Isam Faik

• Faik, I.; Barrett, M.; Oborn, E., 2020, "How Information Technology Matters in Societal Change: An Affordance-Based Institutional Perspective", MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, September 44(3): 1359 - 1390.
  Abstract: While there has been much work on the relationship between information technology (IT) and organizational change, there has been limited research that theorizes the relationship between IT and societal change. This paper draws on institutional theory, in particular institutional logics, to develop a model of IT and societal change, which we argue is critical in an era of large-scale digital transformation. Our approach is based on a view of society as an interinstitutional system, reflecting the multiplicity of logics at the societal level. We conceptualize societal change as shifts in the multiplicity of logics, with a focus on changes in the levels of centrality and compatibility. Our model relates these changes to the materiality of technology through the concept of IT affordances. We propose three mechanisms (sensegiving, translating, and decoupling) through which IT affordances become elements of societal change. We identify three corresponding carriers through which IT affordances gain scale and stability (objects, networks, and platforms). We discuss the implications of our theoretical developments for future research on IT and societal change.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2020/14193

• Faik, I.; Thompson, M.; Walsham, G., 2019, "Designing for ICT-enabled openness in bureaucratic organizations: Problematizing, shifting, and augmenting boundary work", Journal of the Association for Information Systems, January 20(6): 681 - 701.
  Abstract: © 2019 by the Association for Information Systems. There is a growing focus on achieving “openness” in the design and transformation of organizations, in which the enabling role of ICTs is considered increasingly central. However, bureaucratic organizations with rigid structures continue to face significant challenges in moving towards more open forms of organizing. In this paper, we contribute to our understanding of these challenges by building on existing conceptualizations of openness as a form of boundary work that transforms by challenging both internal and external organizational boundaries. In particular, we draw on a performative view derived from actor-network theory to analyze a case study of ICT-based administrative reforms in a judicial system. Building on our case analysis, we develop a typology of the various roles that ICTs can play in both enabling and constraining ongoing boundary work within the context of their implementation. We thus present a view of ICT-enabled open organizing as a process where ICTs contribute to problematizing, shifting, and augmenting ongoing boundary work. This view highlights the inherently equivocal nature of the role of ICTs in transformations towards higher levels of openness.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.17705/1jais.00548

• Faik, I.; Walsham, G., 2013, "Modernisation through ICTs: Towards a network ontology of technological change", Information Systems Journal, July 23(4): 351 - 370.
  Abstract: This article is concerned with modernisation as a prevalent discourse of association between technological change on the one hand and social, economic and political changes on the other. We discuss modernisation as a concept that spans several domains of change including national development, organisational change and epistemological shift. These domains are often categorised into stacked levels, namely the national, the organisational and the individual, or divided into a domain of action and an overarching context. We argue in this paper that an assumption of embeddedness underlies many of these dominant approaches and we identify three issues with this assumption, namely reductionism, unidirectional causality and marginalisation. We draw from the ontological and methodological principles of actor-network theory to suggest a shift towards a more fluid view of the dynamics between the different domains of change. We support our discussion by a case study of the modernisation of the justice system in Morocco, including a national computerisation project of case processing in the courts. © 2012 Wiley Publishing Ltd.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/isj.12001

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