Nils-Petter Augustsson

The Emergence of Information Infrastructure Risk Management in IT Services

Failure to understand, identify, and manage risk is often cited as a major cause of IT problems. While the project is the preferred level of analysis in most IT risk management research, IT is becoming increasingly infrastructural, and there is therefore a need to adapt risk strategies beyond the project level. In this paper, we explore how risk management practices in a successful IT service provider group emerged over time as the group coped with infrastructural dynamics and complexities. Drawing on Orlikowskis practice lens, we investigate actual practices and possible options related to risk management as rapid technological and organizational changes resulted in increased infrastructure management challenges for the IT service provider. Our research contributes to the IT risk management literature by applying risk theory to service management in the infrastructural domain and by moving beyond the project as level of analysis.

Living on the Edge: Balancing Rigor and Relevance Within an Action Research Context

This paper describes the efforts in ensuring research relevance by means of an industrial PhD project. The project is aiming at strengthening the relevance of research and development by educating ...This chapter explores issues associated with the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in process industries and the inherent tension between control and flexibility in IT infrastruc ...

The interstitiality of IT risk: An inquiry into information systems development practices

Information systems development (ISD) has been part of the core of information systems for over 40 years. Throughout its history, the issue of risk has been closely related to ISD projects, and significant efforts have been made by researchers and practitioners to improve their quality. While important headway has been made in assessing and resolving ISD risk, the literature shows that new and salient risks emerge outside the scope of extant risk management regimes. As a consequence, organizations still struggle with leveraging new technology as projects continue to fail at almost the same rate, albeit for different reasons. Understood as the distinction between reality and possibility, risk is inherently intertwined with practice and rooted in the knowledge, goals, power, and values of specific actors in particular contexts. Hence, to understand how risks emerge, we present a longitudinal case study in which we trace the origin and locus of risks in contemporary ISD practices. We draw on these insights to theorize information technology risk as increasingly interstitial, originating from sources positioned in between established practices and therefore outside the scope of conventional risk analyses. In conclusion, we discuss interstitial risks as an important form of emergent risk with implications for both research and practice.

From Technological Transitions to Service Transitions : A Study of Attenuation Effects in IT Service Provisioning

In a day and age when contemporary businesses are transformed, driven by a service-dominance logic and dependent upon IT, we need to understand how...