Interpreting socio‐technical co‐evolution

Kim, Richard M.; Kaplan, Simon M.

doi:10.1108/09593840610700800

Cited by 30 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This study carries important practical implications for complex adaptive systems in business and management sciences, in which entities are increasingly getting organized into communities (Jacucci et al , 2006). The proposed community detection method can be used for network-based fraud detection by enabling experts to understand the formation and development of fraudulent setups with an active exchange of information and resources between the firms (Van Vlasselaer et al , 2017).…”

Section: Discussion Implications and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding digitally enabled complex networks: a plural granulation based hybrid community detection approach

Gupta

Deodhar

2021

ITP

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PurposeCommunities representing groups of agents with similar interests or functions are one of the essential features of complex networks. Finding communities in real-world networks is critical for analyzing complex systems in various areas ranging from collaborative information to political systems. Given the different characteristics of networks and the capability of community detection in handling a plethora of societal problems, community detection methods represent an emerging area of research. Contributing to this field, the authors propose a new community detection algorithm based on the hybridization of node and link granulation.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed algorithm utilizes a rough set-theoretic concept called closure on networks. Initial sets are constructed by using neighborhood topology around the nodes as well as links and represented as two different categories of granules. Subsequently, the authors iteratively obtain the constrained closure of these sets. The authors use node mutuality and link mutuality as merging criteria for node and link granules, respectively, during the iterations. Finally, the constrained closure subsets of nodes and links are combined and refined using the Jaccard similarity coefficient and a local density function to obtain communities in a binary network.FindingsExtensive experiments conducted on twelve real-world networks followed by a comparison with state-of-the-art methods demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Research limitations/implicationsThe study also contributes to the ongoing effort related to the application of soft computing techniques to model complex systems. The extant literature has integrated a rough set-theoretic approach with a fuzzy granular model (Kundu and Pal, 2015) and spectral clustering (Huang and Xiao, 2012) for node-centric community detection in complex networks. In contributing to this stream of work, the proposed algorithm leverages the unexplored synergy between rough set theory, node granulation and link granulation in the context of complex networks. Combined with experiments of network datasets from various domains, the results indicate that the proposed algorithm can effectively reveal co-occurring disjoint, overlapping and nested communities without necessarily assigning each node to a community.Practical implicationsThis study carries important practical implications for complex adaptive systems in business and management sciences, in which entities are increasingly getting organized into communities (Jacucci et al., 2006). The proposed community detection method can be used for network-based fraud detection by enabling experts to understand the formation and development of fraudulent setups with an active exchange of information and resources between the firms (Van Vlasselaer et al., 2017). Products and services are getting connected and mapped in every walk of life due to the emergence of a variety of interconnected devices, social networks and software applications.Social implicationsThe proposed algorithm could be extended for community detection on customer trajectory patterns and design recommendation systems for online products and services (Ghose et al., 2019; Liu and Wang, 2017). In line with prior research, the proposed algorithm can aid companies in investigating the characteristics of implicit communities of bloggers or social media users for their services and products so as to identify peer influencers and conduct targeted marketing (Chau and Xu, 2012; De Matos et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2016). The proposed algorithm can be used to understand the behavior of each group and the appropriate communication strategy for that group. For instance, a group using a specific language or following a specific account might benefit more from a particular piece of content than another group. The proposed algorithm can thus help in exploring the factors defining communities and confronting many real-life challenges.Originality/valueThis work is based on a theoretical argument that communities in networks are not only based on compatibility among nodes but also on the compatibility among links. Building up on the aforementioned argument, the authors propose a community detection method that considers the relationship among both the entities in a network (nodes and links) as opposed to traditional methods, which are predominantly based on relationships among nodes only.

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Section: Discussion Implications and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding digitally enabled complex networks: a plural granulation based hybrid community detection approach

Gupta

Deodhar

2021

ITP

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“…In addition, and according to "the objective of the sociotechnical design" that claims the "joint evolution of the social and technological systems" (Munford 2006, p. 321) (this objective has been more recently denoted as co-evolution of the organization and its supportive technology, see e.g., (Kim & Kaplan 2006), the bottom-up approach to conceive a modular and dynamic structure of the organization should inform, or at least not overtly contrast, the construction of the IS artifact supporting it. This means to conceive the IT artifact in terms of a composition of technologies that operate within each primary working system and of the "interaction points" that let them exchange the pertinent information according to the negotiated boundaries: these interaction points are the sutures that connect the various parts of the IS artifact.…”

Section: Sewing Up Locales Into Glocales: Suturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seams and Sutures in IT Artifacts

Cabitza

Simone

Storni

2016

International Journal of Systems and Society

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After more than forty years the principles of the socio-technical approach still offer a sound basis on which Information Systems, interpreted as socio-technical systems, can be constructed to address the increasing need of flexibility of the modern organizations, and to satisfy the will to exploit the technological evolution that now offers unprecedented opportunities for adaptability and flexibility. The paper reconsiders some of the basic principles of socio-technical theory, namely openness, underspecification and interdependence, and on their basis it outlines new ways to conceive IT-supported organizations so that these organizations, their IS artifacts and the constituting IT artifacts can more easily co-evolve without mutually imposing unnecessary constraints. To this aim, we advocate the application of a socio-technical approach to both the design of the social structures and the design of the technical components of the organizations, by leveraging recent frameworks and technological platforms that are aimed at empowering the frontline end-users.

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“…A recent special issue of the journal Information Technology & People (Jacucci, Hanseth, & Lyytinen, 2006) took a first step in applying this approach to what we know about information systems research (Benbya & McElvey, 2006;Kim & Kaplan, 2006;Moser & Law, 2006). However, a journal that is regularly dedicated to this theme is needed both to publish available research and to foster further research on this important topic.…”

Section: What Does This Mean For Is?mentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Study of Complexity in Information Systems

Courtney

Merali

Paradice

et al. 2008

International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach

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This article addresses complexity in information systems. It defines how complexity can be used to inform information systems research, and how some individuals and organizations are using notions of complexity. Some organizations are dealing with technical and physical infrastructure complexity, as well as the application of complexity in specific areas such as supply chain management and network management. Their approaches can be used to address more general organizational issues. The concepts and ideas in this article are relevant to the integration of complexity into information systems research. However, the ideas and concepts in this article are not a litmus test for complexity. We hope only to provide a starting point for information systems researchers to push the boundaries of our understanding of complexity. The article also contains a number of suggested research questions that could be pursued in this area.

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Interpreting socio‐technical co‐evolution

Cited by 30 publications

References 29 publications

Understanding digitally enabled complex networks: a plural granulation based hybrid community detection approach

Understanding digitally enabled complex networks: a plural granulation based hybrid community detection approach

Seams and Sutures in IT Artifacts

On the Study of Complexity in Information Systems

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