Chapter 6: Process as Theory in Information Systems Research - Organizing Business Knowledge The Mit Process Handbook [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 6: Process as Theory in Information Systems Research

Kevin Crowston

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as K. Crowston (2000), Process as theory in information systems research, in R. Baskerville, J. Stage, and J. I. DeGross, eds., Proceedings of Conference on the Social and Organizational Perspective on Research and Practice in Information Technology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2000, pp. 149-64. 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

6.1 Introduction

Many researchers have searched for evidence of organizational productivity improvements from investments in information and communication technologies (ICT). Unfortunately, evidence for such payback is spotty at best (e.g., Meyer and Gupta 1994; Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1998). On the other hand, at the individual level, ICT are increasingly merging into work in ways that make it impossible to separate the two (e.g., Gasser 1986; Zuboff 1988; Bridges 1995). The contrast between the apparently substantial impact of ICT use at the individual level and the apparently diffuse impact at the organizational level is but one example of the problem of linking phenomena and theories from different levels of analysis.

The intent of this chapter is to show how individual-level research on ICT use might be linked to organization-level research by detailed consideration of the organizational process in which the use is situated. The term ''process''is considered here as an interrelated sequence of events that occur over time leading to an organizational outcome of interest (Boudreau and Robey 1999). Understanding this linkage is useful for those who study ICT, and especially useful for those who design them (Kaplan 1991).

In section 6.2, I briefly present the problem of cross-level analysis. In section 6.3, I discuss the concept of a process to explain how processes link to individual work and ICT use, on the one hand, and to organizational and industrial structures and outcomes, on the other. As well, I briefly discuss the potential use of process theories as a milieu for interplay between research paradigms. In sections 6.4 and 6.5, I illustrate the application of this framework in a study of the use of an information system in a restaurant. In section 6.6, I conclude by sketching implications of my process perspective for future research.