| Real estate on the Web: Investigating the interplay between technology and structure |
| | Crowston, Kevin | Syracuse U. | crowston@syr.edu | 315-443-1676 |
| | Sawyer, Steve | Syracuse U. | sawyer@cat.syr.edu | 315-443-4473 |
| | Wigand, Rolf | Syracuse U. | rwigand@syr.edu | 315-443-5608 |
| | Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are pervasive in many industries and information-
intensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest effects. Information-intensive industrial structures
are the most likely to be challenged by ICTs which allow for information sharing (and the bypassing of
traditional information intermediaries). Further, while ICTs are often associated with industries (and even
organizations), actual use occurs at the individual level. That is, in information intensive industries, changes
to individual work due to the use ICTs can reshape both organizational and industrial structures.
To explore the relationship between individual level use of ICTs and changes to organizational and industrial
structures, we investigate the residential real estate industry. Real-estate is information intensive, which is
reflected in both industrial- and organization-level structures. Realtors act as contractors to local realty
organizations, and are bound by strong legal and professional guides. Realtors are also information
intermediaries, standing between buyers and sellers.
In order to explore these relationships, we use structuration theory to provide an analytic perspective.
Our data show that the historical bases of real estate create a set of structures that are shaped by
contracts. These contracts serve to reify existing structures and provide a legitimizing role for realtors.
The increased use of (primarily web-based) ICTs subverts some of the realtor's information control while
also supporting some of the existing contract-based structures. The structurational perspective and our
findings help to explain why information intermediaries persist when technology-based perspectives would
suggest their disappearance. |
| | Keywords: Information Technology; Real Estate; Structuration |
| Enterprise System Implementation: A Process of Individual Metamorphosis |
| | Volkoff, Olga | U. of Western Ontario | ovolkoff@ivey.uwo.ca | (519)-661-2111 ext. 5128 |
| | The implementation of enterprise systems (ES) is complex, organizationally disruptive, and resource intensive. Unlike the design and
development of proprietary software, implementation of packaged software generally requires that an organization adapt some of its processes
to fit with pre-specified functionality. At the same time, most ES packages are tailorable and can be configured in different ways.
Implementation is an iterative process of adaptation of organizational processes and software to each other.
The study of processes such as adaptation requires the identification of a sequence of events to reveal the underlying mechanism of change.
What is deemed to constitute an event for this purpose depends on the theoretical perspective taken. For this study events were viewed from
both a social process perspective - as responses to episodes of social interaction, and a structuration theory perspective - as changes in power,
in social norms, and in meaning.
A retrospective case study of a completed implementation was conducted, and supplemented by additional interviews from two on-going
implementations. The critical dimension of the adaptation process turned out to be the change in how project team members viewed their
task. Specifically they moved from viewing the software from the framework of organizational processes to viewing their organizations from the
perspective of the software. The learning process to get "inside" the software appears not only to be necessary, but also to have longer-term
implications for the individuals and the organization.
|
| | Keywords: adaptation; IS implementation; structuration theory |
| Globalization as a Structurational Process: The Local/Global Dialectic in the Context of the London Insurance Market |
| | Barrett, Michael | U. of Alberta | Michael.Barrett@ualberta.ca | (403) 492-4693 |
| | Heracleous, Loizos T. | National U. of Singapore | fbalh@nus.edu.sg | 65-874-6440 |
| | The global economy is becoming more functionally integrated and interdependent, facilitated by information and communication technologies, and the operations of multi-national enterprises. Global protagonists suggest that increased economic integration as well as the rapid, unhindered global movement of capital render the world "borderless" and, in so doing, challenge or invalidate national boundaries and localities. We discuss this view of globalization, along with other key issues and current debates. Although there is a growing body of literature that has developed as an antithesis to the more populist account of a "borderless world", there remains a dearth of empirical work that seeks to understand the complex process of globalization.
We adopt an interpretive perspective which draws on Giddens's (1984, 1990, 1991) recent theoretical developments on structuration and the globalizing nature of modernity to develop a conceptualization of globalization as a complex dialectic between the local and the global, mediated by agents' interpretive schemes and actions. This theoretical position underlied the key empirical research focus of an in-depth longitudinal study conducted in the London Insurance Market over a five year period. Analysis of the case study reveals a number of implications, including the view that globalization is not an abstract idea disembedded from agents' interpretations and actions and posing deterministic structural imperatives on local contexts. Rather, it is a process which is intimately interrelated with and shaped by such contexts, interpretation and actions, and which can impose non-deterministic structural constraints open to the local interpretations and influence. |
| | Keywords: Globalization; Structuration; Dialectic |