Christina Amcoff Nyström, Institutionen för Informationsteknologi och medier, Mittuniversitetet: Designing Viable Intranets - Approaching Organizational Empowerment and Participation

Intranets appeared in the mid-1990s and were perceived as the answer to the need for integration of existing Information Systems into organizations. Despite the fact that there has been extensive research regarding implementation, development processes, policies, standardisation vs. creativity and so forth, the potentiality of Intranets has not been fully exploited. Intranets offer many advantages in the form of working networks that support and enable empowered employers to participate in the development of the organization, enable measuring essential functions and monitoring undesired conditions and finding suitable functions that support daily work. The research approach in this thesis has alternated between analysis, empirical studies and design. Current literature, research findings in the form of articles, etc., are analysed, an empirical study of five organizations is conducted and finally a design of possible functions is accomplished.

In the analyse of the state-of-the-art, current research can be grouped into four topics partly overlapping each other; issues and questions concerning informatics, organization theory, knowledge management and design. Urgent issues for further research are identified as mainly belonging to the topics informatics and organization theory; management and strategy, empowerment, further development processes, use and roles. Findings from a study of five Swedish organizations shows a demand for identifying the philosophy of technology in the organizations in order to make an organization’s view of technology common throughout the organization.

Furthermore, functions supporting daily work are lacking to a high degree. Further lacks and demands are identified, as well as potential functions and new possibilities. In the next section, the Philosophy of Technology is related to an Intranet. The discussion is based on a model which consists of the concepts Conception, Use, Technology and Policy. Making the Philosophy of Technology common in organizations is connected to the empowerment of employees and is a guarantor – besides the influence of the VSM in the design – for impact on and participation in the processes of an organization.

The next part deals with possible advantages of combining the cybernetic model, the Viable System Model, by Stafford Beer, and an Intranet. It is found that the VSM can support the design of Intranets according to essential functions such as Early Warning Systems connected to production units and levels that are to be made aware of undesired conditions in the organization. Furthermore, functions for amplifying and attenuating information – both between parts of the organisation and between the organization and the environment – are to be designed. Further examples of functions supporting the organization, in order to make it viable, are given. The main contribution of the thesis is the identification of core functions in the Intranet as establishing functions for supervision (Early Warning Systems), attenuating and amplifying information between the organization and the environment and between subparts in the organization. Furthermore, the interface is to be designed so the underlying technology is “visible”: Where are the different parts of the Intranet located physically? Who delivers information to the different parts? Who uses the functions? Who is responsible? The transparency of the interface makes the philosophy of technology visible throughout the organization; the concepts are the same, the actual use is the same as the intended use, and policy is active and well known and finally, the possibilities and the limitations with/inherent to the Intranet are known among the users. Finally, examples of further research are given – both as regards the implementation of Intranets based on the VSM design and as regards making the interface transparent.

Välkomna!
Daniel Skog