Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 1 Critical Issues in Information Systems BUSS 951 Lecture 13 Researching Organisations and Systems

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 2 Recall last week we described describe several theories of one useful strata- genre and apply it to SFL to an actual IS in its workplace- ALABS use our substantive knowledge of IS to alter the theory apply this theory to some features of the ALABS system

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 3 Agenda overtime we can see shifts in the genre structure of texts associated with these workpractices and a system features... NOTE: case studies conducted over time are referred to as longitudinal studies, or diachronic studies we can do this because we can study systems features using texts, remembering that there is a relationship between text and context! we can ask question why did this change to take place?

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 4 Agenda (1) Language/Discourse its not just Vocabulary that is different between Groups in Organisations- its Language (or Discourse) it helps us explain why users and developers have difficulties in understanding each other! this could be used as a theoretical basis for participation- a way of making an interactive method out of systems analysis

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 5 Agenda (2) We will recap important aspects of the course (to assist you in doing the examination) we will also restate the critical issues covered in this subject with a review of the content of this course

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 6 Language/Discourse as a technology

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 7 Language/Discourse (1) Language and Discourses in general are tools- they do things (achieve work in organisations) that is why they have evolved and therefore it is their functionality that determines their character but discourses are semiotic tools (and therefore tacit or unconscious) they are therefore taken for granted in discussions of 20C technology

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 8 Language/Discourse (2) at this time in our history we have focused on designed tools- the material products of conscious invention but it is the unconscious and evolving discourses of our cultures which engender all purpose-designed systems

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 9 Language/Discourse (3) without an understanding of our material technology- our information systems- in our cultures, then the ways in which it can be mastered (and masters us) is necessarily incomplete by understanding the discourses, we can facilitate intervention in the process of changing and improving workpractices language is just not theorised in information systems

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 10 Language/Discourse (4) written language is extremely important in information systems it is primarily the resources of written language through which the discipline of IS has, like others, evolved as with most language learning, we learn the discourses of IS- literally to be IS practitioners- by copying written directly from IS texts and related reference materials

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 11 Language/Discourse (5) We are tacitly familiar with a number of these written language patterns that we often see in textbooks and journal articles associated with science and technology: Report Genre- description-oriented texts Explanation Genre- reason-oriented science with a taxonomising function Exposition Genre- reason-oriented argument

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 12 Language/Discourse (6) Language of Deliverables the deliverables used in IS are technical in nature because they are concerned with building up an uncommon sense interpretation of the world to do this we take common sense as a starting point and ‘translate’ it into specialised knowledge

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 13 Language/Discourse (7) Language of Deliverables the basic semiotic resource available for this translation is called elaboration at the clause rank this meaning is constructed through the relational identifying clause (Halliday ) favoured clause type in science and technology

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 14 Language/Discourse (8) Language of Deliverables Where: The data store... Value ‘is called’ Process ‘Awards’ Token Identifying Clause Example (NB these are reversible) The data store used in changing pays scales is called Awards Awards is the data store used in changing pays scales

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 15 Language/Discourse (9) Language of Deliverables Elaboration is also found at the group and word rank once again to translate common sense into specialized knowledge traditionally this is called paratactic expansion or more traditionally as apposition

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 16 Language/Discourse (10) Language of Deliverables used in science to ‘remind’ readers of the way we talk technically the technical term is glossed rather than explicitly defined: reduces or [as we say in IS] compresses the file size the term compresses can now be ‘taken for granted’

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 17 IS and User Language

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 18 Grammatical Differences IS language (scientific texts) foregrounds identifying relational processes which are used to define technical terms User language (historical texts) relies on attributive relational processes to assign participants to familiar classes

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 19 Semantic Differences IS language (scientific texts) more likely to realise, and therefore foreground, logical connections between clauses and sentences User language (historical texts) more likely to bury the reasoning inside the clause

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 20 Grammatical Metaphor differences between relational processes and conjunction patterns (IS practitioners and Users) therefore, grammatical metaphor plays a different role in mediating between grammar and semantics in respective discourses

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 21 IS Discourse Nominalisation & Grammatical Metaphor nominalisation is strongly associated with definitions nominalisation is used to accumulate meanings so that a technical term can be defined grammatical metaphor distills

