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Information Systems and Innovation

Faculty Research Group

Our research concerns the development of conceptual foundations and explanation of emerging organisational phenomena associated with IT innovation, and the management of IT-enabled organisational and social change.
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The Information Systems and Innovation Faculty Research Group is a centre of expertise on information technology (IT) innovation and concomitant organisational and social change. It is one of the largest groups of its kind in the world, and is well known for its research in the social, political and economic dimensions of information and communications technology. 

The faculty group covers most areas of information systems and represents a range of academic approaches and specialisms, from systems design and management to theory and philosophy.

We study two interrelated processes of innovation:

  • Information systems and organisational change in business firms and public sector agencies as well as in multiple forms of collaboration across formal organisational boundaries
  • The formation of digital infrastructures, their information content, the range of services they enable and the organisational processes they support.

Our research concerns the development of conceptual foundations and explanation of emerging organisational phenomena associated with IT innovation, and the management of IT-enabled organisational and social change. 

We have developed context specific knowledge of IT innovation and socio-organisational change in a diverse range of domains, including developing countries, public sector, health care, financial sector.  We draw from a range of social theory and have a tradition of qualitative research with constructivist and critical epistemology in pursuing the social study of IT. Our theoretical contributions take the form of:

  • Conceptual foundation of IT innovation and socio-organisational change phenomena, including theories of socio-technical change and organisational governance, digital platforms and digital content, context related rationality of innovation
  • Critical explanation of particular manifestations of IT innovation and emerging issues, including trust, security, privacy
  • Identification of effective relevant management practice

Research themes

Thematically, research in the Information Systems and Innovation Faculty Group falls in three categories:

IT-enabled innovation in and across formal organisations, including:
  • Outsourcing of IT and business services 
  • Systems development and implementation practice 
  • Issues of security and privacy 
  • Enterprise mobility
  • History of IT in organisations
  • Ethical issues arising from IS/IT initiatives 
Digital infrastructures, including:
  • The growth of digital information and the digital content services it enables 
  • Internet-based new organisational processes
  • Mobile technologies and ubiquitous information activity 
  • Cloud computing and information systems as a service 
  • Internet-enabled collaborative business activity
Context specific studies aiming at middle range theory of IT innovation phenomena in well delineated domains, including:
  • IT innovation in the context of developing countries 
  • Health care 
  • E-government 
  • Financial services