Future research issues and agendas
Eric Monteiro
NTNU and Univ. of Oslo
www.idi.ntnu.no/~ericm
Edinburgh, Sept. 2006
1
From artefacts to infrastructures
• Local solutions
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practice: glitches, work-arounds
theory: techy-in-use, situated action
method (research): ethnography
method (develop): prototype
• Beyond the local
– standardisation
» ”same” artefacts, multiple sites
– integration
» dependent on related, but different
2
Standardisation: Example
• Portal Rikshospital
• 556 systems, 160 clinical
• Role-based, in principle
• ex.: order entry
• ”Too much details”
(Rikshospitalet, GK Bruun)
3
Position I: Integration as remedy
• Abstracted models
– idealisation
– ”Holy grail of MIS”
• Modularisation
– interface control
– no/little dependencies
• Architecture
– stratification (APIs etc)
4
Position II: Integration as complexity
• Integration
– dependencies
• Complex
– non-linear
• Interaction
– coupled
• Ex.: MCC
5
C Perrow: complex & coupled
Example
• Auditing of vessels
• Risk, trust, standardisation
• Global – 100 countries, 300 sites
• Global IS infrastructure = applic + backbone +...
• Snapshots:
– WinNT/DLL
– patches
– configurations, reboot
6
Position III: a third way ?
• ”Works in practice, not in theory”
– HRO
• Resilliance (E Hollnagel)
– (overly?) cognitive
• Sense-making (K Weick)
– organisational, but no politics
??
7
-duplication/redundancy
-sense-making/variation
-confine problems