Michelle L. Kaarst-Brown

More on myth, magic and metaphor: Cultural insights into the management of information technology in organizations

Much research on information technology (IT) emphasizes the rational aspects of IT use. However, cultural analyses have considered IT as a symbolic artifact open to social interpretation. This article presents findings from ethnographic studies of two large insurance organizations to illustrate how cultural assumptions about IT are implicated in IT management. We employ the metaphor of magic as an interpretive lens to generate five archetypes of IT culture: the revered, controlled, demystified, integrated, and fearful IT cultures. Each of these archetypal cultural patterns reflects different assumptions about the “magic” of IT and the “wizards” who control its powers. These patterns are similar to social responses to the unknown that have been found in human cultures for hundreds of years. The metaphor itself was drawn from the language of the two organizations. All five archetypes were manifest in both of the companies studied, suggesting that organizations do not necessarily develop unified symbolic meanings of IT. Although separately each archetype invites novel insights into the management of IT in organizations, together they reveal even deeper interpretations consistent with contemporary theories of cultural differentiation and fragmentation.

“Seeding the line”: understanding the transition from IT to non-IT careers

As organizations face increased competitive pressures and technological changes, their attention is focusing on how to attain strategic benefits from information technology investments, including investments in people. From a human resources perspective, one debate centers on how to attract and retain information technology (IT) professionals. Somewhat paradoxically, it is suggested that to retain IT professionals, organizations must provide both technical and business oriented career opportunities.This paper presents a case study of one organization, The Mutual Group, in which more than 70 IT professionals permanently moved into non-IT, business unit jobs during the 1980s and early 1990s. Using interviews and surveys of 51 former IT professionals, this research investigated the characteristics of the individual, the organization, the first non-IT job, and the transition period.We conclude from our findings that IT professionals who moved to non-IT jobs in the line made the transition without the benefit of deliberate preparation, formal transition programs, or safety nets to reduce the risk. Some conditions existed at The Mutual Group that may have assisted them, including: good relations between IT and the line, friends and mentors in line units, and a willingness to take risks in pursuit of new challenges.One contribution of this paper is that is begins to fill a gap in the career mobility literature, based on individuals and their stories of change. It also attempts to understand the role of context in one organization that is a recognized leader in the use of IT for competitive advantage.

Creating social and intellectual capital through IT career transitions

Many organizations must continuously innovate with information technology (IT) to maintain their competitive position. This paper illustrates how the Clarica Life Insurance Company created a stream of business-enabling IT innovations after more than 70 career transitions of IT people into line business positions. The theoretical lens used to discuss this case is the Nahapiet and Ghoshal theory of co-creation of social and intellectual capital. After presenting the Clarica case study with three management profiles, we interpret the data to show how social capital led to an increase in intellectual capital and the organizational advantage that was achieved. We conclude with suggestions for extensions of this model and implications for research and practice.

IT Governance and Sarbanes-Oxley: The Latest Sales Pitch or Real Challenges for the IT Function?

Building on an analysis of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, literature, as well as private and public interviews, this paper hopes to shed light on the potential impact of Sarbanes-Oxley for IT governance, IT budgets, and relationships with vendors and outsourcers. Findings have implications for research as well as practical lessons-learned for American firms, and for IT vendors or other companies doing business with American companies.

Five symbolic roles of the external consultant – Integrating change, power and symbolism

Power and politics have long been accepted as often detrimental elements of change processes. An element of the political arena that has received limited attention, however, is the inadvertent symbolism associated with the presence of an external consultant or change agent. Presents a retrospective analysis of role symbolism of two consultants during a 14‐month change project. Using concepts drawn from theories on organizational power, stages of change, and symbolism, a framework of five symbolic roles of the external consultant is presented. These roles include symbol of change‐to‐come, symbol of changing norms and values, symbol of power redistribution, symbolic wishing well, and symbol of organizational empowerment. The emergence, significance and implications of these symbolic roles during different change stages are explored. Implications are developed for researchers, change agents and external consultants in general.

Sensitive information: A review and research agenda

A basic challenge for intelligence and security informatics is exploring the ways in which humans categorize or classify “sensitive” information. Research and practice support the critical nature of categorization frameworks, yet there are a number of different ways humans conceptualize sensitive information. In this paper we review some of the dilemmas associated with classification of sensitive information, present different classification approaches, and then identify alternative propositions related to factors that influence judgments about degree of sensitivity. We conclude with directions for future research.

‘Houston, we’ve had a problem …’

