design and determination: the global role of information systems 1 global communities of practice n...

Design and Determination: the global role of information systems 1

Global Communities of Practice

Knowledge management must integrate individual, community-of-practice and organizational knowledge

Brown and Duguid(1998) joint enterprise mutuality shared repertoire informal structure


The Individual’s Four Knowledge Contexts

Environment

Organisation

Team

Community of Practice


Virtual CoPs

Example: Texas Instruments• Taipei and Austin

– corporate systems replicated at both ends of a broadband link

Place-based community is a limiting case• Webber’s Non-place realm (1964)• Castells’ Informational city of flows (1989)

– material and information

Accessibility, rather than the location of "place" is key• Current conditions allow access to be non-physical• Indian software industry best demonstration


Maintaining Communities of Practice

Effective communities are needed across space and culture

Internationalisation of Software Development• Indian and British alliances hampered by different

modes of group working• Indian firms place key workers and team in target

markets to deal with clients• Indian firms use foreign partners to enter third

countries (Nicholson Sahay & Krishna, 2000)


Technology: 10% Revisited

Knowledge Extraction and Business Intelligence• Department of Trade and Industry U.K. initiative• Post 9/11 surge in research investment from U.S.

– Social network analysis

Expertise versus competence • "Competent performance is rational,

proficiency is transitional, experts act arationally". (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986, p.36)


Inclusion Exclusion and Infiltration

Digital Divide• access to the “information economy” as important

as physical location Excluded economies

• difficulty maintaining modest economic objectives. • excluded from policy making processes • no influence over the emerging global information

system • reducing ability to negotiate sustainable

exploitation of their own resources


Access from the Margins

Divisions in both developed and developing countries present the less advantaged actors with a major problem • accessing or utilising technologies which have

been shaped by other players towards the support of different priorities.

Existing inequalities will be reinforced unless access to these technologies can be achieved.


Access versus Ownership

Skilling the diaspora low cost internet-based telephony

Business centres & internet cafes located at the margins


Tracks and Traces: The Braceros

350,000 contract workers in 1942 1,000,000 US residents descended from these

workers or their families Oaxaca Index

a matrix of materials surrounding los braceros,

http://www.geocities.com/archiving_practice/losbraceros.html


Performing Identity in Cyberspace:the Braceros

Personal Presence• http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/students/glasshouses/• http://www.tempe.gov/museum/albumslist.htm

Organising, Campaigning• http://www.hispanicvista.com/html/100702cm.htm• http://www.lieffcabraser.com/braceros.htm

Carrying culture• http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/mexico/retablos.html• http://www.geobodies.org/video/performing/

performingdes.html


Windows of Opportunity

How can “small” players influence an emerging new "techno-economic paradigm" (Perez, 1985) ?

A window paradigm for globalising information systems• using available technologies without regard for their

underlying assumptions– mobile phones and micro-enterprises

“Windows of opportunity” may be inadvertently closed by the momentum of mainstream technical development• E-commerce already mutating in to M-commerce

– GPS + LEO satellites


Technologies with Potential

Next Generation Mobile Communications• Switching from geostationary Earth orbits (GEOs)

to medium Earth orbit (MEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites

• Geophysics dictates equality of coverage WiFi Access

• Low cost access to higher speed connections • The last kilometre is often the biggest barrier to

access


Local and Global Knowledge

Social and Institutional Paradigm Shifts must accompany Technical Paradigm Shift

Local experience still matters• in determining strategies• in creating alternative paradigms

“Glocalisation” of Knowledge practices


A Shifting Context for Information Systems

Management ------ Governance• Ultimate consequence of Williamson (1975) and

transaction driven view of organisation• governance replacing management• governance flows along the value chain • disntermediation and re-intermediation

Microsoft ----------- OSF

Cathedral --------- Bazaar Raymond E.S. (2001)

Information Sharing ---------- Knowledge Sharing• hierarchies ---------------------- distributed CoPs


Further Technical Shifts

E commerce to M commerce• location specific services• wearable medical devices• radio frequency smart tags

E government to M government• biometrics• real time monitoring and surveillance of movement

DTI Foresight Project on Intelligent Infrastructure Systems. http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Previous_Projects/Intelligent_Infrastructure_Systems/


Consequences of these shifts

Global business imperatives for web infrastructure• Interaction with globalized client base

Distributed Global IT = Open IT• Accessibility at household and individual level• Collective development of existing public

communicative skills,– http://www.angelfire.com/co3/NCFS/campaign.html – http://www.actupny.org/

Internet as the ground for the globalised coordination of labour

– http://www.icem.org/?id=4&doc=808• Internet as open source communication home for social,

political and labour movements – mirrors open source software movement

design and determination: the global role of information systems 1 global communities of practice n...

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