Information and communication technologies permeate every sphere of society - business, education, leisure, government and so on. This book reflects on the character and complexity of the interaction between people and computers, between society and technology.
This book is a useful text for advanced students of MIS and ICT courses, and for those studying ICT in related areas: Management and Organization Studies, Cultural Studies, and Technology and Innovation. As ICT's permeate every sphere of society-business, education, leisure, government,
etc.-it is important to reflect the character and complexity of the interaction between people and computer, between society and technology. For example, the user may represent a much broader set of actors than 'the user' conventionally found in many texts: the operator, the customer, the citizen,
the gendered individual, the entrepreneur, the 'poor', the student. Each actor uses ICT in different ways. This book examines these issues, deploying a number of methods such as Actor Network Theory, Socio-Technical Systems, and phenomenological approaches. Management concerns about strategy and
productivity are covered together with issues of power, politics, and globalization. Topics range from long-standing themes in the study of IT in organizations such as implementation, strategy, and evaluation, to general analysis of IT as socio-economic change. A distinguished group of contributors,
including Bruno Latour, Saskia Sassen, Robert Galliers, Frank Land, Ian Angel, and Richard Boland, offer the reader a rich set of perspectives and ideas on the relationship between ICT and society, organizational knowledge and innovation.
This book is an excellent resource for developing and understanding patterns in IS research through the windows of foundational theory, practical application research and theoretical implementations of ICT.