Ian McLoughlin

Working Around the Barriers to Creating and Sharing Knowledge in Capital Goods Projects: The Client's Perspective

The article considers knowledge management issues from the clients perspective. In the example presented, a sludge treatment center procured by Northumbrian Water Ltd (NWL), the task faced by the client was to manage knowledge in a context where the core technology being procured was new and resulted in the need for new knowledge to be created and shared both pre- and post-delivery. In exploring these issues, the article reveals the problems of (and some solutions to) managing knowledge across the project life-cycle and between different groups, where the motivation for generating and sharing knowledge was not the same for all participants.

Cultures of ambiguity design, emergence and ambivalence in the introduction of normative control

Organizational actors involved in cultural change programmes have a consciousness and experience that is often fragmented, contradictory and ambivalent. Studies documenting ambivalence have, however, tended to assume that there is a relatively clear and unambiguous change programme about which employees are ambivalent. This article argues that the nature of such programmes is more uncertain and ambiguous than this suggests. Drawing on a six-year study of the introduction of a cultural change programme in the coke-making plant of an integrated steelworks, this article details how cultural ambivalence intertwines with practical ambiguities in the course of such programmes to create complex cultures of ambiguity

Political process perspectives on organization and technological change

In 1949 in Mann Gulch and in 1994 in South Canyon, US firefighters died trying to outrun forest fires. They died ‘with their packs on’, weighed down by their satchels and other heavy firefighting equipment which they continued to carry despite instructions to remove them. Karl Weick (1996), in exploring why they did not ‘down tools’ when so ordered and it seemed rational to do so, raised central issues about the role of tools in people’s work identity, and the complex social and technical arrangements that make us hold on to ‘heavy tools’ when, in hindsight at least, a more flexible and responsive approach to changing conditions appear to warrant their release. This merging of people and the tools that they employ, the intertwined identities of our ‘material’ and ‘non-material’ cultures (Ogburn, 1964), is the subject of a growing number of studies extending far beyond the confines of technological change at work or within organizations. The questioning of the modernist assumption of a clear and unequivocal divide between ‘people’ and ‘things’ raises fundamental questions about how we are to understand technology, ourselves and progress in a late modern era. In an age of postmodern reflexivity characterized by the declining authority of metanarratives, questions are inevitably raised about the validity and meaning of any view of technology as an autonomous, independent and progressive ‘great growling engine of change’ (Toffler, 1970: 25). In what Latour (1994) characterizes as our ‘amodern’ world, the fundamental mythical divide upon which the self-understanding of our modernist culture was based – the separation of the ‘technical’ and the ‘human’ – is recognized by many for what it is (and was): a cultural equivalent of Canute ordering back the waves. The

Digital government at work : a social informatics perspective

Introduction 1. Digital Government and Public Service Innovation 2. A Social Informatics Perspective 3. Integration: Towards the Virtual Agency? 4. Joining-up Childrens Services and Health 5. Identity Management, Governance, and the Citizen as Customer 6. On-line on the Front-Line: FAME 7. Co-production and Tele-care for Older People 8. Making Digital Government Work Methodological Appendix

WORKING WITH COMMUNITIES: Community partnership research in information technology, management and systems

From a research perspective, enhancing our understanding of interactions between people, the contexts in which they are situated, technologies, systems and information is seen as one of the keys to developing better information technologies, management and systems. When designing and doing research, there is a need to take into account the diversity, dynamics and complexity at play in designing, developing, managing and interacting with information systems, optimizing the use of information technologies and managing information. Undertaking community partnership research relating to information technologies, management and systems is centred on understanding and prioritizing how information and information technologies can empower communities, support their development, resilience, health and well-being, promote self-determination, social inclusion and social justice, and bridge divides. This community-centricity presents challenges, however, for research, researchers and research institutions. They are associated with equitable participation, engagement and co-production; respect and recognition of the rights, needs, values and motivation of all participants and stakeholders, as well as their expertise and ways of knowing; researcher stance; and control over and dissemination of knowledge outcomes. The papers in this special issue explore many of these challenges.

