Technology is devised, developed, and delivered through social means to serve social ends. Information and Communication Technologies are distinctive in their degree of interconnectivity and pervasiveness, their fl exible carrying and usage of information and their dynamic, expanding potential. They are at the same time information, control and political technologies, frequently with unanticipated, even unanticipatable consequences and impacts. The relationships between technical, social and organizational innovation are invariably complex and require robust research approaches. We study these rich phenomena by establishing philosophical foundations, assessing, shaping and using social theoretical perspectives, and applying suitable research methods. These methods are predicated on the need to understand the contexts in which these phenomena take place, their history and how they change or stabilise over time, and their different meanings to multiple stakeholders. Rigorous, independent critical research also enables the group to provide informed commentary on and interventions in policy and practice. A core course in our ADMIS degree focuses on social theories and philosophical foundations to give students thinking tools and theoretical perspectives with which to study and critically assess and make sense of information systems and innovation. Students also come to learn about and apply research methods in carrying out a dissertation. The ISOR degree focuses much more on qualitative and quantitative research methods, philosophical foundations, social theories, epistemology, as well as major currents in the IS fi eld in order to equip students with analytical and research skills applicable for completing a doctorate. PhD students are encouraged to take rich, critical approaches to the research questions they choose to pursue. All Group research is undertaken with these distinctive foundational orientations, skills and approaches in mind.

Whereas ICT artefacts used to be restricted to the basements of large enterprises, they have now successfully moved ever closer to us. ICT artefacts permeate all aspects of our lives at home and work. Their flexibility renders them subject to constant innovation, reconfiguration and appropriation. ICT interaction ranges from wireless connections between devices on our bodies to global information infrastructures integrating logistical processes. ICT artefacts are designed for a diversity of organisational roles, such as, for example, supporting the standardisation of information, and automation of processes. One successful role has been that of standardising a range of globally distributed digital connections through emails, text messages and mobile phone conversations. As complex ICT artefacts mediate the relationships between organisations and their surroundings, they increasingly offer not only the raw efficiency of automated encounters but also platforms upon which complex relationships can unfold in often unpredictable ways. The diversity of situations ICT artefacts are developed for is constantly changing the understanding of how best they can be understood and designed. Gone are the days of strict separation between distinct development phases and predictable patterns of use. The embodiment of the ICT artefact was originally the systems development process, then it became that of the packaged standard product. The future brings us information services replacing application ownership and flexible means of mixing and matching such services into fl exible complex arrangements challenging our understanding of development. Research in the Group for example studies: Mobile information services; development of grid computing in particle physics; theories of information services; development of global telecommunication standards; and innovative design paradigms.

The focus is on three important issues: interoperability of secure systems, including the policy and compliance aspects, identity and identity management, and especially the debate about individual rights and collective needs and Anti-Money Laundering systems and compliance, addressing issues of the limits of profi ling and similar surveillance technology. These three issues present a substantial agenda that will provide signifi cant food for thought in the coming debates about security, technology and civil rights in an open society. The Group has established an important research on organizational risk management including in IT and credit risk and reputation risk. Security concerns demand new approaches to identifying suspicious transactions in fi nancial institutions and defi ne and establish effective AML practices within and between fi nancial institutions and regulators There has been an Information Risk and Security element in the LSE Information Systems Group for over 12 years. It has focused on the social and organisational aspects of information risk and security in the developing information society. As information and communications technology diffuses into business, government and social affairs the risks to normal operations associated with information loom ever larger. Dependency on information systems renders public and private enterprise and citizens vulnerable to attacks on the confidentiality, availability and integrity of information. The Information Risk and Security group teaches an MSc option in security that focuses on the behavioural aspects of information security rather than on technical issues. The course considers organisational risk management and the implementation of countermeasures using appropriate technology and policy. It analyses the role of perception and cognition, of power and responsibility, of law, regulation and compliance in the successful contrasting of information risk. Members of the group have, in recent years, led research projects for the ESRC and the EU examining a range of information risk issues including identity and security, anti-money laundering, and public key infrastructure and interoperability. We also engage strongly with practice including a major project on ICTs in financial markets. The group is active in professional security areas with representation in forums from the British Computer Society, the Institute of Information Security Professionals and in security standards development bodies. The group has published recently in journals ranging from MISQ, JAIS, Journal of Financial Crime, CACM, Organization Science, Information and organization, and EJIS. Other work in this area focuses on privacy practices, trans-border data flows and private sector use of identity management. This work has been published in academic journals and has also been influential in developing government policies in the UK, mainland Europe and North America.

