Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 1 Critical Issues in Information Systems BUSS 951 Lecture 13...

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 1

Critical Issues in Information Systems

BUSS 951

Lecture 13Researching Organisations

and Systems

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Recall

last week we describeddescribe several theories of one useful

strata- genre and apply it to SFL to an actual IS in its workplace- ALABS

use our substantive knowledge of IS to alter the theory

apply this theory to some features of the ALABS system

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Agenda

overtime we can see shifts in the genre structure of texts associated with these workpractices and a system features... NOTE: case studies conducted over time are

referred to as longitudinal studies, or diachronic studies

we can do this because we can study systems features using texts, remembering that there is a relationship between text and context!

we can ask question why did this change to take place?

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Agenda (1)

Language/Discourseits not just Vocabulary that is different between

Groups in Organisations- its Language (or Discourse)

it helps us explain why users and developers have difficulties in understanding each other!

this could be used as a theoretical basis for participation- a way of making an interactive method out of systems analysis

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Agenda (2)

We will recap important aspects of the course (to assist you in doing the examination)

we will also restate the critical issues covered in this subject with a review of the content of this course

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Language/Discourse as a technology

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Language/Discourse (1)

Language and Discourses in general are tools- they do things (achieve work in organisations)

that is why they have evolved and therefore it is their functionality that determines their character

but discourses are semiotic tools (and therefore tacit or unconscious)

they are therefore taken for granted in discussions of 20C technology

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at this time in our history we have focused on designed tools- the material products of conscious invention

but it is the unconscious and evolving discourses of our cultures which engender all purpose-designed systems

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without an understanding of our material technology- our information systems- in our cultures, then the ways in which it can be mastered (and masters us) is necessarily incomplete

by understanding the discourses, we can facilitate intervention in the process of changing and improving workpractices

language is just not theorised in information systems

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written language is extremely important in information systems

it is primarily the resources of written language through which the discipline of IS has, like others, evolved

as with most language learning, we learn the discourses of IS- literally to be IS practitioners- by copying written directly from IS texts and related reference materials

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We are tacitly familiar with a number of these written language patterns that we often see in textbooks and journal articles associated with science and technology:Report Genre- description-oriented textsExplanation Genre- reason-oriented science

with a taxonomising functionExposition Genre- reason-oriented argument

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Language/Discourse (6)Language of Deliverables

the deliverables used in IS are technical in nature because they are concerned with building up an uncommon sense interpretation of the world

to do this we take common sense as a starting point and ‘translate’ it into specialised knowledge

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the basic semiotic resource available for this translation is called elaboration

at the clause rank this meaning is constructed through the relational identifying clause (Halliday 1985 112-128)

favoured clause type in science and technology

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Where:The data store... Value ‘is called’ Process ‘Awards’ Token

Identifying Clause Example (NB these are reversible)

The data store used in changing pays scales is called Awards

Awards is the data store used in changing pays scales

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Elaboration is also found at the group and word rank once again to translate common sense into specialized knowledge

traditionally this is called paratactic expansion or more traditionally as apposition

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used in science to ‘remind’ readers of the way we talk technically

the technical term is glossed rather than explicitly defined:

reduces or [as we say in IS] compresses the file size

the term compresses can now be ‘taken for granted’

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IS and User Language

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Grammatical Differences

IS language (scientific texts)foregrounds identifying relational

processes which are used to define technical terms

User language (historical texts)relies on attributive relational processes

to assign participants to familiar classes

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Semantic Differences

IS language (scientific texts)more likely to realise, and therefore

foreground, logical connections between clauses and sentences

User language (historical texts)more likely to bury the reasoning inside

the clause

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Grammatical Metaphor

differences between relational processes and conjunction patterns (IS practitioners and Users)

therefore, grammatical metaphor plays a different role in mediating between grammar and semantics in respective discourses

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IS Discourse Nominalisation & Grammatical Metaphor

nominalisation is strongly associated with definitions

nominalisation is used to accumulate meanings so that a technical term can be defined

grammatical metaphor distills

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User Discourse Nominalisation & Grammatical Metaphornominalisation is strongly associated

with realising events as participants so that logical connections can be realised inside the clauses

nominalisation is deployed to construct layers of thematic and information structure in a text

grammatical metaphor scaffolds

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IS and User Discourse Register Differences

