Information Systems Research Forum

Innovation: bridging the gap between IS and Management studies?

Nathalie Mitev
ISIG, LSE

Friday 6 March 2009
1330-1500
Room NAB 2.13

This seminar will initiate a discussion on how IS can exist in management schools and in innovation studies, I will use the example of two recent publications (see abstracts below) to show how to use and adapt IS research material for such audiences and participate to debates taking place within management studies.

Article forthcoming in Journal of Management Studies

"Reflexive Evaluation of an Academic-Industry Research Collaboration: Can Mode 2 Management Research be Achieved?"
Nathalie Mitev and Will Venters

Abstract
We present a reflexive retrospective account of a UK government research council funded project deploying knowledge management software to support environmental sustainability in the construction industry. This project was set up in a form typical of a Mode 2 research programme involving several academic institutions and industrial partners, and aspiring to fulfil the Mode 2 criteria seen as transdisciplinarity and business relevance.
The multidisciplinary nature of this academic-industrial collaboration is analysed through retrospectively reflecting upon the research process and activities we carried out, and is found to be problematic. No real consensus was reached between the partners on the ‘context of application’, in this case the requirement for knowledge management technology and the nature of sustainable construction, or on the research process itself. Difficulties between industry and academia, within industry and within academia led to diverging agendas and different alignments for participants. The context of application does not (pre-)exist independently of institutional influences, and in itself cannot drive transdisciplinarity since it is subject to competing claims and negotiations. There were unresolved tensions in terms of private vs. public construction companies and their expectations of ICT-based knowledge management, and in terms of the sustainable construction agenda.
This post hoc reflexive account, drawing upon different levels of interpretation of empirical data from the project, enables us to critique our own roles in having developed a managerial technology for technically sophisticated and powerful private industrial actors to the detriment of public sector construction partners, having bypassed sustainability issues, and not reached transdisciplinarity. The objective of transdisciplinarity in Mode 2 management research, while aspired to, could not be achieved and paradigmatic incommensurability between disciplinary boundaries remained. We argue that this is due to institutional pressures and instrumentalisation from academia, industry and government and a restricted notion of business relevance. There exists a politically motivated tendency to oppose Mode 1 academic research to practitioner-oriented Mode 2 approaches to management research. We argue that valuing the links between co-existing Mode 1 and 2 research activities would support a more genuine and fuller exploration of the context of application.
Keywords: Academic-Industry Collaboration – Mode 2 Research – Mode 1 Research - Construction Industry - Environmental Sustainability - Knowledge Management - Multidisciplinary Research - Reflexivity


Article forthcoming in International Journal of Technology Management, Special Issue on 'How unlearning and relearning processes can help to implement information communication technologies for developing innovations'

"A Sceptical Approach to the Concept of ‘Unlearning’: Empirical Evidence on Learning and ‘Unlearning’ in Two Major Process" Studies of ICT Systems Implementation
John Howells and Nathalie Mitev

Abstract

We show that in the management of technology literature what is being called ‘unlearning’ is often not the ‘reversal of learning’, but the ‘discard from use’ of old knowledge which occurs as part of the process of learning new knowledge. We use Klein’s work to argue that the process of unlearning may not occur. The research focus should be on the reciprocal influence of existing knowledge and systems on novel designs. We reanalyse two empirical studies in which we have been involved and which have been published as in-depth process accounts; electronic funds transfer at the point of sale by the UK banks and a new computerised reservation system introduced by the French train company, SNCF[1]. The design of new ICT was rendered uncertain by the process of deregulation so that actors had to learn which organisational forms and ICT design should embody the new competitive relations.


Keywords: unlearning, learning, technology, design, implementation, processual
 

Dr Nathalie Mitev is a senior lecturer in Information Systems and Innovation  at LSE/

If you are a visitor from outside LSE, please send a confirmation to c.m.bonina@lse.ac.uk. You will need to sign in at the reception desk of the New Academic Building. Please note places will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis - registration is not required for LSE students and staff.

For any further queries regarding this seminar or to request information about future events please contact Frances White. Research Coordinator.

page last updated 12 January, 2010

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