The Labyrinths of Information: Challenging the Wisdom of Systems

by Claudio Ciborra

Overview

How to use information and communication technologies in organizations and how to manage their impact has been the traditional domain of computer specialists and management consultants. The former have offered multiple ways to represent, model, and build applications that would streamline and accelerate data flows, while the latter have been busy linking the deployment of ICTs with strategy and the redesign of business processes. This book takes quite a different approach altogether. In a series of essays, Ciborra uses a string of metaphors -- such as Bricolage, Krisis, Gestell, etc. -- to place a concern for human existence and our working lives at the centre of the study of ICTs and their diffusion in business organizations, and looks at our practices, improvisations, and moods. He draws upon his own extensive research and consulting experience to throw a fresh light on some key questions: why are systems ambiguous? Why do they not give us more time to do things? Is there strategic value in tinkering even in high-tech settings? What is the value of age-old practices in dealing with new technologies? What is the role of moods and affections in influencing action and cognition? Labyrinths of Information presents an alternative to the current approaches in management, software-engineering, and strategy that will be of interest to all those concerned with the deployment of ICTs in society today -- whether as users, managers, designers, policy makers, or the merely curious.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191037306
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	09/23/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	821 KB

About the Author

Claudio Ciborra graduated in Electronic Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, before pursuing his studies in management, economics, and organization theory at the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University. He has held teaching positions at a number of Italian universities and been a Visiting Professor in many European and American universities. He is currently Chair Professor of Information Systems and Professor at the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics and Professor at IULM in Milan. He has carried out extensive research in the fields of new technologies, organizational structures, learning, knowledge, and change.

Table of Contents

	Figure	xvi
	Tables	xvi
	Abbreviations	xvii
1.	Invitation	1
2.	Krisis: Judging methods	11
	A phenomenological understanding	14
	Against method	17
	Two cases	19
	A different tack	24
3.	Bricolage: Improvisation, hacking, patching	29
	Flimsy advantage	33
	Alternative models of strategy and competition	34
	True stories	39
	Searching for new strategic systems	44
	The virtues of bricolage	47
	Planning by oxymorons	50
4.	Gestell: The power of infrastructures	55
	Alignment and control	57
	The tactics of cultivation	60
	The actor network perspective	64
	Infrastructure as Gestell	71
	A final case study	78
5.	Derive: Drift and deviation	83
	True stories, again	85
	Drifting and systems development	88
	A general model	90
	Swampy time and space	92
	Global consequences	95
6.	Xenia: Hosting an innovation	103
	A methodological wasteland	105
	An ambiguous stranger	109
	Multiple worlds in a word	111
	The organization as a host: a matter of identity	112
	Technology as a guest: the influence of the stranger	114
	Connecting two separate worlds	114
7.	Shih: Architecture and action	119
	Snapshots from a significant period (1977-1990)	122
	Devising and implementing a global technology strategy	124
	Identity building across discontinuities	128
	Alliances, acquisitions, and surprises	134
	The organization as a platform	140
	The power of junk and shih	144
	Managers as improvisers	147
	A concluding picture	149
8.	Kairos (and Affectio): Seizing the opportunity (and moods and mental states)	153
	Improvisation as situated action	155
	Rediscovering the situation of the actor, in the situation	159
	Improvising as a mood	162
	Panic	165
	Boredom	166
	The temporality of improvisation	168
	Some final thoughts (and feelings)	170
	Methodological Appendix (Odos): My chosen road	173
	References	181
	Index	185