IS Discourse:science is concerned with constructing

taxonomies and implication sequencesemphasis is focused on field“knowledge’ constructed is more

transcendent (‘beyond experience’)scientific taxonomies and implication

sequences tend to function as system

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IS and User Discourse Register Differences

User Discourse:concerned with constructing textemphasis is focused on mode‘knowledge’ constructed is more experientially

based than transcendenthistorical generalizations and explanations

tend to function as text not systemusers tend to refer to their work texts in order

to find out what work means

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IS and User Discourse Generic Differences

IS Discourseorganised as large Report Genres with

embedded Explanation Genres and Experiment Genres

User Discourseorganised as long, generalsied Recount

Genres, with embedded Report Genres and more occasionally Exposition Genres

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IS and User DiscourseTable of Differences

Table: Synoptic overview of key meanings in the pedagogic discourses of science andhistory (after Martin 1991, 333 in Ventola ed/ 1991)

Differences IS Discipline Discourse User Discourse

Grammar identifying defining relational attributive classifying relationalDiscourse Semantics external congruent

(congruent)internal and congruentexternal conjunction

Interaction Patterns nominalization and definitions(distill)

nominalization and “hyper”-Theme (scaffold)

Register taxonomy and implicationsequence construction(field orientation)

text constructionborrowed technically(mode orientation)

Genre report: taxonomizing[[explanation]][[experiment]]

analyse

(generalised recount)[[report: generalizing]][[exposition]]

interpret

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Summary (1)

semiosis at all levels constructs discourses as truth or at best as hypothesis about what is and what happened that can be proved and disproved

the discourses of IS and of Users in workplaces areconstitutive of their subjectivityand negotiable

is an idea which is hidden in the IS discipline- but it is an idea that can change this discipline

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Critical Issues in IS

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Critical Issues

Critical IssuesAre organisations really systems?What is information?What does the IS Discipline do?

Further IssuesHow might organisations be theorised?How can we improve IS Development

Practices?

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Information-theoretic basis of the Discipline

data is easy to identify but information depends on who, what, where, how and when

organisations are not axiomatic (rule determined) since members can change the internal and external processes of the organisation

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Data & InformationIS concept of information (Shannon &

Weaver, defines information in terms which preclude meaning

in other words the second basis of our discipline (the concept of information) is theoretically inappropriate for use when developing systems

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Systems Design as Social Activity (1)

social processes are always at work during the analysis, design, development and implementation of systems

all these activities take place in organisational and institutional settings

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need to ‘locate’ social processes and human interactions within historical and organisational contexts

some justification is required for this approach...

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communication processes and social interactions within the developer community are of great importance

changes in systems development practices, whether related to technology or organisational issues, are always driven and mediated by social factors

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systems development is a complex bridging process linking areas of specialized and diverse expertise; the domain of the IT professional and the domain of the user

systems development concerns itself with IT innovation, application and diffusion- all social

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Effects of Shannon & WeaverIS Methods

skews the types of IS methods that get produced and therefore used

IS methods come with inbuilt with individualism as a theoretical assumption

rather communication gets reduced to exchange

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Effects of Shannon & WeaverPolitical Effects (2)

if this model is about ‘transmission’ then who has the role of the sender becomes a political act (in an organisation or a society)

that is:who can ‘speak’who is allowed to ‘speak’who has the authority to ‘speak’

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Effects of Shannon & WeaverPolitical Effects (4)

adopting Shannon & Weaver, means we adopt a theory of communication which privaledges:those who have the power to speak over

those who may only be permitted to listen!

systems development in organisations is therefore political

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Communication & Power

there is always a close relationship between communication and power

therefore, we must look for other models of communication

the limits in practice which constrain communication depend on the political and ideological outlook of the reader

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Summary (2)

we communicate because sets of concepts reoccur in our culture and language

but we don’t need to share meanings, we only need to think that we can in order to communicate

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Use Semiotic Approaches

the discipline which studies meaning-making (or semiosis) is called semiotics

some semiotic analysis has been criticised as nothing more than arid formalism

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Use Semiotic Analysis

purely structuralist semiotics does not address authorial intentions or audience interpretation

it ignores particular practices, institutional frameworks and the cultural, social, economic and political contexts.

