Research

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My larger research program has examined how organizations innovate with IT -- in particular how they adapt to using technological innovations such as decision support systems, client/server development, knowledge management tools and groupware applications. My research is focused on the interaction between technology and social systems. The key issue is the recursive relationship between the artifacts that we create that then, through our use of them, shape us and our actions, and how they enable us to do some things but they also constrain us. In short, I am interested in how we shape tools that then shape us. Examining how organizations innovate with IT - in public organizations, service organizations, or industrial organizations - is a fascinating task. Very often, even though the espoused reason for organizations to invest in new IT is to try and change the way they work with this new technology, in reality the practice has often been "more of the same" despite the ambition to innovate. Things may have become faster, or perhaps more efficient, but not necessarily different, and not necessarily enabling people in new and innovative ways. I am interested in how we can enact things differently, how we can use technology in innovative ways to do things differently. In order to do so we need to appreciate how technologies are evolving, changing, emerging, and in a similar vein practices of use are constantly evolving and changing. To this end, I am interested in the emergence of different and new uses of technology that change how people work, and that this in turn changes the technology and its uses. My research interests include:  IS and organizational change My main research interest lies in the area of IS and organizational change. Much of my previous work has been concerned with the consequences of information systems in organizations and the processes of system development. This includes empirical examinations of information systems development and of the role and meaning of information systems in organizational activities. It also includes the development of theoretical approaches to explaining the development and subsequent role of information systems in organizations.  Digital services I am interested in digital services and the underlying infrastructure supporting them. This research focuses on new and emerging networked organizing patterns, the digital services produced in such networks, and the technologies that make them possible.  Actor-network theory The theoretical/methodological framework informing most of my research on technologies in context, whether in organizations or in cyberspace, is provided by the so-called Actor Network theory, as developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others.