study. All of this is seen to point toward information security seen as human action, mediated through subjective understanding, and this research is now focusing on the operationalisation of these concepts.

Human Factors and the Systems Development Process

Internet systems have the potential to reach a huge and unknown audience. How easy a system is to use will usually determine its success or failure and consequently the business and yet the human factors elements of systems are rarely considered. Usability describes the ease with which people can use a system to complete a task. It is often the case however that development teams focus more on the technology and less on the users when designing systems resulting in software that is not useable and therefore does not satisfy users’ need. This chapter presents recent research, which examines one approach to developing a web-based information system and demonstrates how the composition of the development team through the inclusion of people with an understanding of user needs is important to the quality of the final product and ultimately the success of the system.

Technology-Push or User-Pull? The Slow Death of the Transfer-of-Technology Approach to Intelligent Support Systems Development

This chapter describes a study of the adoption of intelligent support systems in agriculture. The aim was to investigate the apparent low uptake of these systems and the approaches used in development–whether ‘user-pull’ or ‘technology-push.’ Data was collected for 66 systems, mainly through telephone interviews. An interpretative approach to research was adopted. The nature of user influence in the development process and the nature of the outcomes for the systems were found to be complex and multidimensional constructs. A pattern emerged showing the technology-push approach was associated with low levels of user influence in the development process and comparatively low levels of system impact. This relationship was more evident in systems developed by government organizations.

Concern Solving for IS Development

Mitroff and Linstone’s (1993) summit work, “The Unbounded Mind,” reiterates the multiple perspectives epistemology that was introduced to IS by Churchman (1971). They explain the advantages of dealing with IS development problems as involving three domains of knowledge–technical, meaning objective; personal, meaning lifestyle and ethics; and organisational, meaning social constructions and politics. They argue these align with Freud’s professional, personal and political layers of anxiety. This chapter focuses on the ‘organisational’ or ‘political’ domain, where the key is being able to deal with conflicting demands from stakeholders. The author recently returned from two years as adviser to the Deputy Premier of South Australia. This epitomises the typical working life of senior executives, who operate almost exclusively at this ‘organisational’ or political domain of analysis. His conclusion from that experience was that ‘problem solving’ in this domain should be relabelled ‘concern solving,’ as it was so much about dealing with stakeholders’ concerns rather than objective problems.

The Social Responsibility of Information Systems Developers

Information systems professionals have often been accused of ignoring issues such as ethics, human factors, social consequences, etc., during the development of an information system. This chapter aims to put into perspective that this attitude or ‘fact’ could be a result of a somewhat outdated mechanistic view of information systems and their role in organizations. Organizations adopt and use information systems for a variety of reasons, of which some of the most influential on the outcome or success of the systems often are neither planned nor anticipated. It is these reasons and their consequences that are the main point of discussion in this chapter. The importance of viewing information systems as social systems is stressed and it is pointed out that the ‘social side’ of information systems is the ‘other side of the coin’ of technical development methodologies. In the modern organization all work is so intertwined with the use of information technology that the one side cannot be considered, planned or developed, without considering the other. It is furthermore argued that it is the social responsibility of information systems professional to ensure that the human environment within which systems are being developed is cultivated and nurtured.