I found the three editorials a very interesting set of documents. They are a great tie back to the first couple sessions of class. These memos represent many different things to me: 1.) These editors want to send a message about how they plan on running the journal, just as an inauguration speech from a President at the beginning of his term wants to set the tone. 2.) They are also setting up some rules and provide some insight into what it will take to get published in their journal. 3.) It again impresses the fact that the collection of authors, reviewers, and editors of this journal and the others are THE authorities and credibility watchers of our field. 3.) At least in these three memos, there is a fair share of glad-handing. There seems to be a lot of mutual admiration going on. 4.) That being said, they are very serious about their job. There are no free passes into the Quarterly. Rigor, scrutiny, and validity are not taken lightly.

Bock et al. bring together what I think some of us were hoping to see in the Pawlowski and Robey article. First, this article was actually based on theory, to be exactly the theory of reasoned action (TRA). From what I have gathered in a short lookup in addition to is description of the reading, TRA's purpose is to show that a person's intention is the product of his/her attitude towards a behavior and the norms associated with the behavior. Second, this article has emperical substance that crosses organizational, industy, genders, and functions.

I appreciated the fact that they acknowledge that still more rigorous resear needs to be done, and I don't disagree. There were of course some limiting factors, particularly with regards to the staying in the same culture with such strong nationalistic links.

I am though the first 50 pages (chapters 1 & 2) and I finding it very hard to get going. Books that make me continuously look up lots of words in the dictionary to get their meaning really slows down my comprehension. It also takes away from my enjoyment of learning what they are trying to teach me. Boy, I just wanted to get that off my chest. I have felt this a few times this semester, but I really appreciate that I am being stretched and learning new so many new concepts. There is so much to learn from the material in this class; it would help if they used straightforward English. Drucker was the master of the simplification of language. He was amazingly profound and did not need to use any extraneous pontification or wordsmithery to make his work credible.

Pawlowski & Robey provide a very interesting study on knowledge brokering. This qualitative study brought to light many of the conditions that occur in the real world IT department in a large multi-location corporation. The IT staff does control (and many times hoard) the critical information that revolves around their IT resources and capabilities. My sense is that much of this has to do with fear of replacement or job security.

I would be very interested to see if other research has come about as a result of this article. I am going to have to see the tool Kim used to see how many times this article was cited. I would like to see this research extended to breakdown the different roles within an organization to see how and how much certain job titles broker their knowledge and what affects their behaviors have on the IT and business performance. This is also a potential link into the organizational learning research that could draw on this line of research.

While reading this article I was continually looking for how I would take this research to the next step. What would make this valuable if it was changed to a quantitative study. What elements would be important to quantify? I am certainly looking at these articles differently than I did at the start of the semester.

Or at least it felt that way. I apologize to everyone for the late postings. I have had NO time to get my reading done for the last two weeks, so I am way behind in my postings. I will not bore you with all of travails, but it certainly brougt me back to Rosemary's earlier posting on work/family/school/sanity balance. I will be catching up as quickly as I can, and if you can put yourself back into last week's article long enough to give me a comment or two, I would appreciate it.

I wish you and your families the happiest of Thanksgivings!

As you all know, I was in Chicago this week. I was driving through downtown and passed Northwestern University. It reminded me of my trip this past summer to Oxford. The architecture was incredible. Of particular note were the enormous stone buildings of Northwestern that had "School of Law" and "School of Commerce" carved into the arches of the doorways of these impressive schools. Just as the history I felt when observing the Oxford University buildings, Northwestern reminded me of the responsibility and excitement of contributing to our fields and our societies. It was inspirational, a little scary, and very motivating for me.

Swanson and friend (I am feeling a bit non-PC today) give us this week a exploratory paper that is very theoretical and conceptual. The authors seem to be well-meaning, but this material seems to be in the ether for me. I am very skeptical of their evidence, or could I be mindlessly critical, jumping on a bandwagon?

I do think Swanson is onto something; it seems that this will make a good stepping stone into other research endeavors, particularly in org behavior or IT in the DSS realm. This paper seems to point to mindless decision-making as group think or lack of internal innovation. I agree with much of what they imply. I believe that the authors could have had more qualitative and/or empirical material to help support their theory and models.