Global sourcing of business and IT services has received increasing attention since 2000 and the offshoring role in Y2K work. In developed economies many organizations have rapidly evolved global models involving a mix of third parties at a range of geographical locations. Meanwhile developing economies have looked to develop their own industries to stimulate and meet demand. Both domestic and offshore suppliers are increasingly intent on designing more sophisticated sourcing arrangements, including offshore, nearshore and onshore components. The 2007 markets for IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO), in terms of supplier revenues, exceeded $US200 billion and $US140 billion respectively, and are anticipated, on our figures, to rise at about 5 per cent and 7 per cent through 2007-12. We are at the forefront of research in relation to these phenomena, and look to further lead thinking in developments, and to provide rich understanding of, and lessons from, global sourcing experiences. Areas our Global Sourcing research programme is focusing on include, job markets, skills and capabilities, service and market developments, infrastructure requirements, learning, innovation and intellectual property issues in global sourcing arrangements. New themes, for which sponsorship is being invited, include: ‘from IT-related services to service verticals and multi-tower BPO’; ‘emerging offshore issues’; ‘retained core capabilities’; ‘service-orientated architecture’; and ‘shared services’. This research stream is led by Professor Leslie Willcocks and is backed by an annual March conference: ‘Global Sourcing: Services Knowledge and Innovation’, and a Palgrave book series entitled Technology Work and Globalization. A new MSc in Global Sourcing is also planned to start in 2008-09.

Globalisation has focused academic and policy attention towards addressing the role of ICTs in developing countries. The topic area is of increasing business and policy relevance to a host of players at global, national and local levels. Management consultancies, IT companies, international governmental and non-governmental organisations are increasingly involved in the supply of IT products and services in developing countries. Their mandate is to harness ICTs in order to promote global economic activity and to encourage international development policy prescriptions. Within developing countries, central and local government bodies have to grapple with the twin objectives of harnessing ICTs in order to participate in global economic activity and addressing other pressing social development priorities. Participation of developing countries in the global economy may be important for economic development, but this activity only touches a small percentage of the population of many developing countries. Huge sections of the population have few opportunities even to enjoy basic amenities such as employment, education and good health. At the local contextual level where ICT projects are implemented, there are a host of different issues which need to be faced related to the interplay between ICT and the local socio-political and cultural milieu within which the artefacts are embedded. The issues that emerge at these various contextual levels are clearly interdisciplinary and we draw on the fields of development studies, anthropology and social policy to enable a more critical analysis of the interaction between ICTs and developing countries in the context of globalisation.

This aspect of our research examines how public sphere initiatives are established and pursued, their goals, and their wider consequences are for both the state and the citizen. Government in both industrialized and developing countries have long been large-scale users of ICT to provide services to their citizens. More recently, the trend has been towards electronic portals and one-stop shops for such services (e-government). Moreover, e-government interventions are closely linked with efforts for organizational and management reform of the public sector. With the active encouragement of the major development institutions, e-government initiatives in developing countries aim at delivering good governance as a basis for economic growth and social development. This leads us to an interest in issues of civic space and, for example, the potential of ICT to improve the quality of democratic involvement and citizens’ trust in democracy, to alter the privacy rights of individuals, to shape new understanding of intellectual property, and to undermine government’s ability to raise taxation and police borders. Research in this area is undertaken in both industrialized and developing countries. Themes addressed include national and local e-government strategies and projects, the development of information infrastructures in health care systems, electronic voting, and national identity cards. We are also concerned with how the citizens approach these new technologies and whether they fulfil their promise to reduce inequality in access to information and participation or lead to further exclusion of the most marginalised. Thus we are concerned both with the nature and design of technologies and their conditions of use.

Technical change, along with improved organisational practices, account for so much of modern economic growth. Major corporate, local, national and international policies and managerial practices are predicated on the assumption that ICT-led productivity growth will increasingly become the source of social improvement. We apply a variety of methods to investigate the factors affecting success and failure in the use of ICTs and the character of innovation at the level of the organisation, the technical system, and beyond. Our studies range from investigations of the effects on innovative activity of national, European Union and other regional policies, to studies of corporate innovation strategies and of R&D management, and research on decision-making practices associated with high technology. We have special interests in internet governance and telecommunications as well as other infrastructure and network industries, and on the characteristics of regulation, governance, and exchange regimes as applied to new business models. Our analytical approaches include techniques from economic sociology, social anthropology, policy studies, and the critical insights associated with science and technology studies, especially as applied to the analysis of systems failures and of political and economic interest groups.