Technology-Shaping Effects of E-Collaboration Technologies: Bugs and Features Export

@article{markus2005technology-, abstract = {Recently, Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) called for increased theorizing of the information technology (IT) artifact. Both authors have made important contributions to what they refer to as the "ensemble" view of technology. By contrast, the "tool" view has remained noticeably underdeveloped. The goal of this essay is to begin articulating such a tool view for research on e-collaboration technologies. Referred to here as "the technology-shaping perspective," this view eschews technological determinism but nevertheless looks for broad patterns of probabilistic effects that can be attributed to technology's material features. In brief, the technology-shaping perspective holds that technologies pose problems for users who want to use them to accomplish particular goals; the solutions users create for those problems during recurrent use may exhibit certain regularities across different contexts. Consequently, small differences in the features of apparently similar tools could be associated with big differences in usage patterns and social outcomes. The claim is that conducting future research on a technology-shaping agenda could yield cumulative results that are less "disappointing" than many scholars find group decision support systems (GSS) research, the largest single body of work on e-collaboration technologies.}, annote = {Interesting IS theory article that picks up the IT artifact debate. Markus's position is that more conceptualization can be done with the 'tool-view' of technology. She explicitly takes a materialist position and elaborates study design guidelines for those interested in the effect of variation in technology features. IS Packages, like Group Support Systems (GSS), even when focused on the same `problem' are not all the same; they have different features. Many GSS studies, whose dissappointly inconsistent results were part of Orlikowski's critique, don't compare different GSS systems in similar contexts, if they compare they compare different systems (with different features) in different contexts. This is an experimental design failure, caused by the conceptual confusion in the area. ``although it is \_not\_ realistic to expect \_consistency\_ in use practices and outcomes \_within a technology\_, it \_is\_ reasonable to look for \_systematic differences\_ in uses and outcomes \_across technologies\_'' (p 10) because there is a probablistic relationship between features and outcomes. She argues that impacts cluster around the designer's expected uses; the central tendancy of use, across different contexts, will different depending on the features of the system. One needs to find ``evidence of behaviour patterns that vary systematically with the features of apparantly similar technologies'' (p13) She uses previous empirical data (calendaring, email) to argue point, discussing differences in outcomes affected by email system features like lacking a CC and group reply function, or the defaul availability of other's calander data. ``The materialist position is not that technology causes people to behave the way they do, but only that it makes it expensive for them to do otherwise, and hence they often don't'' p 13 This is relevant to the FLOSS work because of the central role of tools. Would need to look for systematic differences in patterns of behaviour linked to the use of tools. CVS vs SVN etc. Also what can be done with an historical study of the transition from CVS to SVN, or find a hybrid project that uses VSS internally ... Also relevant for the review article is that FLOSS studies haven't typically studied tools comparatively... (Found this article in the sample edition of the IJEC which I was looking at to get the virtual teams review article).}, author = {Markus, Lynne M.}, citeulike-article-id = {344690}, journal = {International Journal of e-Collaboration}, local-url = {file://localhost/Users/james/Documents/University/Syracuse/Research/Paper\%20Library/markus/markus2005technology-shaping\%20effects\%20of\%20e-collaboration\%20technologies\%20bugs\%20and\%20features.pdf}, month = {March}, number = {1}, pages = {15--37}, posted-at = {2007-09-24 06:22:51}, priority = {2}, title = {Technology-Shaping Effects of E-Collaboration Technologies: Bugs and Features}, volume = {1}, year = {2005} }

TY - JOUR ID - markus2005technology- L3 - citeulike-article-id:344690 N2 - Recently, Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) called for increased theorizing of the information technology (IT) artifact. Both authors have made important contributions to what they refer to as the "ensemble" view of technology. By contrast, the "tool" view has remained noticeably underdeveloped. The goal of this essay is to begin articulating such a tool view for research on e-collaboration technologies. Referred to here as "the technology-shaping perspective," this view eschews technological determinism but nevertheless looks for broad patterns of probabilistic effects that can be attributed to technology's material features. In brief, the technology-shaping perspective holds that technologies pose problems for users who want to use them to accomplish particular goals; the solutions users create for those problems during recurrent use may exhibit certain regularities across different contexts. Consequently, small differences in the features of apparently similar tools could be associated with big differences in usage patterns and social outcomes. The claim is that conducting future research on a technology-shaping agenda could yield cumulative results that are less "disappointing" than many scholars find group decision support systems (GSS) research, the largest single body of work on e-collaboration technologies. IS - 1 JF - International Journal of e-Collaboration EP - 37 TI - Technology-Shaping Effects of E-Collaboration Technologies: Bugs and Features VL - 1 SP - 15 AU - Markus, Lynne PY - 2005/March// ER -