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Developing and implementing information systems (IS) in and
across organizational contexts is a rather multifaceted challenge
that does not only involve their design, but also the development
of supportive social frameworks, institutional structures as well
as normative conventions that complement and reinforce their
adoption and diffusion at large. Therefore, investigating the
technological nature of IS without examining their prevalent social
aspects yields an incomplete and somewhat shortsighted
understanding of the underlying issues at stake.
Thus far, the prevailing discourse in IS has had a techno-centric
orientation in spite of the far-reaching social ramifications of
these systems. The aim of this course is to move beyond this focus
and to include additional ways of describing and analyzing the
interrelationship between technology and people in organizations.
The course will enable the students to unfold how organizational
life is constructed and managed by technology and how social
relations influence the technology's ability to contribute to a
company's success. We do so by exploring social,
organizational, and technological aspects of information systems by
building on perspectives of technological determinism,
actor-networks, social construction of technology, institutional
structures, sensemaking processes, and other approaches used in
organization studies. In particular, the course builds on
perspectives that explain, apply, build on, and/or compare social
aspects of information systems.
The unifying themes that we wish to discuss in the course are: what
assumptions about the design, implementation, and use of
information systems are embedded in the perspectives? What are the
strengths and weaknesses of these perspectives in terms of
understanding the interplay between technology and organization,
including individual and collective practices with respect to the
design and use of technology? How can the different perspectives be
applied to real cases of technology use in organizations and what
are the practical implications? How do social relations influence
the technology's ability to contribute to a company's
success?
The course's development of personal
competences:
This course will develop the students' skills in analyzing
how information systems impact social relations and organizational
structures in organizations, and how social relations influence the
design, implementation and adoption of IS. In this respect, the
course will enhance the students' understanding of the
complexity of information systems.
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