Conference Links
Organization Science Special Issue on Information Technology and Organizational Form and Function:
Possible Topics
Given the relative paucity of research and theory, this special issue is directed at providing a forum for scholars to develop and test theories that open the black boxes of organizations and IT at the same time, providing an improved understanding of how each affects the other’s design and function. Papers that consider both the complexities of organizational systems and IT are particularly encouraged. Possible themes for papers include:
- How has IT affected the structuring of organizations and the processes within them, such as decision making, job design, communication, power and political behavior?
- How can we describe organizations in a way that makes clear the critical IT components?
- Do our current concepts related to individual and group behavior need to be modified to reflect the impact of IT? For example, do we need to include locational and temporal dimensions into models of group behavior?
- How has IT affected the creation, management, and performance of interorganizational relationships, such as alliances, outsourcing, supply chain management, and off-shoring?
- Does the design of information technologies, such as those using the semantic analysis of language, serve as new models for understanding how people can identify experts in loosely coupled organizations?
- Since the concept of an “alignment” between information systems and organizations is too vague to inform specific testable hypotheses, specific aspects of this alignment need to be examined. Is one needed to catalyze the other? Could one compensate for the lack in another? Which aspects of each really need to be aligned for successful organizational functioning?
- Given that distributed and situated cognition may now occur in highly computer-mediated ways, how does the design of information–organizational systems impede or facilitate heedful interrelating?
Abstracts to be submitted by May 1.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!