Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research. Theory and Application

Citation

Gillard, H. (2007), "Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research. Theory and Application", Information Technology & People, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 85-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/09593840710730572

This Handbook is a long awaited addition to IS literature. In systematically addressing a call for more critical IS research, it provides a wealth of diverse and reflective material. The high quality and pristine clarity of the articles take the reader on a multifaceted journey of critical exploration, achieving the aims of the editors to meet the heterogeneous interests and concerns of the IS community. One of its core contributions is the blend of theoretical and empirical studies from which IS research may reflect on its core traditions, and perhaps move on from a recalcitrant quantitative/qualitative debate. In not limiting research to justification of these concerns, the Handbook positions critical theory as a viable analytical and practical tool by which to ethically review complex socio‐economic, cultural, political and gendered values embedded in the construction and implementation of IT and ICT systems. As responsible practitioners, we require greater understanding of how these values and others influence our policies, beliefs and practices. By critically reviewing techno‐economic rationality, we begin to unravel, how these values, are reinforced, by dimensions of power, where asymmetry manifests in multiple forms of discrimination.

For critical IS research, practice and action constitute the other side of the research coin, shaping its theory to explore deep‐seated roots of injustice and bridging the gap between local and wider accounts of socio‐technical life. The editors, Howcroft and Trauth, remind the reader that it is action‐oriented, and by linking its theory to application with ethical reflexivity, transformative research praxis highlights the underlying structures of power, control and domination; the restrictive conditions of the status quo that serve to exclude or marginalize. Emancipation is the goal of critical IS theory; freedom from inequality, discrimination and the constraints of techno‐economic determinism and rationality. In privileging the concrete realisation of unconstrained human potential, such research explores the localised settings in which people diversely experience forms of oppression, and questions our taken for granted assumptions, our normative values and customs that techno‐economic solutions can reflect. Critical IS theory, largely absent from IS research in the past, seeks to go beyond the limitations of its discipline's reliance on quantitative and interpretive analyses. For the diversity of human experiences is missed when data is quantified, and the relativism and passiveness of interpretive research risks equalising these experiences, neglecting conflicts of interest (Hirshheim and Klein, 1994; Wilson, 1997).

The Handbook addresses this neglect by richly exploring the eclectic strength of applied critical theorising, providing an array of forms of power imbalances in relation to information and telecommunication systems with scholarly fortitude and originality. In dividing the Handbook into two sections, theory and application, the editors have selected a comprehensive collection of analytical and empirical work that redresses a fundamental weakness in critical theory. It has been short on specifying effective ways in which emancipatory goals may be realised, in part because it lacks empirical data.

In the theory section, overviews of traditional IS theories and methodologies are presented, alongside critical reflection on whether these tools are adequate for addressing the complex processes surrounding present day ICT systems. The Handbook reflects the emergence of Actor Network Theory (ANT), Structuration and the Social Construction of Technology to broaden IS analyses by drawing upon the works of Marx, Habermas, Foucault, Lukes, Clegg, Feenberg, Bourdieu, Sen and others to weave argumentation. By beginning with a comparison of positivism, interpretivism and critical theory, Cecez‐Kecmanovic outlines the basic assumptions of each and provides the reader with a theoretical base from which to understand the remaining chapters. In exploring the critical potential of current IS research, Mitev takes the case of social constructivism to understand IS failure and provides further detail to Cecez‐Kecmanovic's comparison. Seeking to improve work conditions and democratic procedures, Silva provides analyses of circuits of strategic power that are drawn from Clegg and ANT. With a specific focus on the power of linguistics, Alvarez outlines a critical discourse analysis with which to investigate the discursive generation, legitimisation and reproduction of the instrumental and political dimensions of IT. The reader is reminded by Adam that IS has an ethical responsibility for integrating reflexive professionalism into its education and practices, arguing that this morality should not be governed by rules and principles but rather embedded in phenomenology. This ethical awareness may further accountability for systems failure and user resistance, and the reformulation of ICT design as a social leaning process by Stewart and Williams shifts the emphasis from closed systems with specific aims to on‐going and unfinished projects, acknowledging the heterogeneity and evolution of both users and technical systems.

