The role of power in shaping the use of information

infrastructures

Knut H. RollandDepartment of Computer and Information ScienceNorwegian University of Science and Technology

Structure of the talk

• The concept of power

• Different political streams of IS studies

• Information infrastructures as ’disciplinary technologies’

• Power and politics in the use of the GSIS in MCC

• Implications

The concept of power

• Power as hierarchical, causal, and zero-sum– Neoclassical and structural organization theory (e.g. Dahl, 1957;

Weber, 1947)– Labour Process Approaches (e.g. Braverman, 1974)

• Power as context and relationship specific– The ’power school’ in organization theory (Pfeffer, 1981)

• Power as inherent in all human action (Giddens)– ”dialectics of control”

• Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)– Implicit and systemic– Distributed across different actors– Embodied in heterogeneous micro-practices – Enacted and discontinuous

Political streams of IS studies• Organizational politics perspective in IS

– Organizational politics ’better’ than rational models (Kling, 1980; Markus, 1983)

– “key participants who value particular CBIS configurations actively strive to develop and expand them through a variety of strategies which require political mobilisation” (Kling and Iacono, 1984: p. 1218)

• The ’Scandinavian school’– use of information technologies inevitably related to a power

struggle between workers and management– IT professionals should take an active role in choosing to support

“resource week groups” • Theoretical frameworks

– ”Integrated Information Environment or Matrix of control?” Orlikowski (1991)

– ”The political perspective on the organizational change process emphasizes the information system as involved in the process of control and domination..” Walsham (1993: p. 69)

Information infrastructures as disciplinary technologies

• Actor-network theory (ANT)– Power is distributed in heterogeneous networks and actively

performed through processes of enrolling actors and inscribing interests (e.g. Latour,1991)

– ”Politics by other means”

• Disciplinary technologies– User behaviour is inscribed in the heterogeneous components of

an information infrastructure: e.g. standards, training programmes, implementation strategies, level of detail, categories, distribution of work tasks etc.

– Users can ’resist’ and establish ”counter networks”: the dialectics of control

Power and Politics in use of the GSIS in MCC

• The GSIS as a disciplinary technology– Sequence of tasks inscribed: must fill-in all details

before reports can be generated– ’Best practices’ and ’24 hour policy’– Imposing a specific configuration of the underlying

infrastructure – Reports can only be stored in the GSIS

• ’Counter networks’ and changing coalitions– IT department and local surveyors– Alternative ways of using the GSIS (dialectics of

control)

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