IT Innovation Through a Work Systems Lens

Abstract

This paper presents what I think is an innovation, the use of work system concepts as a lens for understanding IT innovation in organizations. It starts by presenting the ideas at the heart of the work system approach, the work system framework for describing an existing or proposed work system and the work system life cycle model for describing how work systems change over time. To demonstrate how a work system lens can illuminate both practice and theory related to IT innovation in organizations, it returns to the previous IFIP 8.6 Conference (Copenhagen, October 2003) and applies work system ideas to the situations and theories in the papers presented there. It closes by using CASE adoption as a final example about IT innovation within IT groups.This paper presents what I think is an innovation, the use of work system concepts as a lens for understanding IT innovation in organizations. This approach builds on the term work system, which has been used by a number of socio-technical researchers and by some practitioners for over 20 years, but has not been defined carefully or used as a rigorous concept until recently. The term work system appeared in two articles in the first volume of MIS Quarterly Heinen, 1979a, 1979b]. Mumford and Weir [1979, p. 3] spoke of "the design and implementation of a new work system." Davis and Taylor [1979, p. xv] mentioned "attempts at comprehensive work systems design, including the social systems within which the work systems are embedded." For other past uses of the term work system see Alter (2003).Abstract: