Tzouris, Menelaos

m.tzouris@lse.ac.uk

Reconceptualising Organizational Boundaries as Boundaries of Meaning: implications of self-service information systems for boundary management in the direct banking sector

The focal interest of this study is self-service information systems (SSIS). The defining characteristic of SSIS is that, in addition to the well documented potential of information systems of facilitating the automation, standardisation, and simplification of organisational actions, they also bring the potential of de-layering and of redistributing the organisation's actions to entities which are conventionally considered as part of its environment.

SSIS in banking are in general direct banking systems. Examples are: automated teller machine (ATM), interactive voice response (IVR)/ phone banking, web/ mobile banking, and banks' portals. All the above contribute towards the redistribution of a bank's action to its customers.

We explore and apply Luhmann's theory of social systems, which assigns an elaborate significance to boundaries by relating both the structures and processes of social systems to their boundary with the environment. Following such an understanding, and conceiving organisations as social systems, we emphasise the importance of SSIS in influencing the process of meaning construction of organisational boundaries within a given institutional platform.

In sum, organisational boundaries are perceived as differentiating the organisation from its environment and essentially bounding its functional, behavioural, and communicational aspects. Hence, boundaries are not perimeters, but functional constitutive components of a given organisation.

There is a common assumption that the advent and diffusion of information and communication technology enables a shift in the structure of organisations that is highly influential in re-constructing their boundaries. In contrast to the unproblematised understanding of boundaries as tangible entities, which most of the managerial literature embraces in order to deal with the strictly demarcating 'place' of an organisation's boundary, this study considers a rather neglected issue: the issue of its 'nature' which, following Luhmann, we identify as being meaning.

Consequently, we emphasise the importance of SSIS as decisive factors in the process of constructing the meaning of organisational boundaries of an organisation. Further, we seek to investigate the remaking of boundaries from the perspective of the organisation's relationship with its customers: we focus on the organisational side of the consequences that the deployment of SSIS brings to bear on the nature of work and the relationship with customers.

Supervisor: Professor J Kallinikos

^