Rob Kling

Social Analyses of Computing: Theoretical Perspectives in Recent Empirical Research

Recent empirical studies of computing use in organizations and in public life are examined. The roles of computer technologies in the workplace, in decision making, in altering power relationships, and in influencing personal privacy are examined. In addition, studies that examine the social accountability of computing arrangements to broad publics are reviewed. All studies of computing in social life make important assumptions about the social world in which computing is embedded. Two broad perspectives are contrasted. Systems rationalism, a collection of approaches including management science, managerial rationalism, and the systems approach, is found to be most helpful in stable settings, when there is considerable consensus over important social values. Segmented-institutionalist analyses, which assume social conflict rather than consensus, are particularly powerful as the social world of computing use becomes more dynamic and as a wider variety of groups is involved.

Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research

A concept of the user is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development, and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence the selection of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that people make. In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic user concept are limited. In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this user concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize the user as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily users of ICTs. Most people who use ICT applications utilize multiple applications, in various roles, and as part of their efforts to produce goods and services while interacting with a variety of other people, and often in multiple social contexts. Moreover, the socially thin user construct limits our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication, and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from the user concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting, and using information systems.

The Web of Computing: Computer Technology as Social Organization

Publisher Summary This chapter examines web models for understanding the dynamics of computing development and its use in organizational life. The chapter describes the study of the relative explanatory power of the discrete-entity model and web model by drawing upon the existing research literature and three case studies. The chapter explores different kinds of insights each model provides into the social dynamics of computing development and use. The chapter also illustrates the ways by which each model provides analytical power for making evaluations and predictions. Five major propositions that web analysts essentially make about the dynamics of computing development and use are also presented. The chapter concludes by examining two additional cases of computer developmentand use. It is noted that web models allow better predictions of the outcomes of using socially-complex computing developments in contrast to the discrete-entity models. Web analysts examine the interaction between people and technologies as part of a larger social and technical mosaic, in which the development and use of the focal technology is embedded.

Learning About Information Technologies and Social Change: The Contribution of Social Informatics

Social informatics is the body of research that examines the design, uses, and consequences of information and communication technologies in ways that take into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. This article serves as a brief introduction to social informatics. Examples such as computer networks, scientific communication via electronic journals, and public access to the Internet are used to illustrate key ideas from social informatics research. Some of the key themes include the importance of social contexts and work processes, sociotechnical networks, public access to information, and social infrastructure for computing support. The article draws upon 25 years of systematic analytical and critical research about information technology and social change.

Not just a matter of time: field differences and the shaping of electronic media in supporting scientific communication

The shift towards the use of electronic media in scholarly communication appears to be an inescapable imperative. However, these shifts are uneven, both with respect to field and with respect to the form of communication. Different scientific fields have developed and use distinctly different communicative forums, both in the paper and electronic arenas, and these forums play different communicative roles within the field. One common claim is that we are in the early stages of an electronic revolution, that it is only a matter of time before other fields catch up with the early adopters, and that all fields converge on a stable set of electronic forums. A social shaping of technology (SST) perspective helps us to identify important social forces—centered around disciplinary constructions of trust and of legitimate communication—that pull against convergence. This analysis concludes that communicative plurality and communicative heterogeneity are durable features of the scholarly landscape, and that we are likely to see field differences in the use of and meaning ascribed to communications forums persist, even as overall use of electronic communications technologies both in science and in society as a whole increases.

Cooperation, coordination and control in computer-supported work

SF-funded collab-oratories are experimental and empirical research environments in which domain scientists work with computer, communications, behav-ioral and social scientists to design systems, participate in collaborative science, and conduct experiments to evaluate and improve the systems. These research projects are concerned with distributed and collabo-rative research that requires intense reliance on wide-area networks and the Internet, to bring together instruments , laboratories and researchers. Three NSF programs in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate support the design of collaboratories and coordination experiments: 1. Coordination Theory and Collaboration 7ichnology Special Initiative (CT2). This initiative supports the fundamental research of relevance to the design of collaboratories. The research covers a broad spectrum of coordination problems, from formal theory to software design and collaboratory development. For the past two years, the Information Technology and Organizations (ITO) Program has coordinated this initiative. A total of 17 awards have been made. Funding for existing as well as new CT2 awards is expected to be about

The Institutional Character of Computerized Information Systems

3 million this year. Also starting in FY 1991 the initiative has been institutionalized by making it an integral part of the ITO program, with an enhanced base to its budget. 2. Research on scientific databases. A new call seeks proposals for work on problems that are fundamental to the design of scientific databases, written by interdisciplinary groups that include relevant domain scientists. The success of the overall col-laboratory design enterprise requires the ability to store and easily access the data and knowledge in extremely large, heterogeneous and distributed databases. The Database and Expert Systems Program coordinates this effort. Funding for proposals under this announcement will total more than

Scholarly communication and the continuum of electronic publishing

1 million. 3. The Gigabit Network project. NSF and DARPA have awarded over

The Mobilization of Support for Computerization: The Role of Computerization Movements

15 million to the Corporation for National Research Initiative (CNRI) to create testbeds to perform research on the design and development of networks that operate with data rates of about one GB per second. The availability of GB networks may enable a major paradigm shift from text-based to image-based communication. Five contracts awarded by CNRI address network architec-tures and potential applications for GB networks. This testbed research includes distributed computing using multiple supercomputers and workstations, and real-time processing of composite high-speed data streams. The experiments explore the feasibility of group collaboration over the network and the use of GB networks to develop simulated environments. [] Intelligent Systems (IRIS). This division supports fundamental scientific research on the …

Electronic journals and legitimate media in the systems of scholarly communication

Examines how important social and technical choices become part of the history of a computer‐based information system (CBIS). Argues that CBIS should be developed in terms of their social, as well as their information‐processing characteristics. Demonstrates that developing CBIS as an institutional system is important because: the useability is more critical than the technology; a well‐used CBIS with a stable structure is more difficult to replace than an unstable, ill‐used one; and CBIS vary from one social setting to another. Illustrates with a case study of a failed attempt at conversion.