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semiotics emphasizes that signs are related to their signifieds by social conventions which we learn

we become so used to such conventions in our use of various media that they seem natural or commonsense

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semiotics can help to make us aware of what we take for granted in representing the world

we are always:dealing with signs, not with an

unmediated objective realitythat sign systems are involved in the

construction of meaning

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Semio-informatic Dilemma (1)

their are great difficulties faced by any semio-informatic approach which relies on models of the sign

we have seen that signs are everywhere, that we utilise many systems of signs simultaneously to signify meaning

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Semio-informatic Dilemma (7)

the use of higher level semiotic structures confuses many researchers who have only ever seen semiotics defined in terms of signs- semiotics is the study of signs according to many

it is the semio-informatics researchers’ responsibility to theorise the higher level semiotic structures

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Language and social contextApplied to IS

SFL gives two complementary perspectivescan look at the perspective of language: IS as

textcan look at the perspective of context: IS as

social organisation applying SFL to examining systems is very

different to traditional IS approachesa given text provides only a partial

perspective about a work practice

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in the short term a linguistic analysis provides only a small part of the overall picture

traditional IS practices are applied top-down: gives a very broad picture poor on details

SFL methodology is applied bottom-up: provides a very detailed view of work practices which then need to be integrated across various sites

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need to look at many actual texts in a social context in order to find out about work practices

only by shunting between language and social context (the work practice and the organisation) can we perform a meaningful analysis

in one of your assignments you were asked to collect a small set of texts

you would need to collect many texts of the same type of transaction before you understood it (see all the variations)

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how many texts to collect?: well its difficult to know

you need to include those people involved in the work practices into the analysis

so this SFL approach to understanding work practices MUST be participative

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SFL and IS

not all the SFL model needs to be used on each text- what language resources you use will depend on the type of analysis needed

for IS the most useful strata and context (genre and register) and discourse semantics

IS are interesting because they are multigeneric, many genres are involved in describing the general properties of texts

end-user modification of system and wholesale management driven change can be characterised using genre...

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SFL and IS

System DevelopmentGenres as QuasispeciesGeneric Element: Cut,

Paste and ElaborationGenre GraphsGenre AssociationsGenre Assemblages

Systems Analysis translate from certain

structurally simple Factual and Narrative Genres to to more complex Factual Genres

Methodologies can also be described

using Genre Methodologies are multi-

generic (Macrogenres)

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Course Justification

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Justification (1)

almost all IS students leave without understanding anything other than methodologies

so I have tried to get you to consider a social, rather than a technical, basis of the information systems discipline

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Justification (2)

one of the things that should be important to you...

an explicitly theorised social description can be used to implement- not just talk about- an information system

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Justification (3)

in order to do this I needed you to understand that there is an enormous body of material that you can apply to understand IS development

we have looked at sociology (qualitative analysis), ethnography and semiotics

of all of these my interest is in semiotics- it is the least used and I think the most promising because it involves issues of meaning making, social groups and culture

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Justification (5)

of the semiotic approaches to IS my preference (and my own research area) is SFL and Social Semiotics, why:can deal with systems (manual/automated)

and changes to them over timecan deal with Analysing Systems, and can be

used to theorise Methodologiesmost of the work is being developed in

Australia (accessible)

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JustificationAssessment

what I have tried to do in this course is to teach you how to act as researchers

that’s why the assessment was designed in order for you to practice thinking about topics from a theoretical, methodological and substantive aspects- to clarify the epistemology and ontology of a specific paper and on being able to identifying concepts, statements, models and theories

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understanding these concepts is a necessary part of the research process and is a significant part of our proficiency and literacy in a given field

these concepts are building blocks that enable us to effectively summarise what we are reading:not just recounting what was said by the author but

actually identifying what was meant (even if the author didn’t realise it)

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these divisions are a little difficult- because they are a little artificial- but it is necessary since it is the start of the research process!

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we used an explicit model of genre built into the assessment

in other words, I have applied genre analysis to the assessment process in a course which is in part about genre analysis!

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Justification

this course has been a direct result of my own research interests and that of the Department of Information Systems

we are interested in supervising good students in this area (Projects and PhDs), or in the new Extension Programme

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Justification

but if you decide to finish your studies and get back to industry, then...

keep in touch if you are interested in applying these methods in your workplace

study hard and prepare well

GOOD LUCK and THANKS

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 1 Critical Issues in Information Systems BUSS 951 Lecture 13...

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