A genealogical study of boundary-spanning IS design

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a business-aligned information system (IS) from an actor-network perspective, viewing non-human intermediaries jointly as inscriptions and boundary objects. This field study presents a situated view of IS design over time. The design process is assessed through analyzing the intersected activities of a team of seven organizational managers who were defining changes to business processes, information technology, and organizational roles and responsibilities. This view of design presents a very different view to the rational, analytical process that is usually encountered in the IS literature. Instead of an orderly progression, we see a trajectory of design definition, as the team responds to the contingencies and instrumentalities that prevail during the course of a design inquiry. These managers enacted a new reality through their interactions with external stakeholders, senior managers, specifications, procedures, business documents, and IT systems. This study provides much needed rich insights into the complexities of systems definition and negotiation, explaining the situated rationalities underlying IS design as the co-design of business and IT systems. A fifth form of boundary object is suggested by this analysis, which is based on the need to align interests across a network of actors.

Keywords:

• information system design
• actor-network theory
• boundary objects
• situated design

Notes

1 Names of the organization, its departments, members and products have all been disguised.

2 In Table 2, the key to the ‘actor’ abbreviations in the translation of interests column is: ISM – IS Manager; BPM – Bid Process Manager; PEM – Project Engineering Manager; MD – Marketing Director; Team – members of the core design team, acting in concert; IS Dept. – technical developers working under the IS Manager.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Gasson

About the author

Dr. Susan Gasson is Assistant Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, U.S.A. Following an industry career in systems design, project management and systems architecture consultancy, she earned her MBA and Ph.D. at Warwick Business School in the U.K. Dr. Gasson is a member of the ACM, the AIS, and IFIP Working Group 8.2 (Organizational Aspects of IS). Her research interests focus on the management of collaborative knowledge processes to specify and design boundary-spanning organizational information systems. Her work has been published in leading journals and conferences including the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, the Data Base for Information Systems, the Journal of End User Computing, Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, the International Journal of E-Collaboration, and ICIS. She is the author of a chapter on ‘Rigor in Grounded Theory Research’ in The Handbook Of Information Systems Research. Dr. Gasson was the recipient of a prestigious NSF Career Award in 2004.