Frank Frößler

Xenia: A Metaphor for Sense-Making and Acting in Information Systems Innovation

This paper draws on Ciborra’s insightful concept of xenia (i.e., hospitality) to analyze how successful infrastructural service innovation was managed at the local operations of an international financial services firm. The xenia concept problematizes the information system development (ISD) orthodoxy and points to issues and aspects that are often overlooked or considered irrelevant in structured methodologies. In interpreting the findings of the empirical study—in which a highly successful (but radical) big bang transition from one technology platform to another takes place over a single weekend—we suggest that IS implementation and development is an emergent process in which technology and users are continually redefined. This process resembles an emotional “meeting” between host and guest who, over time, develop mutual familiarity and acceptance. Further, we argue that the metaphor of xenia opens space for reconsidering conventional but socially sterile approaches to IS innovation; xenia offers a radically different way for understanding and acting upon ISD. Our analysis highlights the intrinsic socio-technical interplay underlying IS development and implementation, and raises questions about the importance of local cultures of “hospitality” and ways they may be cultivated and nurtured in order to alleviate the meeting between technology and organizations.

The First (Beer) Living Lab: Learning to Sustain Network Collaboration for Digital Innovation

The Beer Living Lab was the first of a series of living labs established to analyse and improve complex cross-border trade and logistics challenges using innovative information technology. Unlike stable inter-firm networks where roles are formal and explicit, role taking and role assigning in the Beer Living Lab was highly dynamic. Although project deliverables were formally assigned, in practice responsibilities emerged as a result of actors’ own initiative or as a result of negotiation and sense-making. Even leadership behaviour shifted throughout the various stages of the initiative. The practice of knowledge broking and cultivating a close working relationship with the operational manager emerged as crucial for creating and sustaining the social network which in turn stabilised the hybrid network organisation. We discover (yet again) the key practices of knowledge brokers and the necessity for social involvement in overcoming discontinuities within organisation networks.