A Cognitive Perspective On Boundary- Spanning IS Design Dr. Susan Gasson Assistant Professor College of IS & T Drexel University

An Investigation of Boundary-Spanning IS Design  The nature of organizational IS design and the role of boundary-spanning knowledge management in high-level design.  Traditional (decompositional) process model vs. convergence model of design process.  Three views of design as social cognition.  Research study: participant observation and ethnographic data collection of boundary-spanning design process in organizational context over period of 18 months.  [If time] SSM as a tool for surfacing implicit understanding.  Research findings: the nature of a boundary-spanning design process.

Boundary-Spanning, Enterprise-Level IS Design  Organizational IS design is viewed here as a high-level, conceptualization process:  The giving of form to an organizational IS  Involves the co-design of business and IT systems  Distinct from the low-level “design” stage of SDLC.  Involves knowledge sharing and negotiation of consensus across multiple knowledge domains or organizational boundaries. Product engineering manager Financial accounting manager IS manager Bid process manager Marketing manager Operations finance manager Extent of shared understanding

Traditional Model Of Design Process  Individual, rational model of problem-solving (Alexander, 1964).  Assumes consensual, objectively-defined set of initial goals (Simon, 1973).  Empirical studies reveal emergent strategies:  “Opportunism” of expert software designers (Guindon, 1990).  “Improvisation” in designing IT-related organizational change (Orlikowski, 1996). Consensus on organizational problem and goals for change Agreed form of IS solution Gap analysis: process of design

Convergence Model of Design No longer goal-driven, but continual evolution of “gap analysis” between how we understand (frame) the problem and how we understand (frame) the solution.

Research Question  Does the convergence model offer a convincing alternative to the decompositional model of design and, if so, how does the convergence of problem- and solution-space take place in boundary-spanning group design?

Boundary-Spanning IS Design Process Convergence model still deals with individual processes – does this explain collaborative process? People are members of multiple social worlds, through their membership of different work and disciplinary groups (Strauss, 1983; Vickers, 1974). Organizational "problems" not consensual but emerge through interactions between the various social worlds to which decision-makers belong (Suchman, 1998; Weick, 1998).  Therefore, we need to examine processes of social cognition, to understand collaborative design process.

3 Views Of Social Cognition  Socially-situated cognition:  Situated action (Suchman, 1987; 1998): shared work-spaces are produced through social and contextual interaction; continually redefined.  Cognitive “frame” (Goffman, 1974) – “structures of expectation” guide how people predict and interpret context (Tannen, 1993).  Socially-shared cognition:  Shared frames: cognitive "shortcuts" provide shared interpretations of organization without the need for complex explanations (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995; Fiol, 1994).  Congruence between “technological frames” (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994).  Distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995):  Understanding is not so much shared between, as "stretched over" members of a cooperative group (Star, 1989).  Coordination achieved through “heedful interrelating” (Weick & Roberts, 1993).

Research Questions  Does the convergence model offer a convincing alternative to the decompositional model of design and, if so, how does the convergence of problem- and solution-space take place in boundary-spanning group design?  IS design as socially situated cognition:  How do individuals' design frames interact, to form a group "framing" of an information system?  IS design as socially-shared cognition:  Does a design group develop a shared design-frame over time? If so, what aspects of the design are shared?  IS design as distributed cognition:  How does a boundary-spanning design group manage and mediate distributed design understanding?

Boundary-Spanning Collaboration in The Co-Design of Business and IT Systems Technical division Bid response Core design team Bid response Bid response Bid response Bid response Product/ customer strategy Customer interface & intelligence Financial strategy Product development Cost/effort estimation Production capacity planning Contractual policy  Commercial division Finance division Operations division Marketing division Participant observation & ethnographic data collection of group of 7 managers involved in design of IS to support the process of responding to customer invitations to bid for new business: IS Manager Process Improvement Manager

Framing in IS Literature  Concept comes from cognitive psychology  Orlikowski & Gash (1994) used concept of “Technological Frames” to represent different understandings of the role of technology in work.  Davidson (1996, 2002) extended concept to understand how IT system stakeholders understood what IT is required and the role that this would play.  Problem of granularity: this is behavioral and not cognitive research:  Frame congruence (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994) – frames are similar in content and structure (qualitatively coded).  Problem of explicit vs. implicit knowledge about IS:  Framing involves implicit knowledge, so employed Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1981) to elicit.

