Reading in organization theory with IT focus

Annals of Medicine

The Checklist

Atul Gawande 2007/12/10

article about checklists in intensive medicine, and about the importance of system design more generally. Checklists are incredibly effective in providing better care, because even highly trained doctors forget little seemingly non-important things that can have a huge effect on outcomes. This article is one of a few things (the IT article too) that are making me realize that I won't be able to develop an adequate model of institutions without including stigmergy. Well written (its a New Yorker article). The article betrays some cynicism and skepticism that these approaches will ever be recognized enough to be implemented as widely as they should. The argument is that medicien gets a ton of money, but delivery gets almost none.

NEJM

A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population

This is a followup, that was most likely assigned as a signal that the above concern is no concern. This article is on a study covering hospitals around the world, appying the checklists above to surgery saftey and reporting effectiveness (though somewhat diminishing returns)

How IT makes johnny More Productive

Computerworld A summary of another article assigned for the class about the role of IT in corporate productivity

The proper article was simultaneously boring and fascinating, it is the kind of basic level research that I am very glad I will never have to do, and am happy to be able to read. Argument is that IT and the appropriate human systems built around them, leads to corporations that decentralie decision making (with all lthe advantages of that) and thereby increase their capacity to survive in This Crazy World.

What makes a car American

CNN 12/12/08. Article about the complexity of car manufacturing and the arbitrariness of Made in America. Toyota has almost more American employees manufacturing American cars than any of the Big Three. They, in turn, do most of their assembly and other parts in Mexico or other countries. Made in America is a sticker that car companies can buy. Big Three have a thinktank that argues against this conclusion with somewhat arcane arguments about R&D and other small points. There is propaganda in Georgia guiltripping people into buying american.

How culture influences IT-enabled organizational change and information systems

Martinsons, M. G., Davison, R. M., & Martinsons, V. (2009). How culture influences IT-enabled organizational change and information systems. Communications of the ACM, 52(4), 118-123.

Explains itelf except that it was a bit more ambitious than you might expect it to be. They have a 5 dimensional representation of national culture, with axes

1. Power Distance
2. Uncertainty Avoidance
3. Masculinity
4. Time Orientation
5. Individualism

and they reate many countries relative to each other

Trusting strangers

English-Lueck, J. A., Darrah, C. N., & Saveri, A. (2002). Trusting strangers: Work relationships in four high-tech communities. Information, Communication & Society, 5(1), 90-108. an anthropology paper on work culture in silicon valleys emphasizing the role of trust and relationships across busniesses within an industry, with some emphasis on the contrast of this result to perspectives on convetional business culture. Funded by the NSF and Sloan Foundation.

Organizational obstacles to interface design and development: Two participant-observer studies

Poltrock, S.E., & Grudin, J. (1994). Organizational obstacles to interface design and development: Two participant-observer studies. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 1(1), 52-80. Two interface designers looking at how the structure of a corporation influences it ability to effectively design interfaces. they ananlyze two companies with respect to their ability to effectively meet the four established criteria for effective interface design.

Organigraphs: Drawing how companies really work

Mintzberg, H., & Van der Heyden, L. (1999). Organigraphs: Drawing how companies really work. Harvard Business Review, 77(5), 87-94.

mintzbuerg is one of Alice's heroes. This paper, very Harvard Business Review, criticizes conventional org charts and proposes a new strucutre for drawing the "real" structure of a corporation. It starts off very rigorous, with a definition of sets, and introduces a few, progressively more flaky and buzzy structures, and climaxes in adolescent pictures of how awesome diferent corporations are, with, like, sharks and lazers and stuff.

Foster, I., & Tuecke, T. (2005). Describing the elephant: The different faces of IT as service.

Enterprise Distributed Computing, 3(6). Retrieved September 6, 2005, from http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php Introduces a lot of the more specific vocabulary of IT

Hammond, T. H., & Thomas, P. A. (1989). The impossibility of a neutral hierarchy.

Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 5(1), 155-184.

fascinating arcane erudite article making the argument that, through many mechanisms, all organizaitonal structures distort what kind of information they will recieve and be able to act on. The authors claim that they will FORMALLY PROVE that this will happen in any organization, and then they do. Very mathematical. I'm sure that given their assumptions their results hold. I'm not positive about the assumptions but this might be worth a closer look. Though it certainly isn't what I've really been looking for, it is definitely the closest thing that I have found.

The vulnerable system: An analysis of the Tenerife air disaster

Weick, K. E. (1990). The vulnerable system: An analysis of the Tenerife air disaster. Journal of Management, 16(3), 571-593. An interesting article looking at physical, social and human factors behind every aspect of the Tenerife air disaster. The most salient aspect of this article is its truly terrifying appropriation and mass nutchering of diverse concepts from harder sciences. It is like a torture museum, How many ways can you torture how many kinds of people most efficiently? It was like watching a car wreck. Stohl and Redding 1987, re hierarchical constraints in stresful envs, looks interesting.

Scholars before Researchers Boote Beile 2005

It says that kids don't write or read anymore, and that that is really important to be good at before you are a doctor of anything.

Jorunals:

Information and Organization Organization and Management ACQ

Week 10 reading

INTERNET TECHNOLOGISTS AS AN OCCUPATIONAL COMMUNITY: ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE Daniel Marschall Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA Abstract This paper uses qualitative research data, obtained from ethnographic 􏰥eldwork at a US software development 􏰥rm, to demonstrate that a group of skilled workers in the Internet economy constitute an ‘occupational community’. A conceptual framework for identifying occupational communities is described, along with relevant findings from previous ethnographic research on skilled workers in computer-related occupations. The Internet technologists at the company share collaborative work practices, identify closely with one another, adopt a distinctive use of language, and possess other characteristics indicating their participation in an occupational community. These 􏰥ndings are part of a longitudinal research study of the 􏰥rm’s organizational culture. Keywords Internet, computer programmers, occupations, corporate culture INTRODUCTION

...

The boundaries of such an occupational community are set by the members themselves, not by outside authority 􏰥gures. If participants in an occupational community operate within the confines of a single organization, they remain aware of other members in their community who work elsewhere and are part of an overall realm of systematic work practices. Members of an occupational community draw their identities and construct their self-images from their occupations and the social roles they inhabit in them. They tend to take pride in their identities, and present themselves to others in occupational terms. Community members construct distinctive identities in relation to their positions within the occupation. They exhibit a special use of language, for example, adopting jargon and technical vocabularies not imme- diately understandable to outsiders. They also may adopt special codes, including clothing and the styles of cars they prefer to drive. Members use these codes, argue Van Maanen and Barley, ‘to construct meaningful interpretations of persons, events, and objects commonly encountered in the occupational world’ (1984: 300).

early silicon valley white collar coder culture

polioce culture article

another quicvk book review about cops, a littl emore abstract and more typecasty

also, a really abstract one that does factor analysis on a survey on something or other