The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology

This book is a useful text for advanced students of MIS and ICT courses and for those studying ICT in related areas: Management and Organization Studies Cultural Studies and Technology and Innovation. As ICT''s permeate every sphere of society-business education leisure government etc.-it is important to reflect the character and complexity of the interaction between people and computer between society and technology. For example the user may represent a much broader set of actors than ''the user'' conventionally found in many texts: the operator the customer the citizen the gendered individual the entrepreneur the ''poor'' the student. Each actor uses ICT in different ways. This book examines these issues deploying a number of methods such as Actor Network Theory Socio-Technical Systems and phenomenological approaches. Management concerns about strategy and productivity are covered together with issues of power politics and globalization. Topics range from long-standing themes in the study of IT in organizations such as implementation strategy and evaluation to general analysis of IT as socio-economic change. A distinguished group of contributors including Bruno Latour Saskia Sassen Robert Galliers Frank Land Ian Angel and Richard Boland offer the reader a rich set of perspectives and ideas on the relationship between ICT and society organizational knowledge and innovation.