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ICTs in the Contemporary World seminar
The Biography of the Enterprise-Wide System:
Or How SAP Conquered the World
Robin Williams & Neil Pollock
University of Edinburgh
Tuesday 4 March, 2008
3.00 - 5.00 p.m.
Discuss this video on the ISIG discussion blog
Fifth Floor, Tower One
The advert in the airport reminds us that "the FTSE 100 firms all run SAP". However numerous ethnographic studies insist that organisations and their practices are so specific that the implementation of such Enterprise Resource Planning systems can only be achieved by expensive and risky customisation or by unwanted organisational change to fit the presumptions built into these complex software packages. Drawing upon their forthcoming book Software and Organizations, Neil Pollock and Robin Williams will explore how it is that generic packaged solutions have been created that can bridge to different sectors and organisations.
They use this case to look at shortcomings in academic analysis, arising, for example, from the localisation bias of many implementation studies and their neglect of sites of technology design and the complex forms of coupling that link design and implementation. Better spatial metaphors are required to explore how these generic and global technologies are instantiated at multiple sites and across dispersed settings. The 'Biography of Artefacts' framework was developed to study the emergence and evolution of technologies - tracking a group of artefacts and associated practices over time and within their broader context. In place of the naïve methodologies prevalent today (e.g. the single site ethnography or simple methodological nostrums such as 'follow the actor') they suggest a move to theoretically informed, longitudinal selections of different sites and moments for study
Professor Robin Williams is co-director of Research for the Research Centre for Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He has accumulated over 20 years of interdisciplinary research into ‘the social shaping of technology’, focusing upon the interplay between ‘social’ and ‘technical’ factors in the development and implementation of a range of technologies, including EDI, Banking systems and Multimedia. Published works include ‘Social Learning in Multimedia’ (Edward Elgar) with Stewart and Slack, 2005.
Dr Neil Pollock teaches and researches on the sociology of information systems at the University of Edinburgh where he is a senior lecturer in the Management School and a Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Social Sciences. Neil is currently leading an ESRC project on the Biography and Evolution of Standardised Software Packages and his current research interests include the sociology of technology, actor network theory and the ‘performativity’ of simple business tools. He has recently completed a book with Robin Williams called ‘Software and Organisation:the Biography of a Software Package’ (Routledge).
Organised jointly with the Information Systems Research Forum (ISRF)
Please note places will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis - registration is not required.
For any further queries regarding this seminar or to request information about future events please contact Frances White, Research Coordinator
Page last updated 18 March 2009 ^
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