Riccardo Mercurio

Myth #6: Health Care Is Rightly Controlled by the Public Sector, for the Sake of Equality

The healthcare sector has all the characteristics to be considered a complex system. Indeed, its extrinsic complexity is related to its openness, since the health system is affected by the political, social, and financial context where it operates.

The Role of IS in Performance Management: The Case of an Italian Public University

The article investigates the relationship between Performance Management Systems (PMS) and IS in a single Italian Public University, starting from the gap that exists between what is declared in University policy statements—ostensibly oriented towards empowerment—and what is actually implemented by public managers. We are particularly interested in understanding how ICT could support PMS in the control process. In our empirical analysis we observed that the role of IS depends on the strategy adopted in planning and implementing the PMS.

Play and Fun Politics to Increase the Pervasiveness of Social Community: The Experience of Angels 4 Travellers

The episode described above is an incipit to provoke reflection upon a specific aspect of social networks related to the playful component of networking activity and the perception of fun by its amateurs. Indeed, while some of us were uploading content onto the Angels 4 Travellers (A4T) platform, we dismissed from our minds that we were performing a creative act, devoted to the creation of content to be shared with our virtual ‘friends’. Starting from this event, we became involved in reflection on how much virtual activity is done voluntarily and, certainly, with some degree of enjoyment, with the consequence that many virtual communities are becoming widespread thanks to the role of voluntary subjects.

Transport Infrastructure and Economic Development: An Organizational Analysis

In this work we make use of the concept of policy networks to introduce the main consequences underlying the building and establishing of a transport infrastructure for enhancing mobility. Our interest is connected with the vast domain of inter-organizational relations for transport systems: settings in which many key players, both public and private, cooperate to implement socially relevant public policy. Under this respect, policy networks may be interpreted as an analytical tool for examining, in transport settings, the relations between organizations, by taking into account the role played by private and public actors and the formal as well as informal relationships between them. This paper unfolds as follows. In par. 2 we depart by pointing out the relevance of the policy networks concept to study transportation infrastructures. Interpreting transport infrastructures as policy networks subsequently recalls a few issues that are covered in the following paragraphs. In particular, transportation infrastructures bring about both economic impacts (par. 3) and logistic advantages in terms of peripheralness/accessibility of a given area (par. 4). Finally, we look at the wider context of transportation infrastructure to derive a notion of organizing mobility as a more inclusive concept of policy network exploring how organizing mobility can represent an infrastructure for development.

Remembering Claudio: a note from his friends at Universities of Naples and Catanzaro

Received: 4 August 2005 Revised: 27 September 2005 Accepted: 29 September 2005 At the University of Naples, the research group on information systems and organizational studies developed a strong relationship with Claudio Ciborra throughout the years, having the chance of benefiting from his insights and ideas to promote the study of the discipline and establishing sound reference models for new generations of researchers. Starting from personal relationships rooted in the 80s (Claudio had been teaching in southern Italy at the beginning of his academic career), we enjoyed a proximity to Claudio’s academic endeavours, which strengthened during the time. As a consequence of such mutual interest, back in 1999, Claudio’s dream of bringing the major European Conference on Information Systems to Italy for the first time started to assume a real contour when the decision was made to host the 11th ECIS (2003) at the University of Naples. Organising such a prominent event in the academic calendar was indeed a major challenge, but also, as was clear from its preliminary rounds, an exciting opportunity to get in touch with outstanding academics and fresh ideas. And as such that chance had been conceived by Claudio as well. For sure Claudio loved the location for a variety of reasons: a true cosmopolitan and mediterranean in nature as he was, he found inspiration and joy of life in countless journeys towards the south. But also because he managed to feel at home there, feeling a sense of recognition of his groundbreaking ideas. To use Claudio’s own words, his link with Naples managed to ‘precipitate the turning of an ephemeral contact into a relationship that looks and feels like a long acquaintance’. The ECIS project gradually assumed the traits of an emerging reality in the years between 1999 and 2003, when several meetings with him took place in various locations, to unfold hot topics deserving a track at the conference, always in an effort, under his constant eye on the matter, to strike a balance between academic rigour and the attractive novelties of the outside world. ECIS 2003 was a memorable conference, addressing the need to explore the limitations of existing managerial and technical approaches and models, to establish new alliances with other social sciences, looking at the specificity of emerging technologies in a new light. It was really a manifesto of Claudio’s attitude and meanings towards the discipline, answering his invitation to refocus the managerial agenda, drawing on new contributions emerging from the social sciences, such as theories of globalization and the risk society, allied to those from business and management. In his vision, the conference represented a milestone and a challenge for the IS field, called to develop new paradigms to inspire fresh research directions, where cultural and human issues have a primary role, adapted to the current challenges of developing and using information and communication technologies in the changing world, squeezed by revolutionary and unprecedented forces and trends affecting organizations and institutions in which information technology is introduced: globalization; European Journal of Information Systems (2005) 14, 459–460 & 2005 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/05

The human side of organizational change: Compliance and management control systems in Italian public utilities

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