[AISWorld] Cfp: The 2nd SIG Prag workshop on IT Artefact Design & Workpractice Improvement (preceding ECIS-2013)

[Göran Goldkuhl]

First Call for Papers

The 2nd international SIG Prag workshop on
”IT Artefact Design & Workpractice Improvement”
ADWI-2013
(Preceding ECIS-2013)

June 5, 2013, Tilburg, the Netherlands

Background – pragmatic perspectives

There are many signs in the information systems (IS) community for a stronger pragmatic movement. This can be seen in a growing interest for research approaches and methods in IS that emphasise contribution to practice and collaboration between the practice and academia. Action research, which aims for knowledge development through collaboration and intervention in real settings, is receiving more and more academic credibility (Baskerville & Myers, 2004; Davison et al, 2004). This can also be said about design research that aims for the generation of new and fruitful artefacts (Hevner et al, 2004; Gregor & Jones, 2007). Research through evaluations has long had a strong place in IS research (Ward et, 1996; Serafeimidis & Smithson, 2003). There exist also several approaches and frameworks that combine or integrate elements from the above-mentioned approaches, like e.g. practice research (Goldkuhl, 2011), collaborative practice research (Mathiassen, 2002), practical science (Gregor, 2008), engaged scholarship (Mathiassen & Nielsen, 2008) and action design research (Sein et al, 2011). Underlying these different approaches is a quest for practical relevance of the conducted research (Benbasat & Zmud, 1999; Van de Ven, 2007; Wieringa, 2010). It is not enough to only “mirror” the world through descriptions and explanations but a pragmatic orientation recognizes intervention and design as a way of knowing and a means for building knowledge about social and institutional phenomena (Aakhus, 2007). There is a need for knowledge of other epistemic kinds that contributes more clearly to the improvement of IS practices.

A pragmatic orientation can also be seen in the increasing interest in the conceptualisation of practices, activities, agency and actions. Practice theorizing has gained an increased attention in IS studies (Orlikowski, 2008; Leonardi, 2011). There has been an interest for agency and action oriented theories in IS for quite some time; e.g. activity theory (Nardi, 1996), structuration theory (Orlikowski, 1992), social action theorizing (Hirschheim et al, 1996), human agency theorizing (Boudreau & Robey, 2005) and language action perspective (Winograd & Flores, 1986). From this follows also an interest for social and pragmatic views of the IT artefact (Aakhus & Jackson, 2005). This includes views of the IT artefact as contextually embedded and carriers of those social contexts (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001) and such artefacts being tools for action and communication (Ågerfalk, 2003; Markus & Silver, 2008).

This enhanced practice and action orientation follows a growing awareness within IS scholars towards pragmatism as a research foundation (e.g. Goles & Hirschheim, 2000; Ågerfalk, 2010; Goldkuhl, 2012). It is not the case that IS scholars suddenly become pragmatists in their research orientation. It is rather the case that there is move from an implicit pragmatism to an explicit one (Goldkuhl, 2012). For a long time IS scholars have addressed practical problems with an interest for improvement. That interest has led to the extensive development of methods, models and constructive frameworks for not only the design of IT artefacts, but also related to several other IS/IT phenomena like e.g. innovation management, business process management, project management, IT service management just to mention a few. These methods actually reveal an on-going search for knowledge of other epistemic kinds for advancing understanding of information technology, information systems, and practice.

Workshop site and purpose

After the success of the first ADWI workshop in 2012, it is now time for a second workshop on IT Artefact Design & Workpractice Improvement (ADWI-2013). ADWI-2012 (www.vits.org/adwi/) was run in Barcelona in June 2012 just before ECIS. ADWI-2013 will take place on June 5, which is just before ECIS (taking place in Utrecht on June 6-8). ADWI-2013 will take place in Tilburg which is fairly close to Utrecht (one hour away).