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 22 User Discourse Nominalisation & Grammatical Metaphor nominalisation is strongly associated with realising events as participants so that logical connections can be realised inside the clauses nominalisation is deployed to construct layers of thematic and information structure in a text grammatical metaphor scaffolds

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 23 IS and User Discourse Register Differences IS Discourse: science is concerned with constructing taxonomies and implication sequences emphasis is focused on field “knowledge’ constructed is more transcendent (‘beyond experience’) scientific taxonomies and implication sequences tend to function as system

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 24 IS and User Discourse Register Differences User Discourse: concerned with constructing text emphasis is focused on mode ‘knowledge’ constructed is more experientially based than transcendent historical generalizations and explanations tend to function as text not system users tend to refer to their work texts in order to find out what work means

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 25 IS and User Discourse Generic Differences IS Discourse organised as large Report Genres with embedded Explanation Genres and Experiment Genres User Discourse organised as long, generalsied Recount Genres, with embedded Report Genres and more occasionally Exposition Genres

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 26 IS and User Discourse Table of Differences

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 27 Summary (1) semiosis at all levels constructs discourses as truth or at best as hypothesis about what is and what happened that can be proved and disproved the discourses of IS and of Users in workplaces are constitutive of their subjectivity and negotiable is an idea which is hidden in the IS discipline- but it is an idea that can change this discipline

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 28 Critical Issues in IS

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 29 Critical Issues Are organisations really systems? What is information? What does the IS Discipline do? Further Issues How might organisations be theorised? How can we improve IS Development Practices?

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 30 Information-theoretic basis of the Discipline data is easy to identify but information depends on who, what, where, how and when organisations are not axiomatic (rule determined) since members can change the internal and external processes of the organisation

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 31 Data & Information IS concept of information (Shannon & Weaver, defines information in terms which preclude meaning in other words the second basis of our discipline (the concept of information) is theoretically inappropriate for use when developing systems

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 32 Systems Design as Social Activity (1) social processes are always at work during the analysis, design, development and implementation of systems all these activities take place in organisational and institutional settings

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 33 Systems Design as Social Activity (2) need to ‘locate’ social processes and human interactions within historical and organisational contexts some justification is required for this approach...

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 34 Systems Design as Social Activity (3) communication processes and social interactions within the developer community are of great importance changes in systems development practices, whether related to technology or organisational issues, are always driven and mediated by social factors

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 35 Systems Design as Social Activity (4) systems development is a complex bridging process linking areas of specialized and diverse expertise; the domain of the IT professional and the domain of the user systems development concerns itself with IT innovation, application and diffusion- all social

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 36 Effects of Shannon & Weaver IS Methods skews the types of IS methods that get produced and therefore used IS methods come with inbuilt with individualism as a theoretical assumption rather communication gets reduced to exchange

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 37 Effects of Shannon & Weaver Political Effects (2) if this model is about ‘transmission’ then who has the role of the sender becomes a political act (in an organisation or a society) that is: who can ‘speak’ who is allowed to ‘speak’ who has the authority to ‘speak’

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 38 Effects of Shannon & Weaver Political Effects (4) adopting Shannon & Weaver, means we adopt a theory of communication which privaledges: those who have the power to speak over those who may only be permitted to listen! systems development in organisations is therefore political

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 39 Communication & Power there is always a close relationship between communication and power therefore, we must look for other models of communication the limits in practice which constrain communication depend on the political and ideological outlook of the reader

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 40 Summary (2) we communicate because sets of concepts reoccur in our culture and language but we don’t need to share meanings, we only need to think that we can in order to communicate

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 41 Use Semiotic Approaches the discipline which studies meaning-making (or semiosis) is called semiotics some semiotic analysis has been criticised as nothing more than arid formalism

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 42 Use Semiotic Analysis purely structuralist semiotics does not address authorial intentions or audience interpretation it ignores particular practices, institutional frameworks and the cultural, social, economic and political contexts.

