Researching XBRL as a socio-technical object

The Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a grammar based on XML that is defined and described in the XBRL 2.1 specification. Instance documents are created by combining XBRL taxonomies and linkbases with data (facts) for a particular context. An alternative view is, XBRL is a mechanism for communicating information for decision-making between interested parties based on a generally accepted way of representing and digitally transmitting symbols of actions and events. XBRL may be both of these and many other things depending on how we frame our methodological understanding for the purposes of research. In this section we present an approach that conceives XBRL as a socio-technical object in the tradition of post-social perspectives (Knorr Cetina 1997; Latour 1996, 1999). © Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2007.

A socio-technical perspective on ERP implementation

This paper provides an analysis of ERP implementation in the context of social-technical information systems management theory. The paper provides a discussion of how ERP systems can contribute to the development of a new generation of business management that combines both formal and informal mechanisms. This could be achieved through the use of informal communities of an enterprise that could both collaborate efficiently with a common ERP platform with a certain level of standardization but also have the flexibility in order to provide an agile reaction to internal and external events. © 2012 IADIS.

ICT and the Shaping of Society: Exploring Human -ICT Relationships in Everyday Life (summary section only)

This thesis explores the relationship between humans and ICTs (information and communication technologies). As ICTs are increasingly penetrating all spheres of social life, their role as mediators – between people, between people and information, and even between people and the natural world – is expanding, and they are increasingly shaping social life. Yet, we still know little of how our life is affected by their growing role. Our understanding of the actors and forces driving the accelerating adoption of new ICTs in all areas of life is also fairly limited. This thesis addresses these problems by interpretively exploring the link between ICTs and the shaping of society at home, in the office, and in the community. The thesis builds on empirical material gathered in three research projects, presented in four separate essays. The first project explores computerized office work through a case study. The second is a regional development project aiming at increasing ICT knowledge and use in 50 small-town families. In the third, the second project is compared to three other longitudinal development projects funded by the European Union. Using theories that consider the human-ICT relationship as intertwined, the thesis provides a multifaceted description of life with ICTs in contemporary information society. By oscillating between empirical and theoretical investigations and balancing between determinist and constructivist conceptualisations of the human-ICT relationship, I construct a dialectical theoretical framework that can be used for studying socio-technical contexts in society. This framework helps us see how societal change stems from the complex social processes that surround routine everyday actions. For example, interacting with and through ICTs may change individuals’ perceptions of time and space, social roles, and the proper ways to communicate – changes which at some point in time result in societal change in terms of, for example, new ways of acting and knowing things.

Web publishing revisited-a case study of literary websites in Russia

The concept of web publishing has been widely discussed in IS research literature since the WWW emerged. The discussion in various publications often revolves around the issues of business success and profitability, web design, and effective content presentation. This paper is a study of one of the “unknown” segments of the Internet - a family of websites publishing literary works in the Russian language. We demonstrate that the innovative model adopted by site owners in building the relationships with the site customers, and the information technology selected for the sites can play a crucial role in the success of a web-based venture. Our analysis is based on the concepts of virtual community and socio-technical interaction. We discuss the  contribution of this case not only to the innovative use of the Web-based business models, but also to the new forms of literary life and national  culture. Some of the concepts, principles and practices, adopted on those sites may be of interest to the Internet developers and communities worldwide.

Análise da resistência a sistemas de informação: a percepção dos gestores de tecnologia da informação acerca de sistemas ERP