ADWI-2013 intends to bring scholars and practitioners together for a knowledge exchange and development on research foundations and practical contributions concerning the design and improvement of IT artefacts and workpractices. The ADWI workshop is intended to be a developmental arena with thoughtful and constructive feedback from reviews and comments on site. ADWI should be a place where you can present ideas in papers and get fruitful feedback for further development of the papers. A developmental arena means also taking responsibility for pushing contributions further to high-quality journal publications. From the last workshop (ADWI-2012) several papers have been pushed further into two special issues in the open access journal Systems, Signs & Actions. The themes are “Collaboration and validation in practice research and design research” and “IT Artefact & practice theorizing – pragmatic perspectives”. We plan to do similar for this workshop. At least one special issue will be arranged in Systems, Signs & Actions inviting promising papers from ADWI-2013. The theme will be decided on later. We will possibly also work with some other outlet for another special issue. This depends on the outcome of the workshop.

Topics

The workshop can include papers from diverse fields of IS. We do not try to enumerate such fields below; we only present three broad topic areas (as three main pragmatic orientations). We invite papers to ADWI-2013 in the following areas:
·         The design, selection, adaptation and use of research methods and approaches that emphasise improvement of, collaboration with and intervention in IS practices (e.g. approaches like action research, design research, evaluation research, practice research, engaged scholarship).
·         The generation and use of practice, activity, agency, action oriented theories (or other types of knowledge) about IS phenomena.
·         Different kinds of knowledge (e.g. practical theories, frameworks, models, methods) that contribute to the improvement of IS practices. This includes examples of such knowledge from improvement, which can be taken from diverse IS fields.

An information system is always an embedded part of some practice. It is never an isolated entity without relations to social practices. The notion “IS practice”, which is used in the topics above, stands for diverse IS related practices like e.g. strategizing, development, procurement, deployment, use, evaluation and service management of IS/IT.

Dates and submission details

Submissions: March 25, 2013
Notification: May 1, 2013
Final manuscripts: May 27, 2013
Workshop: June 5, 2013, Tilburg, the Netherlands, (just before the 21st European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS-2013)

The workshop website is www.vits.org/adwi2013/. The workshop will follow an ordinary scientific procedure with submission of papers and selection of papers through peer-review (pursued by an international program committee). Papers are expected to be between 5-16 pages. We welcome full research papers as well as shorter papers (work-in-progress or position papers). Submissions should be sent as e-mail attachments to goran.goldkuhl at liu.se<mailto:goran.goldkuhl at liu.se>. We use an ECIS-like template that can be found at the workshop website (www.vits.org/adwi2013/). Workshop proceedings will be electronically published and distributed.

Program co-chairs

Mark Aakhus, Rutgers University, NJ, USA (aakhus at rci.rutgers.edu)
Brian Donnellan, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland (Brian.Donnellan at nuim.ie)
Göran Goldkuhl, Linköping University, Sweden (goran.goldkuhl at liu.se<mailto:goran.goldkuhl at liu.se>)

Organising chair

Hans Weigand, Tilburg University, the Netherlands (h.weigand at uvt.nl)

Organisers

AIS Special interest group on Pragmatist IS research (SIG Prag)
Netherlands research School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS)

Programme Committee

Pär Ågerfalk, Sweden
Stephan Aier, Switzerland
Steven Alter, USA
Michel Avital, Denmark
Joao Carvalho, Portugal
Mike Chiasson, UK
Rodney Clarke, Australia
Gabriel Costello, Ireland
Stefan Cronholm, Sweden
Aldo de Moor, the Netherlands
Ingrid Erickson, USA
Owen Eriksson, Sweden
Walter Fernandez, Australia
Ulrich Frank, Germany
Matt Germonprez, USA
Shirley Gregor, Australia
Karin Hedström, Sweden
Markus Helfert, Ireland
Ola Henfridsson, UK
Jonny Holmström, Sweden
Philip Huysmans, Belgium
Juhani Iivari, Finland
Michele H. Jackson, USA
Karlheinz Kautz, Australia
John Krogstie, Norway
Jenny Lagsten, Sweden
Mikael Lind, Sweden
Rikard Lindgren, Sweden
Kecheng Liu, UK
Kalle Lyytinen, USA
Angela Nobre, Portugal
John Stouby Persson, Denmark
Jan Pries-Heje, Denmark
Sandeep Purao, USA
Joan Rodon, Spain
Kurt Sandkuhl, Germany
Mark S. Silver, USA
Jonas Sjöström, Sweden
Jeffrey W. Treem, USA
Rajiv Vashist, Australia
Roel Wieringa, the Netherlands
Robert Winter, Switzerland
Trevor Wood-Harper, UK
Fahri Yetim, Finland
Xiaomu Zhou, USA