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 43 Use Semiotic Analysis semiotics emphasizes that signs are related to their signifieds by social conventions which we learn we become so used to such conventions in our use of various media that they seem natural or commonsense

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 44 Use Semiotic Analysis semiotics can help to make us aware of what we take for granted in representing the world we are always: dealing with signs, not with an unmediated objective reality that sign systems are involved in the construction of meaning

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 45 Semio-informatic Dilemma (1) their are great difficulties faced by any semio-informatic approach which relies on models of the sign we have seen that signs are everywhere, that we utilise many systems of signs simultaneously to signify meaning

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 46 Semio-informatic Dilemma (7) the use of higher level semiotic structures confuses many researchers who have only ever seen semiotics defined in terms of signs- semiotics is the study of signs according to many it is the semio-informatics researchers’ responsibility to theorise the higher level semiotic structures

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 47 Language and social context Applied to IS SFL gives two complementary perspectives can look at the perspective of language: IS as text can look at the perspective of context: IS as social organisation applying SFL to examining systems is very different to traditional IS approaches a given text provides only a partial perspective about a work practice

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 48 Language and social context Applied to IS in the short term a linguistic analysis provides only a small part of the overall picture traditional IS practices are applied top- down: gives a very broad picture poor on details SFL methodology is applied bottom-up: provides a very detailed view of work practices which then need to be integrated across various sites

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 49 Language and social context Applied to IS need to look at many actual texts in a social context in order to find out about work practices only by shunting between language and social context (the work practice and the organisation) can we perform a meaningful analysis in one of your assignments you were asked to collect a small set of texts you would need to collect many texts of the same type of transaction before you understood it (see all the variations)

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 50 Language and social context Applied to IS how many texts to collect?: well its difficult to know you need to include those people involved in the work practices into the analysis so this SFL approach to understanding work practices MUST be participative

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 51 SFL and IS not all the SFL model needs to be used on each text- what language resources you use will depend on the type of analysis needed for IS the most useful strata and context (genre and register) and discourse semantics IS are interesting because they are multigeneric, many genres are involved in describing the general properties of texts end-user modification of system and wholesale management driven change can be characterised using genre...

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 52 SFL and IS System Development Genres as Quasispecies Generic Element: Cut, Paste and Elaboration Genre Graphs Genre Associations Genre Assemblages Systems Analysis translate from certain structurally simple Factual and Narrative Genres to to more complex Factual Genres Methodologies can also be described using Genre Methodologies are multi- generic (Macrogenres)

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 53 Course Justification

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 54 Justification (1) almost all IS students leave without understanding anything other than methodologies so I have tried to get you to consider a social, rather than a technical, basis of the information systems discipline

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 55 Justification (2) one of the things that should be important to you... an explicitly theorised social description can be used to implement- not just talk about- an information system

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 56 Justification (3) in order to do this I needed you to understand that there is an enormous body of material that you can apply to understand IS development we have looked at sociology (qualitative analysis), ethnography and semiotics of all of these my interest is in semiotics- it is the least used and I think the most promising because it involves issues of meaning making, social groups and culture

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 57 Justification (5) of the semiotic approaches to IS my preference (and my own research area) is SFL and Social Semiotics, why: can deal with systems (manual/automated) and changes to them over time can deal with Analysing Systems, and can be used to theorise Methodologies most of the work is being developed in Australia (accessible)

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 58 Justification Assessment what I have tried to do in this course is to teach you how to act as researchers that’s why the assessment was designed in order for you to practice thinking about topics from a theoretical, methodological and substantive aspects- to clarify the epistemology and ontology of a specific paper and on being able to identifying concepts, statements, models and theories

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 59 Justification Assessment understanding these concepts is a necessary part of the research process and is a significant part of our proficiency and literacy in a given field these concepts are building blocks that enable us to effectively summarise what we are reading: not just recounting what was said by the author but actually identifying what was meant (even if the author didn’t realise it)

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 60 Justification Assessment these divisions are a little difficult- because they are a little artificial- but it is necessary since it is the start of the research process!

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 61 Justification Assessment we used an explicit model of genre built into the assessment in other words, I have applied genre analysis to the assessment process in a course which is in part about genre analysis!

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 62 Justification this course has been a direct result of my own research interests and that of the Department of Information Systems we are interested in supervising good students in this area (Projects and PhDs), or in the new Extension Programme

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-13: 63 Justification but if you decide to finish your studies and get back to industry, then... keep in touch if you are interested in applying these methods in your workplace study hard and prepare well GOOD LUCK and THANKS