The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical basis for research into the interaction of organizations and information technology. Recent work in social theory departs from prior traditions in proposing that social phenomena can be understood as comprising both subjective and objective elements. We apply this premise of duality to understanding the relationship between information technology and organizations. We construct a theoretical framework in which the development and deployment of information technology in organizations is a social phenomenon, and in which the organizational consequences of technology are products of both material and social dimensions. The framework is based on Giddens ' theory of structuration, and it allows us to progress beyond several of the false dichotomies (subjective vs objective, socially constructed vs material, macro vs micro, and qualitative vs quantitative) that persist in investigations of the interaction between organizations and information technology. The framework can be used to guide studies in two main areas of information systems research-- systems development and the organizational consequences of using information technology.

This article identifies the emergence of the institution-based view as a third leading perspective in strategic management (the first two being the industry-based and resource-based views). We (a) review the roots of the institution-based view, (b) articulate its two core propositions, and (c) outline how this view contributes to the four fundamental questions in strategy. Overall, we suggest that the institution-based view represents the third leg of a strategy tripod, overcomes the long-standing criticisms of the industrybased and resource-based views ’ lack of attention to contexts, and contributes significant new insights as part of the broader intellectual movement centered on new institutionalism.

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Contemporary approaches to systems analysis ignore the importance of computing infrastructure-- the kinds of resources necessary for making computerized system workable and effective. Infrastructure includes "hard resources " such as electricity and physical space; it also includes human resources such as the skill levels of systems users and maintainer. Systems analyses which account for infrastructure can help lead to more effective recommendations. The key organizing ideas of this paper, web models, are based on almost 20 years of empirical studies of the ways that people and organizations adopt, develop and use computerized systems. It is based on an understanding of how people and organizations actually behave rather than upon a model which prescribes how they should behave. Web models draw "large " social boundaries around a focal computing resource so that the defining situation includes: the ecology of participants who influence the adoption and use of computer-based technologies, the infrastructures for supporting system development and use, and the history of local computing developments. Social action characteriwed by "natural open systems " models of organizations. Web models help explain the actual leverage of computing developments, their carrying costs,

Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

This paper explores the interpretative flexibility of ERP systems through the study of a project to implement a hosted system for the Central Accounting Department of a large multinational. The paper presents intensive case study data around the decision to implement the system and analyses it in terms of the interpretative flexibility of the system. The paper questions the extent to which technological features of the new system influence the perceived flexibility of the system.

The dynamic capabilities literature suggests that firms need to use both internal development and external sourcing to thrive over time, but we have a limited understanding of the conditions that best suit different sourcing choices. This study examines how constraints that arise from firms ’ existing stocks of capabilities and from their internal social contexts shape their choices of capability-sourcing modes and, in turn, their ability to obtain new capabilities. Thus, the research focuses on an underemphasized form of dynamic capability: the ability to select appropriate modes of capability sourcing. We test the arguments with a survey and longitudinal survival study of the international telecommunications industry. We find intriguing variations in the way that firms ’ selection capability influences their ability to renew their capabilities and, ultimately, to survive. Key words: modes of capability acquisition; selection capability; resource gap; institutional gap; internal development; external sourcing History: Published online in Articles in Advance April 7, 2008. Recent arguments in the dynamic capabilities literature suggest that firms need to develop skills in both internal development and external sourcing to be able to renew their capabilities and thrive over time (Helfat

What will it take for social informatics to transition from a thriving social movement to become an institutionalized approach to the study of computing? The premise of social informatics is that information and communications technologies (ICT) are both socio-technical and thus socially-shaped. The commonsensical nature of this premise belies the difficulties faced by scholars who have pursued this line of thinking to engage others in the findings and constructs that reflect a socio-technical view of ICT. In this essay we frame social informatics as a social movement. We make the case that, as a social movement, social informatics has the potential to institutionalize as one of the established perspectives from which to study computing. To do this, however, requires attention to developing the institutional structures needed to maintain long term viability. This includes: (1) Increasing the attention to developing and sharing analytic models and theory-building as a means of supporting the research tool kits of adherents and others. (2) Making clear that there is a distributed and active leadership via visible schools, programs and centers of vibrant social informatics work. (3) Engaging new scholars in conducting this work, (4) Connecting and contrasting the findings and theories of other perspectives with those of social informatics and (5) Finding support for conducting social informatics research and vehicles for its

It still disturbs us. The thought that human behavior can be explained in the same terms as systems of flora and fauna—i.e., in the language of ecology still provokes incredulity and irritation. The organizational ecologist is liable to be labeled reductionist, a victim of physics envy—or at least biology envy--and presumed to be incapable of, or uninterested in, understanding the more subtle complexities of human behavior and culture. Human organization, we are told, is obviously different. A review of recent thinking in intraorganizational ecology, however, reveals such complaints as at once overestimating the rigidity and determinism of ecological theories and underestimating the degree to which the central concepts of ecology (i.e., survival of the fittest and mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention) offer a plausible and useful way to interpret the internal workings of human organizations. Rather than reducing our understanding to mechanistic laws of blind chance and Panglossian optimization, they simply suggest for our attention some important constructs (particularly organizational routines) and provide testable ideas for how these may behave (through birth, competition, complementarity, adaptation, and death). To our minds, the language of ecology is not a substitute for or retreat from the language of psychology, sociology, and the other disciplines of organization theory, but rather a companion, a platform on which organizational theorists can attempt

Intensive Work First draft – please do not cite without author’s permission This paper examines how and why a professional elite – the so-called “Magic Circle” of UK law firms – has become a taken-for-granted, legitimate, and extremely durable categorization of the most highly-reputed firms in the UK legal profession. Using both interview and documentary data, this study examines the process of institutionalization and belief formation in the context of two previously unresearched, and unconnected, models- the discursive model of institutionalization proposed by Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy (2004), and the model of industry belief systems described by Porac, Ventresca, & Mishina (2002). The study traces the historical evolution of this elite group, finding evidence to confirm the status of the Magic Circle categorization as both an institution, and as part of a cognitive belief system about the structure of the UK legal market. In particular, the study presents evidence to suggest that the business and professional media are important