References


Aakhus M (2007) Communication as Design. Communication Monographs, Vol 74 (1), pp 112–117

Aakhus M, Jackson S (2005) Technology, Interaction and Design. In K. Fitch & B. Sanders (Eds.), Handbook of Language and Social Interaction (pp. 411–433). Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ

Ågerfalk P J (2003) Information Systems Actability: Understanding Information Technology as a Tool for Business Action and Communication, Ph D diss, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University
Ågerfalk P J (2010) Getting Pragmatic, European Journal of Information Systems, Vol 19 (3), pp 251–256
Baskerville R, Myers M (2004) Special issue on action research in information systems: making IS research relevant to practice – foreword, MIS Quarterly, Vol 28 (3), p 329-335
Benbasat I, Zmud R W (1999) Empirical research in information system research: The practice of relevance, MIS Quarterly, Vol 23 (1), p 3-16
Boudreau M-C, Robey D (2005) Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective, Organization Science, Vol 16 (1), p 3–18
Davison R M, Martinsons M G, Kock N (2004) Principles of canonical action research, Information Systems Journal, Vol 14, p 65–86
Goles T, Hirschheim R (2000) The paradigm is dead, the paradigm is dead … long live the paradigm: the legacy of Burell and Morgan, Omega, Vol 28, p 249-268
Goldkuhl G (2011) The research practice of practice research: theorizing and situational inquiry, Systems, Signs & Actions, Vol 5 (1), p 7-29
Goldkuhl G (2012) Pragmatism vs. interpretivism in qualitative information systems research, European Journal of Information Systems, Vol 21 (2), p 135-146
Gregor S (2008) Building theory in a practical science, in Hart D, Gregor S (Eds, 2008) Information Systems Foundations: The role of design science, ANU E Press, Canberra
Gregor S, Jones D (2007) The Anatomy of a Design Theory, Journal of AIS, Vol 8 (5), p 312-335
Hevner A R, March S T, Park J, Ram S (2004) Design science in information systems research, MIS Quarterly, Vol 28 (1), p 75-115
Hirschheim R, Klein H, Lyytinen K (1996) Exploring the intellectual structures of information systems development: a social action theoretic analysis, Accounting, Management & Information Technology, Vol 6 (1/2), pp. 1-64
Leonardi P (2011) When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: affordance, constraint, and the imbrication of human and material agencies, MIS Quarterly, Vol 35 (1), pp. 147-167
Markus L, Silver M (2008) A foundation for the study of IT effects: A new look at DeSanctis and Poole’s concepts of structural features and spirit, Journal of the AIS, Vol. 9 (10/11), pp 609-632
Mathiassen L (2002) Collaborative practice research, Information Technology & People, Vol 15 (4), p 321-345
Mathiassen L, Nielsen P A (2008) Engaged Scholarship in IS Research. The Scandinavian Case, Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Vol 20 (2), p 3–20
Nardi B A (Ed, 1996) Context and consciousness. Activity theory and human-computer interaction, MIT Press, Cambridge
Orlikowski W J (1992) The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations, Organization Science, Vol 3 (3), p 398-429
Orlikowski W J (2008) Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work, Organization Studies, Vol 28 (9), p 1435–1448
Orlikowski W J, Iacono C S (2001) Desperately seeking the “IT” in IT research – a call to theorizing the IT artifact, Information Systems Research, Vol 12 (2), pp 121-134
Sein M, Henfridsson O, Purao S, Rossi M, Lindgren R (2011) Action design research, MIS Quarterly, Vol 35 (1), p 37-56
Serafeimidis V, Smithson S (2003) Information systems evaluation as an organizational institution – experience from a case study, Information Systems Journal, Vol 13, pp 251–274
Van de Ven A (2007) Engaged scholarship: A guide for organizational and social research, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Ward J, Taylor P, Bond P (1996) Evaluation and realisation of IS/IT benefits: an empirical study of current practice, European Journal of Information Systems, Vol 4, pp 214-225
Wieringa R (2010) Relevance and problem choice in design science, in Winter R, Zhao J L, Aier S (Eds. 2010) Proceedings DESRIST 2010, LNCS 6105, Springer, Berlin
Winograd T, Flores F (1986) Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design, Ablex, Norwood
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