I did find their analysis of innovation to be interesting. I am not sure that they have a comprehensive model for the interplay between innovation and the organization, but it is an interesting concept. I would be curios to see if other fiends have developed similar or conflicting models compared to Swanson et al's. I would assume that mangement and org behavior researchers have taken a swag at how innovation is integrated and accepted within the organization. This is a very important topic though and I would be interested in looking for a further expansion of this research. It even has the potential to be useful in my 360 paper.

This is an interesting qualitative article that is apparently a continuation of previous research by Walsham. His use of Structuration Theory, developed Anthony Giddens, to analyze the two cross-cultural software development projects is apparently unique in the IS field. He makes what I consider to be a very direct statement about this paper: "The primary contribution of this paper has been to provide such a theoretical basis, drawing from structuration theory, which was used to analyze cross-cultural software production and use."

This research is interesting to a few fields of study. One almost can't go through an MBA organizational behavior class without studying Hofstede, so it is easy to see how this paper could have been published in a management practice or organizational behavior journal. I am not sure that the theorists in these fields would agree with Walsham’s assessment of the Hofstede’s usefulness in this study. This research again seems to be leaning towards those disciplines a touch more than IS&T, but it is a great reminder to developers that systems are not used in a vacuum or heterogeneously accepted around the globe. Because of this aspect of the research, I will probably be able to use this in my 360 paper (thanks Terry).

Walsham makes an important point about the dynamic nature of culture. He is spot on with his assessment that culture changes, primarily because of outside forces. However, there is a trap that gets researchers caught up: globalization (i.e., “The World is Flat” by Freedman). While there is some effect on modern societies from the proliferation of what Walsham calls ICTs, research has found that local culture and traditions usually trump globalization practices in real world research. Globalization has not infiltrated as far as some might think.

I have saved comment on Robson to this point, so I thought I would send along a nugget. I really enjoy the structure and flow of this book. Robson has done a great job of detailing each of the issues, models, and philosophies covered to this point. I have found myself varying from three different states of understanding: 1.) That seems obvoius enough; 2.) I have seen this before, but now it is clearer to me; 3.) Wow, I have a lot to learn.

This is certainly a text that I will refer back to again, like  Booth, Colomb, & Williams. There is also a lot to this book that I hope I will rememer when doing future research. It is no wonder that there are often multiple authors and editors. Who can keep track of all of this material?

This book also will require multiple reads for me. It is not that the material is too technical, it just seems to me that many of the items he speaks about will make more sense when you actually apply them. His tables and boxes of information are absolutely invaluable. I will probably have them at hand whenever I am writing research in the future.

 

 

This action research article by Kohli & Kettinger has been a welcome relief for me. In contrast to some of our other articles, this piece of research interested me on a couple different levels. First, there was a purpose that could provide valuable information to both the practice and educational realms of IT. Second, there is the affect of change on a organization that allows this type of research to make an immediate impact, as apposed to just being an outside observer. Lastly, this topic has a topic staying power that people will want to revisit and develop further. I can't say the same about some of the other research we have read.

Their analysis of how a DSS can play a role in the very difficult environment of clinical physicians was excellent. The authors gave an honest assessment of their results, including the first, failed attempt to implement their action research model. They also pointed out the fact that the DSS system was not going to completely solve their questions on controlling expenses (no silver bullet). I am going to sound like Karen here, but I would have liked to have seen more of their data and the models used to develop their conclusions. I would have also appreciated more graphical representations of their data and findings. Overall, this was a very good article though.

Robson writes of how action research takes effort from the subjects being observed and this was certainly the case in this study. I believe this research was very helpful for the physicians in a couple of ways: 1.) it gave them an opportunity to understand how their peers treated similar cases to theirs (best practices). 2.) it empowered them to have a affect on the expenses of the healthcare group they were partnering with (to some extent corporate citizenry). These two influences play an interesting role together when you think about peer pressure and partner evaluation. This DSS gave SJHS a lever to hold their physician partners accountable for their decisions. It also provided valuable information to the clan that they might not have surmised on their own.