Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
  • Publication
    A bigger picture: information systems and spatial data infrastructure research perspectives
    A weakness of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) studies has been the limited uptake of research outside of positivist and scientific-technological perspectives. To put it simply, a study of a SDI without considering other philosophies of knowledge will be greatly constrained to technical and administrative organizational dimensions. The ontological uniformity of SDI studies is unnecessarily restrictive. While valuable in a narrowly defined framework of project, SDI studies should consider the larger set of interactions involving actors in political, administrative and socio-technical domains. We review the development of information system research approaches and consider key positions from its diverse ontologies (positivism and interpretivism) and theories (strategic alignment, interactionism and social construction). We point to possible ways to consider these positions in SDI research.
      181
  • Publication
    Scalability as Institutionalization - Practicing District Health Information System in an Indian State Health Organization
    This paper is based on an analysis and of the introduction and scaling processes of a health management information system in the public health care system of an Indian state. The system is developed and implemented by an international action-research network in close collaboration with the local health department. The purpose of the system is to improve health information circulation and use within the health system by establishing action-nets to get institutionalized into organizational practices. Data is being collected by directly participating in this project within an action research framework. This ongoing initiative is presented by introducing the two main organizations involved (the health services and HISP, the implementing organization), and then focusing on the way they are interweaving part of their activities around the health management information system. The conclusive part discusses how this process is relevant for learning and the scaling up of these kinds of systems.
      216
  • Publication
    Openness may not mean democratization - e-Grievance systems in their consequences
    E-government initiatives tend to come charged with expectations of improving the performance of public administrations by reducing inequalities in public service provision. The studies presented here elaborate on implications and consequences of systems to handle citizen complaints and public feedback related to the services provided to and managed for the population of different cities. Two cases from India and one from Europe have been chosen to explore what kind of consequences such systems can have in different settings. All cases are researched with a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Although such systems come wrapped within the rhetoric of universalism and more equitable access, empirical data show that, by facilitating 'participation of the fittest', they get exploited more effectively by those who are better off, already. Therefore bureaucracy tends to become more dependent on the social environment.
      253
  • Publication
    From authentication to ‘Hanseatic governance’: Blockchain as organizational technology
    Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible application, including – but not limited to – land and other registries, global trade systems. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian, anarchic agenda, recent developments of commercial applications have illustrated that it can been dissociated from a particular ideological framing. The purpose of our paper is to identify and classify core properties of blockchain as an organizational technology and related modes of blockchain governance. We do this by looking at a number of case studies which highlight a number of governance design issues as well as unintended effects of the technology and related design choices. We are exploring the linkages between blockchain application properties and related design options and choices.
      437
  • Publication
    Blockchain as organizational technology
    (University College Dublin, 2019-02-28)
    Information technologies have been changing how things get organized for a while now. Free and open source software, peer-to-peer networks, cloud computing, just to name a few waves of digital innovation, are instances of a mode of organizing which has been: a) circumventing the structures and conventions of formal organizations, and b) changing and disrupting markets while opening new ones. The most recent trend of digital innovation is blockchain, which embeds functions that used to be domain of organizations: consensus and authentication. Cryptocurrencies proved at scale the feasibility of an architecture that certifies each token on a network and differentiates it from all others. All copies are the same no more. This newly created scarcity originates both cooperation to keep the system running reliably, and rivalry between actors longing for a finite number of tokens. Thus, blockchain mode of governance is peculiar, and can be studied in application domains like markets (second-hand cars) and public authorities (land registries).
      343
  • Publication
    Infrastructures and their invisible carnivalesque
    (European Group for Organizational Studies, 2017-07-08) ;
    In this paper, we argue that Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies more generally, is an important and distinctive information infrastructure that warrants substantive study by organizational scholars. The Bitcoin system is briefly described and the particular methodological challenges involved in studying the phenomenon are also discussed. We assert that neither of the two broad conceptualisations of information infrastructures found in the literature—topdown and bottom-up—help us in understanding Bitcoin. Instead, Bitcoin is better understood as a form of game and we draw on the ludology literature and the case material to identify its game dimensions. Bitcoin is a particular type of game, and we introduce the term Klein Bottle Game to describe this type of game. A Klein bottle a one-sided, non-orientable surface that has no boundary. We then describe the main features of Klein bottle games. First, they are different from most games in that the boundaries between the game and non-game worlds are not decipherable. Second, we use the term Klein Portal to describe the particular set of practices that link the Klein Bottle Game that is Bitcoin to other infrastructures. Third, we argue that Bitcoin exhibits many of the features of the carnivalesque—hence we speak of the crypto-carnivalesque—in that it is a site where norms and structures are temporarily suspended, conventional authority is contested, and autonomy if favoured over heteronomy. Fourth, Bitcoin is a site of ironic inversion, in that the ideology that drove Bitcoin’s initial development shows signs of now being inverted. We conclude by noting the distinctive nature of Bitcoin and caution against extending our analysis to other instances of information infrastructures.
      324
  • Publication
    Irreductionally Real Information Infrastructures: Practices beyond Universals
    (Wichmann-Verlag and Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013-07) ;
    The Internet was designed to be nuclear war and future-proof. Probably unexpectedly, these two issues supported each other. Indeed, the need to create a decentralized large digital network made it open-ended the way we have come to know the internet through the last years. The changes are also relevant to specific developments of spatial data infrastructures and their future. Our focus is on the practical and empirical aspects of the internet and related infrastructures, as they have become part of our present and future prospects.
      415
  • Publication
    Tribal Governance: The Business of Blockchain Authentication
    (Urban Centre for Computation and Data, 2018-01-06) ; ; ;
    The blockchain technology offers a novel mode of distributed authentication, which does not depend on a central authority. We consider this novelty against established governance modes. We illustrate our argument by paying special attention to blockchain-based authentication functions in the empirical domain of land registries across the world. Based on interviews with representatives from organizations deploying blockchain, and content analysis of related grey literature, we discuss established governance idealtypes against what the rivalry that cryptocurrencies and blockchains bring to digital settings. After referring to market, hierarchy, network, and bazaar, we conclude outlining the prospects of a different, blockchain-related governance mode called ‘tribal’ that better captures the ‘togetherness’ which rivalry originates.
      948