Este trabalho visa obter e verificar empiricamente um meta-modelo que possa apoiar e aprofundar a compreensão do fenômeno da resistência a sistemas de informação. Tratase de uma pesquisa explanatória e quantitativa na qual faz-se, por meio de uma extensa revisão da literatura mundial, o levantamento e consolidação das principais teorias e modelos existentes sobre o tema. Dessa forma, buscando obter um melhor entendimento do problema de pesquisa, propõe-se um meta-modelo de fatores pertinentes ao comportamento de resistência a sistemas de informação. Neste modelo, considera-se um conjunto de aspectos que, embora já abordados anteriormente, em sua maior parte ainda não haviam sido testados empiricamente, quais sejam: (i) as características idiossincráticas dos indivíduos, (ii) os aspectos técnicos inerentes aos sistemas de informação, (iii) as características da interação sócio-técnica, (iv) as características da interação de poder e políticas e, finalmente, (v) as características das organizações nas quais a tecnologia e o homem estão inseridos e interagem entre si. O instrumento de pesquisa utilizado no trabalho foi um questionário estruturado, aplicado via Internet, com suas questões contextualizadas quanto aos sistemas de gestão empresarial ERPs: Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. Obteve-se um total de 169 respondentes, considerando-se uma amostra composta exclusivamente por gestores de tecnologia da informação (TI) brasileiros e que tenham vivenciado pelo menos uma experiência de implantação de sistemas ERP ao longo de suas carreiras. Uma vez realizada a coleta dos dados, foram empregados testes estatísticos relativos à análise fatorial, visando alcançar um modelo definitivo. A partir do novo modelo encontrado, por meio da validação proporcionada pela análise fatorial, cada fator identificado representou uma causa para o comportamento de resistência a sistemas de informação. Por fim, testou-se também hipóteses a partir do novo modelo identificado, verificando-se as relações entre a percepção direta dos gestores quanto à resistência e os diversos fatores considerados relevantes para a explicação deste comportamento. Como resultado do estudo, consolidou-se um modelo de análise do comportamento de resistência a sistemas de informação, baseado na percepção do gestor de TI e contextualizado nos sistemas ERPs.

Antecedentes à resistência à implantação de sistemas de informação: uma análise de sistemas de gestão eletrônica de documentos

O trabalho a seguir objetivou o desenvolvimento de um meta-modelo de análise para estudo do fenômeno da resistência durante a implementação de um sistema de gerenciamento eletrônico de documentos (GED). O estudo foi conduzido por meio de uma abordagem quantitativa e explanatória e buscou elencar os principais expoentes da literatura acadêmica no tema da resistência. A partir de suas concepções, os fatores mais relevantes no campo da resistência contextualizada a um sistema de gerenciamento eletrônico de documentos foram evidenciados. O meta-modelo gerado, o qual serviu de base para a análise estatística, identificou os seguintes antecedentes ao comportamento de resistência: características pessoais, sistemas e interação. Este, por sua vez, divide-se na interação poder e política e na interação sócio-técnica. A partir da identificação desses vetores e montagem do meta-modelo, foi elaborado um questionário de investigação, o qual foi distribuído via Internet. Foram colhidas 133 respostas de usuários que tivessem vivenciado pelo menos uma experiência de implantação de um sistema de gerenciamento eletrônico de documentos. Os dados foram então submetidos a tratamento estatístico na ferramenta SPSS por meio de análise fatorial e regressão linear múltipla. Os resultados obtidos permitiram identificar os fatores de maior influência no comportamento de resistência e confirmar/refutar as hipóteses originalmente propostas. O meta-modelo gerado também promoveu a discussão dos resultados com base na teoria utilizada, gerando novos insights para o entendimento do comportamento de resistência no contexto do GED.

Affordance in interaction

The concept of affordance has different interpretations in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). However, its treatment has been merely as a one-to-one relationship between a user and a technology. We believe that a broader view of affordances is needed which encompasses social and cultural aspects of our everyday life. We propose an interaction-centered view of affordance that can be useful for developing better understandings of designed artefacts. An interaction-centered view of affordance suggests that affordance is an interpretative relationship between users and the technology that emerges during the users' interaction with the technology in the lived environments. We distinguish two broad classes of affordances: affordance in Information and affordance in Articulation. Affordance in information refers to users' understanding of a technology based on their semantic and syntactic interpretation; and affordance in articulation refers to users' interpretations about the use of the technology. We also argue that the notion of affordance should be treated at two levels: at the 'artefact level' and at the 'practice level'. Consequently, we provide two examples to demonstrate our arguments.