Hope to die before you get old? Techno-centric versus user-centred approaches in developing virtual services for older people

Abstract This ongoing experience of a collaborative project to develop virtual services for older people is outlined. A key feature is an objective of making users more central to the system development process. The idea of appropriation through co-production to enable ‘design in use’ is proposed. This is presented as an alternative to dominant techno-centric approaches and as potentially more effective than participative design in mitigating its consequences. The experience to date of intervention nurture and facilitating co-production in the project is outlined and discussed. It is suggested that this approach can avoid problems of ‘over-integration’– a consequence of many attempts to provide more joined-up public services by virtual means.

Lost in translation? Building science and innovation city strategies in Australia and the UK

Abstract With the development of the ‘knowledge economy’ in many advanced industrial nations, there has been a growing interest in regional innovation systems and the role that universities might play in these. One result has been the demarcation by government actors of specific spaces for the creation, transfer and transformation of knowledge. Such spaces have been given various names, such as ‘smart regions’, ‘science cities’ and ‘innovation corridors’. Whilst the associated policy rhetoric has much in common with the earlier interest in science and technology parks there are also clear distinguishing differences. More recent policy initiatives have sought to foster industry clusters within these spaces to contribute to economic development and diversification and link this to economic, social and cultural regeneration. This paper explores policy-driven creation of ‘innovation areas’ by focusing on two contrasting examples: Newcastle Science City in the North East of England and the Gold Coast Pacific Innovation Corridor in Queensland, Australia. The paper compares the rhetoric of university–industry–government policies with the realities.

Disruptive innovation in health care: business models, moral orders and electronic records

There is widespread consensus that current healthcare costs are unsustainable, and that efficiencies could be achieved by reorganising care and making greater use of information technology, in particular nationally available electronic health records. Such approaches have, however, been difficult to implement, partly because incentives for uptake are weak. In this article we argue that the difficulties go deeper than calculations of costs and benefits, and include disruptions to the complex moral orders that surround the production and exchange of health information. Using the introduction of national electronic health records in England and Australia as examples, we show how attempts to reshape and transfer distributions of rights and responsibilities developed in the age of paper into the digital world go awry. We suggest that a fundamental rethinking of the role of ‘records’ in healthcare may be an integral component of the moral re-ordering required to transform health care through such means.

'Last orders' at the rural 'cyber pub': a failure of 'social learning'?

An initiative to stimulate innovation by putting rural public houses ‘online’ as one element of making the pub, ‘the hub’ of service delivery in UK rural communities is explored. Research findings are presented which show that the initiative did not develop as intended and ultimately – even in pilot form – became difficult to sustain. This abortive attempt to appropriate computer and internet technology is explained as a failure of social learning. In particular, whilst aiming with some success to assist in the configuration of the technology to the specific context and setting of the rural pub, the initiative failed to focus on developing the means and mechanisms that might have supported the development of a stronger learning culture. This could have provided the basis for the kind of social innovation required to develop and sustain a model of the rural ‘cyber pub’ that might then have been more widely appropriable.

INNOVATING RELATIONSHIPS: Taking a co-productive approach to the shaping of telecare services for older people

We reflect on the experiences of OLDES (Older People@Home), a European Commission 6th Framework-co-funded project, which sought to undertake a user-centred design of telecare services for older people. A series of interventions were undertaken with the objective of nurturing co-production. The aim was a rebalancing of the techno-centric focus of the system development and delivery partners in the project in order to address the wider needs and interests of other members and stakeholders (in particular, health, social care and the voluntary/community sector) as well as those of the older people themselves and their carers. The intention, in response to the challenges posed by an ageing demographic, was to effect wider discussions about the role of a telecare in the sustainable development of health and social care services. We use this experience to reflect on the practical struggles involved in trying to build a shared set of understandings and practices that might enable a variant of co-production to be nurtured and to evolve. We conclude by discussing the challenges of being engaged in this sort of process and the need to include spaces and occasions for the innovation of inter-organisational relationships as an essential part of the shaping of complex products and services of this type.