The role of power in shaping
the use of information
infrastructures
Knut H. Rolland
Department of Computer and Information Science
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Structure of the talk
• The concept of power
• Different political streams of IS studies
• Information infrastructures as ’disciplinary
technologies’
• Power and politics in the use of the GSIS
in MCC
• Implications
The concept of power
• Power as hierarchical, causal, and zero-sum
– Neoclassical and structural organization theory (e.g. Dahl, 1957;
Weber, 1947)
– Labour Process Approaches (e.g. Braverman, 1974)
• Power as context and relationship specific
– The ’power school’ in organization theory (Pfeffer, 1981)
• Power as inherent in all human action (Giddens)
– ”dialectics of control”
• Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)
–
–
–
–
Implicit and systemic
Distributed across different actors
Embodied in heterogeneous micro-practices
Enacted and discontinuous
Political streams of IS studies
• Organizational politics perspective in IS
– Organizational politics ’better’ than rational models (Kling, 1980;
Markus, 1983)
– “key participants who value particular CBIS configurations
actively strive to develop and expand them through a variety of
strategies which require political mobilisation” (Kling and Iacono,
1984: p. 1218)
• The ’Scandinavian school’
– use of information technologies inevitably related to a power
struggle between workers and management
– IT professionals should take an active role in choosing to support
“resource week groups”
• Theoretical frameworks
– ”Integrated Information Environment or Matrix of control?” Orlikowski
(1991)
– ”The political perspective on the organizational change process
emphasizes the information system as involved in the process of control
and domination..” Walsham (1993: p. 69)
Information infrastructures as
disciplinary technologies
• Actor-network theory (ANT)
– Power is distributed in heterogeneous networks and actively
performed through processes of enrolling actors and inscribing
interests (e.g. Latour,1991)
– ”Politics by other means”
• Disciplinary technologies
– User behaviour is inscribed in the heterogeneous components of
an information infrastructure: e.g. standards, training
programmes, implementation strategies, level of detail,
categories, distribution of work tasks etc.
– Users can ’resist’ and establish ”counter networks”: the dialectics
of control
Power and Politics in use of the
GSIS in MCC
• The GSIS as a disciplinary technology
– Sequence of tasks inscribed: must fill-in all details
before reports can be generated
– ’Best practices’ and ’24 hour policy’
– Imposing a specific configuration of the underlying
infrastructure
– Reports can only be stored in the GSIS
• ’Counter networks’ and changing coalitions
– IT department and local surveyors
– Alternative ways of using the GSIS (dialectics of
control)
References I
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Abbate, J. 1994. The Internet Challenge: Conflict and Compromise in
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discussion of Scandinavian Research on Systems Development.
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Braverman, H. 1974. Labour and Monopoly capital: The degradation of work
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Ciborra, C.U. et.al (eds.) 2000. From control to drift. Oxford: Oxford
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Clegg, S. and Wilson, F. 1991. Power, technology and flexibility in
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References II
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Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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References III
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Law, J. (ed.) 1991. A sociology of monsters – essays on power, technology and
domination. London: Routledge.
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ACM, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 430-444.
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References IV
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Walsham, G. 1993. Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations. Chichester:
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