Towards participatory action design research : adapting action research and design science research methods for urban informatics

This paper proposes a new research method, Participatory Action Design Research (PADR), for studies in the Urban Informatics domain. PADR supports Urban Informatics research in developing new technological means (e.g. using mobile and ubiquitous computing) to resolve contemporary issues or support everyday life in urban environments. The paper discusses the nature, aims and inherent methodological needs of Urban Informatics research, and proposes PADR as a method to address these needs. Situated in a socio-technical context, Urban Informatics requires a close dialogue between social and design-oriented fields of research as well as their methods. PADR combines Action Research and Design Science Research, both of which are used in Information Systems, another field with a strong socio-technical emphasis, and further adapts them to the cross-disciplinary needs and research context of Urban Informatics.

Experience as meaning : some underlying concepts and implications for design

As the current computing systems move from desktop and work settings into our everyday lives (e.g. mobile and ubiquitous systems) a growing interest is seen for designing interactive systems with experiential support. Some conceptual work already exists that tries to analyze and understand users? experience with interactive systems but in practice this is still not frequently used. Drawing on the concepts from the domain of art, this paper introduces a way to conceptualize users? experience as the meanings or interpretations they construct during their interaction with or through the interactive systems. We consequently apply this conceptualization in a design project where we use it at an early concept design stage for designing aware technologies in care-taking situations.

Rich evaluations of entertainment experience: bridging the interpretational gap

This paper reports a qualitative study of evaluating the ?experience? supported by a state-of-the-art interactive television application. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) system is a new technology in the ever-growing industry of interactive entertainment. Focusing on the users? interpretations, we applied a set of rich evaluation strategies to collect data about users? experiences with the IPTV. The results show implications about how the users constructed complex and reflective understandings about the system. The evaluation suite helped us gather information about users? aspirations, expectations, and intellectual and emotional states of their understandings. The results also imply a strong support for taking into account the non-technical values of human-technology interaction.

Human-centred methods for design of mobile social technologies : a case study of agile ridesharing

Social contexts are possible information sources that can foster connections between mobile application users, but they are also minefields of privacy concerns and have great potential for misinterpretation. This research establishes a framework for guiding the design of context-aware mobile social applications from a socio-technical perspective. Agile ridesharing was chosen as the test domain for the research because its success relies upon effectively connecting people through mobile technologies.

Improving the railway’s understanding of accident causation through an integrated approach to human factors analysis and technical safety data recording

This paper describes a safety data recording and analysis system that has been developed to capture safety occurrences including precursors using high-definition forward-facing video from train cabs and data from other train-borne systems. The paper describes the data processing model and how events detected through data analysis are related to an underlying socio-technical model of accident causation. The integrated approach to safety data recording and analysis insures systemic factors that condition, influence or potentially contribute to an occurrence are captured both for safety occurrences and precursor events, providing a rich tapestry of antecedent causal factors that can significantly improve learning around accident causation. This can ultimately provide benefit to railways through the development of targeted and more effective countermeasures, better risk models and more effective use and prioritization of safety funds. Level crossing occurrences are a key focus in this paper with data analysis scenarios describing causal factors around near-miss occurrences. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the system can also be applied to other types of railway safety occurrences.

Knowledge sharing in virtual communities

The Internet has transformed the scope, boundaries and dynamics of social and economic interactions. It is argued to have broadened the notion of the community from physical, colocated groups towards collectives that are able to transcend time and space, i.e. virtual communities. Even if virtual communities have been on the academic agenda for a couple of decades, there is still surprisingly little research on knowledge sharing within them. In addition, prior research has largely neglected the complex dynamics between Internet-based communication channels and the surrounding communities in which they are embedded. This thesis aims at building a better understanding of knowledge sharing supported by conversational technologies in intra-organisational virtual communities and external virtual communities supporting relationships with customers. The focus is thus on knowledge sharing in types of virtual communities that seem to be of relevance to business organisations. The study consists of two parts. The first part introduces the research topic and discusses the overall results. The second part comprises seven research publications. Qualitative research methods are used throughout the study. The results of the study indicate that investigation of the processes of knowledge sharing in virtual communities requires a socio-technical perspective, combining the individual, social and technological levels, and understanding the interplay between them. It is claimed that collective knowledge in virtual communities creates the enabling structure for knowledge sharing, and forms the invisible structure of the community on the basis of which it operates. It consists of a shared context, social capital and a unique community culture. The Internet does not inevitably erode social interaction: it seems that supporting social relationships by means of communication technology is a matter of quantity rather than quality. In order to provide access to external knowledge and expertise, firms need to open themselves up to an array of Internet-based conversations, and to consider the relevance of virtual communities to their businesses.