Data Analysis Methods 1.Qualitative coding of “levels of problem decomposition”  Analyze goal-orientation and decompositional focus of group process  Qualitative coding of “contributions” to design meetings at 4 points, distributed throughout design project. 2.Qualitative coding of in-depth interviews, based on SSM (Checkland, 1981), to derive design “framing” concepts employed by individuals. 3.Discourse analysis of design meeting transcripts to understand how distributed understanding was managed.

Research Question  Does the convergence model offer a convincing alternative to the decompositional model of design and, if so, how does the convergence of problem- and solution-space take place in boundary-spanning group design?

Design Was Not Decompositional High-level design goals Detailed implementation mechanisms Predicted Actual Simulated Single Meeting

Research Questions  Does the convergence model offer a convincing alternative to the decompositional model of design and, if so, how does the convergence of problem- and solution-space take place in boundary-spanning group design?  Sub-questions, from a “framing” perspective:  How do individuals' design frames interact, to form a group "framing" of an information system?  Does a design group develop a shared design-frame over time? If so, what aspects of the design are shared?  How does a boundary-spanning design group manage and mediate distributed cognition?

Data Analysis Methods 2.Discourse analysis, to derive design “framing” concepts employed by individuals  Data collected (in interactive interviews) at 3 points:  beginning,  middle (approx.), and  end of design project  Interview questions focused on 3 aspects of design, reflecting the 3 elements of the convergence model:  Problem-framing  Solution-framing (target system goals and form)  Process-tasks required to get from problem to solution (gap analysis)  Employed Soft Systems Methodology techniques (Checkland, 1981) in interviews, to surface implicit frames/understandings.

SSM Goal Surfacing: 6 Definitions of “Achieve Higher Quality In Bid Process”

Example SSM Root Definition For Process-Task Root Definition: A system owned by the Managing Director where the Team leader identifies which processes need analyzing and obtain resources for this for the benefit of the people who operate the Bid response process and customers. This is necessary because the Bid response process is bound up in other business processes. It is constrained by the subsequent impact on wider processes which interface with any process that interfaces with the Bid process.

How do individuals' design frames interact, to form a group "framing" of an information system?  Organizational problem frames  noticeable convergence of individuals’ framing-perspectives.  Target system goals  converged to some extent towards the middle of the project  appeared to converge superficially towards the end  use of common metaphors, e.g. "electronic document library"  but differed widely in meanings attached to metaphors  overall, little convergence at the level of individual understanding  Design tasks required (gap analysis)  diverged widely at all stages. Product engineering manager Financial accounting manager IS manager Bid process manager Marketing manager Operations finance manager Extent of shared understanding

Does a design group develop a shared design-frame over time? If so, what aspects of the design are shared?  The use of shared metaphors in defining system goals or aspects of a solution did not indicate a shared understanding of what those goals/solutions entailed.  What was shared was an understanding of how the problem on which the group was focusing was structured  e.g. the use of the phrase “the big-arrow, little-arrow concept” indicated a shared understanding that the team’s problem was to find a way of defining the Bid process so that it was aligned with, but separate and parallel to the product lifecycle process.  But problem definitions were discarded when they caused perceived dissonance with individual frames.  Replaced by more sophisticated problem-structure that embodied some elements of previous structure, but also replaced other elements.

Does a design group develop a shared design-frame over time? If so, what aspects of the design are shared? Very different from the traditional model, design was driven by shared problem-frames, not shared goals.

How does a boundary-spanning design group manage and mediate distributed design understanding?  Through understanding problems in common, the group was able to develop sufficient levels of trust that they could delegate responsibility for parts of the solution definition, when this was too complex for one person to understand in detail:  "I know that Peter wants to fix the same things that I want to fix, so I'll trust him to sort out his end of the system [personnel training]".

How Do Groups Manage Distributed Knowledge In Design?  Shared attitudes and beliefs towards the design (why are we doing this and how do we want to change the company? – built through developing shared problem-structures) guide shared interpretations of the organizational environment.  This permits groups to negotiate distributed understanding of design tasks and how to perform them.  Negotiation is facilitated by the use of boundary objects (e.g. design models), that capture and communicate a joint knowledge of the design that is greater than the knowledge of any individual.  Knowledge of who knows what allows group to distribute work effectively among themselves.  Appears to be established through individual “specialization” in specific application-domain areas, during the design process.

Research Question  Does the convergence model offer a convincing alternative to the decompositional model of design and, if so, how does the convergence of problem- and solution-space take place in boundary-spanning group design?

Questions?