We explore an important phase of information systems design (ISD), namely task redesign, and especially how different viewpoints enter into the discussions. We study how one particular visual representation, a process diagram, is interpreted and how alternative, even competing, representations are produced verbally. To tie the visual and verbal representations and the representational practices to wider social practices, we develop and use the Extended Three-dimensional Model of discourse. Visual representations emerged as focal in bringing in the different viewpoints and as reference points for discussions. Our model provided a focused and powerful means to unveil for the outside researchers how the planned changes in tasks and authority relationships instigated a social struggle. The IS designer was an outsider to the client organization and therefore considered only the information system, not the social system in which it was intended to operate. Other participants did not recognize this, therefore, seeing the designer as furthering managerial interests. Seeing task redesign in the social context of a client organization can help IS designers and researchers to understand what the users see naturally, that is, the ISD as a dynamic, enabling but socially constrained process where different viewpoints are represented.Keywords: critical discourse analysis, task redesign, verbal and visual representations, social struggle, social determinants Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.-Malayan proverb I N T R O D U C T I O NInformation systems design (ISD) projects are established to construct not only new computerized information systems but also new work practices, task divisions between people, and J Sarkkinen & H Karsten

The aim of Participatory Design (PD) is to involve the users in the design. Even though the research has shown the success of PD projects in empowering users, little has been said about PD practices within accountable organizations. To transfer PD practices to these business organizations, we need to understand design as an institutional discourse. This paper discusses a sequence of organizational planning interaction and demonstrates how a manager represents the issues within a planning frame and why other participants are unable to act within this frame. The users and even the designer were marginalized from the planning activity. It is postulated that balancing the existing institutionalized power relationships may be laborious within this kind of context. For this reason, it is, instead, argued that we could approach this task implicitly by strengthening diverse frames and, in this way, to pave the way for a more grounded heterogeneous planning discourse inside accountable organizations. This process could be supported by a human mediator, a frame advocate.

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