T he topic of IS employment, offshoring, and how perceptions do not equal reality is important, but should not be surprising. This train wreck has been coming for some time – and outsourcing or offshoring is only the most recent and most visible symptom of a systemic lack of respect for the IT profession as a whole in much of North American and Western Europe. Hirschheim and Newman do a great job of presenting their interpretation of issues that many of us are dealing with every day. As faculty, we try to help students prepare for their future careers, even as we struggle with the angst of lost employment within our own schools and departments. I am impressed that the authors take on this topic and that they tackle the perceptual issues associated with offshoring of information systems jobs. It is a frustrating problem and one we need to do something about. I was somewhat disappointed at first that this was only a conceptual paper, rather than one that presented new data; however, they do an excellent job building their arguments with the available evidence. They have indeed hit on many of the major issues and debates that came to my own mind. As examples, I was happy to see that they address the socalled ‘IT identity crisis,’ commoditization, different social value, and how jobs have changed due to offshoring. While they do a good job arguing that much of the ‘problem’ is perceptual, our opinions differ in how our discipline should deal with it. I’ll focus on just three interrelated cultural arguments they have either ignored or misinterpreted. First, the authors present a rather naı̈ve suggestion that faculty should get out there to make a difference. Second, the authors totally ignore the negative role of university and school administrators and the cultural conflict that exists in most schools. Lastly, they presume that people have a clear idea of what the IT profession is all about in the first place. First, the authors argue that faculty should get out there and convince high-school children and parents that there really are IT jobs available when they graduate that won’t take the kids (and future grandkids) to foreign climes. Their argument presumes two things: first, that faculty are qualified to sell the IT profession and, second, that they have the time, resources, motivation, and incentives to do so. The first point may be an overly optimistic view of IS faculty’s marketing skills and available time. Regardless of the professional background of IS faculty, few of us are trained in marketing or public affairs such that we could mount an effective effort to change public perceptions one faculty-member at a time. We have enough problems convincing our own colleagues in other departments that we add value to the school’s curriculum. Untenured faculty are generally working 60 hr weeks to meet tenure requirements or external assessment requirements, so that they have a chance at another job should their own departments retrench or decline them. Tenured faculty are not particularly motivated to get out there and perform pro bono work on behalf of an institution that is treating them as if low IS enrollments are their fault, and showing little, if any, support for them in the first place. Hirschheim and Newman mention the lack of academic jobs – but those faculty who have jobs are often facing marginalization, reduced resources, and dysfunctional competition for students within their own institutions. My second point builds on this sad reality of the turf wars and lack of respect frequently paid to the IS function in both academic and other sectors. There is plenty of research (my own and others) that shows there are cultural assumptions about information technologies and about IT professionals that impact resources provided, championship of IT-enabled innovation, and desirability of IT careers (e.g. Kaarst-Brown and Robey, 1999; Kaarst-Brown, 2005; Guzman, 2006; Guzman and Stanton, 2009; Jin, 2010). A school’s dominant cultural view that IT is potentially dangerous (‘fearful’), needs to be controlled (‘controlled’), or that anyone can do it (‘demystified’), for example, is unlikely to offer support for IS faculty survival. Beyond the ‘geek’ stereotype that may be country-specific and is changing, is the reality that many academic institutions have done absolutely nothing to help encourage additional enrollments in an IS discipline they don’t believe in or compete with for resources. Universities have been subsidizing the Classics, Arts, Math, and Philosophy academic programs for decades. They view these as essential knowledge for graduates from their programs and ‘perceptually’ important units for a top university. What are top administrators’ views of the IT faculty and programs? – clearly, not as important. Where are the scholarships for the IS students? Where are the extra staff to work on enrollment management for IS programs? Journal of Information Technology (2010) 25, 380–381 & 2010 JIT Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved 0268-3962/10

Doing Business in Paradise: How Small, Information Intensive Firms Cope with Uncertain Infrastructure in a Developing Island Nation (TCI)

This article presents findings from a case study of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) in the British West Indies area of the Caribbean. TCI is a tax haven that has worked to attract offshore financial firms such as trust companies, insurance, and financial management companies. All of these firms qualify as “information intensive†, are small in size (average 11 employees), engage in business on a global basis, and yet must compete while dealing with local infrastructure challenges. TCI is presented as the developmental context in which small businesses, largely owned or managed by foreigners from other cultures, must interpret and cope with national infrastructure challenges in this very small, young, rapidly growing island nation. Not surprisingly, we found that these firms share similar challenges with those in other developing countries, however, the perceptions of these challenges, and how these small firms cope, provide insights on the importance of small firms, small-scale foreign investment, and cross-national transfer of technology expectations.

Lessons for IT Project Manager Efficacy: A Review of the Literature Associated with Project Success

In the maturing IT project management space, there are still many debates about the skills needed to achieve success. This article presents a review and synthesis of project management literature that highlights the potential conflict in goals and the measurement of “success” from three perspectives: project outcomes, project management processes, and the project managers influence. Our review indicates that each perspective of success, defined by various stakeholders at various points in time, shifts the focus onto different skills and knowledge. Drawing upon this tri-focal lens, we propose a shift in focus on success to the intersection, or “sweet spot of project manager efficacy.”

A failure to communicate: Security vulnerabilities in the GridStreamX Edgeware application

Any communications network is subject to becoming the target of exploitation by criminal hackers looking to gain unauthorized access to an information system. As a computer information infrastructure, the wireless grid Edgeware technology model aims at aggregating ensembles of shared, heterogeneous and distributed wireless resources to provide transparent services of various applications, systems and devices. Currently, there is no research exploring the exploitation of technical vulnerabilities from a hackers attack against a wireless grid Edgeware application. Using a quantitative research method from the theoretical perspective of an anatomy of a network attack, the central premise of this article is to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of a wireless grid called the GridStreamX Edgeware application for vulnerability exploitation through a laboratory experiment within the Syracuse University Wireless Grid Innovation Testbed (WiGiT). The GridStreamX Edgeware application is cloud to ‘worst case scenario’ emergency response wireless Grid resource, which can be utilized as a data communication vehicle during an enterprise network catastrophe and/or failure. This research makes a meaningful theoretical and managerial contribution because it represents the first empirical examination of researching the technical requirements of the open specifications for wireless grid Edgeware technology.