Recherche et développement dans les sciences de l’environnement : l’Université entre impératifs scientifico-techniques, économiques et socio-politiques. Le cas du Réseau de centres d’excellence ArcticNet.

Cette thèse cible l’étude d’une organisation sociotechnique pluraliste, le Réseau de centres d’excellence ArcticNet, établi depuis 2003 au sein de l’Université Laval et financé par le programme fédéral des Réseaux de centres d’excellence (RCE). Ce programme, effectif depuis 1988, est issu d’une initiative du ministère de l’Industrie Canada et des trois Conseils fédéraux de financement de la recherche scientifique (CRSNG, CRSH et IRSC). Par sa dimension interdisciplinaire et interinstitutionnelle, le RCE ArcticNet sollicite la mise en place de divers accommodements sur une thématique environnementale controversée, celle du développement de l’Arctique canadien côtier. Notre approche se concentre sur la description de ces collaborations pluralistes et l’analyse des stratégies de consensus mises en place par une organisation universitaire médiatrice. Si cette étude illustre le cas d’ArcticNet, elle questionne toutefois deux réalités d’ensemble: (1) D’un point de vue théorique, prépondérant dans cette thèse, les enjeux environnementaux et de développement durable s’inscrivent dans les nouvelles réalités de la production des connaissances portées par une coévolution entre science et société, contribuant à l’expansion des domaines de R&D ciblés; et, (2) D’un point de vue empirique illustratif, les éléments de formation et d’évolution d’un réseau sociotechnique intersectoriel et les stratégies des scientifiques dans la recherche et le développement de l’Arctique canadien côtier présentent un profil basé sur l’accommodement des parties prenantes. Cette recherche adhère au postulat épistémologique des théories des organisations sociotechniques pluralistes, plutôt qu’aux modèles théoriques de la société/économie de la connaissance. L’étude regroupe un total de 23 entrevues recueillies en 2008 et en 2010 auprès de l’administration, de membres scientifiques et de partenaires d’ArcticNet, suivant une logique de témoignage. Elle ouvre ainsi une nouvelle réflexion sur leur milieu de pratique de la science, plus particulièrement des sciences de l’environnement, vers lequel la société actuelle oriente la nouvelle production des connaissances, à travers les divers financements de la recherche et du développement.

Resiliencia organizacional y capital psicológico

Desde la noción universal sobre la empresa como un sistema de interacción con un entorno determinado para alcanzar un objetivo, de manera planificada y en función de satisfacer las demandas de un mercado mediante la actividad económica, su viabilidad, sostenibilidad y crecimiento dependerán, por supuesto, de una serie de estrategias adecuadas no solo para tales fines, sino también para enfrentar diversidad de agentes endógenos y exógenos que puedan afectar el normal desempeño de su gestión. Estamos hablando de la importancia de la resiliencia organizacional y del Capital Psicológico. En un escenario tan impredecible como el de la economía mundial, donde la constante son los cambios en su comportamiento —unos propios de su dinámica e interdependencia, naturales de fenómenos como la globalización, y otros derivados de eventos disruptivos— hoy más que nunca es necesario implementar el modelo de la empresa resiliente, que es aquella entidad capaz de adaptarse y recuperarse frente a una perturbación. Al mismo tiempo, más allá de su tamaño, naturaleza u objeto social, es indispensable reconocer básicamente que toda organización está constituida por personas, lo cual implica la trascendencia que para su funcionamiento tiene el factor humano-dependiente, y por lo tanto se crea la necesidad de promover el Capital Psicológico y la resiliencia a nivel de las organizaciones a través de una cultura empresarial.