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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.