In exploring the broader and episodic construction and integration of information systems, Westrup critically engages with the development of fashionable management trends. Extending this analysis to the IS field, he shows how they have influenced strategic economic decisions on outsourcing, downsizing and business re‐engineering in the past, and how today the durability of specific technologies are closely aligned with customer‐management relations. The political responsibility for questioning and transforming both academic and corporate managerial strategies lies, Grey strongly argues in a historically informative article, in critical management business schools. Broadening this reasoning to IS academe, accountability resides in investigating the inequalities of its systems socio‐economic settings, and Greenhill and Wilson utilise a Marxist dialectical framework to explore at‐home telework, providing a twenty‐first century profile of the gendered labour process of private work. They position working class women's oppression in the denial of supportive public employment protection agencies, and in their confinement to the privatised capitalist family and care. This contribution refreshingly addresses the deficit of gender analysis in IS, and provides an alternative to the discipline's traditional Habermasian critiques. In providing these detailed analytical synopses of the historical and current complexities of local and structural variables of power surrounding ICT systems and their gendered relations, and by challenging techno‐economic instrumental authority from diverse perspectives, current researchers, students and those interested in gaining insight to the present diverse direction of IS research would benefit immensely from reading this handbook.

The second part of the book focuses on empirical data that is drawn from around the world. Questioning the rational of post‐Fordist production, Hertzberg and Monteiro explore the techno‐corporate dilemma in multinational operations by referring to their case study of Rolls‐Royce Marine. The authors outline the necessity for hybrid solutions that recognize oppositional interests between global control, uniformity and maximisation of economies of scale, and the local sovereignty of customers who require particular specialisations. This contextualising of the local within the broader picture constitutes much of the attention of the articles in this section, with Kvasny and Yapa reviewing the economic rationality of solutions to US urban poverty. Drawing from Bourdieu's notion of socio‐cultural capital, these authors point to the material and symbolic resources that disenfranchised people possess, and outline how they may be developed through a case study of community and academic collaboration in IT‐based enterprise projects in inner‐city Philadelphia. Continuing this challenging of conventional solutions, in a longitudinal study in the Indian state of Kerala, Madon develops Sen's concept of capabilities to focus on how e‐government projects are valued by users and beneficiaries, and how these values provide greater understanding of the gradual, subtle changes in the evaluation process. Longitudinal exposure is essential for in‐depth comprehension of the multifarious and conflictory processes involved in ICT systems integration, performance and socio‐economic development, with Walsham offering a notion of critical engagement to convey this prolonged commitment. In outlining the why, what and how of IS research, he shows why asymmetries in wealth and power can be reflected in the what of three case studies – healthcare information system in South Africa, a geographical information system for land management in India, and a digital inclusion project in Brazil; and how this requires reflection in IS research, publication and teaching.

Avgerou and McGrath shift the challenge to conventional IS innovation which assumes one form of rationality in human agency, and draw on Foucaultian power, knowledge and morality for an understanding of multiple rationalities and emotions in the context of the failure of the London Ambulance Service within the British Health Service. Developing this line of argument, Klecun considers the healthcare implications of conflicting policy, project and local rationalities that underpin the construction and use of telehealth in the UK, suggesting from her longitudinal study of a range of projects that the solution to all healthcare problems does not necessarily lie in these politically motivated systems. The e‐madness of our passion for on‐line consumption, and the alienating and stressful environments of telephone call centres in Britain are explored by Richardson, who refers to Bourdieu in deconstructing the myth of the “global knowledge economy” to provide historical, socio‐political and economic contexts to the culture of technology, and a sense of collective identity. Doolin and McLeod revisit interpretivism, suggesting that it may include a more critical element by grounding its empirical research in locally situated settings, and reflectively considering the social implications of broader dimensions of power and control. These authors apply this critical interpretivism to three case studies of “casemix”, executive and intranet information systems in New Zealand, and draw from Foucault, Giddens and Latour to show how resistance, failure and power manifest in their construction and use.

This handbook's collection of articles introduces to IS research diverse analytical and empirical perspectives, opening it up to multidisciplinary theories and practices. However, one note of caution perhaps is that IS researchers need to be careful not to merely point, through generalised statements picked from one article, how in retrospect, their research or that of others seeks emancipatory objectives when the rationale for that research was not necessarily critical in the first instance. Critical theory sets the political agenda from the start, not in retrospect and although subsequent reflection may provide insights, it is ethically questionable to as whether the grounds from which they emerged constitute a theoretical base for critical reflection. This points to a historical tendency of IS research to limit its investigation through the lens of its discipline, and not look further a field to the vast array of scholarship outside. By so doing, it may risk repeating what others have already covered in more imaginative detail, and worse, apply principles and findings to research that are not critically contextualised.

The Handbook of Critical Information Systems Research, as a whole, provides rigorous research and breaks from this blinkered tradition, and whilst its articles are comprehensive in covering the criteria of critical research, there are many other dimensions of power imbalance that are, as yet, uncharted by critical IS theory, such as sexuality, ethnicity, mental and physical disability, and age. The IS discipline's weak representation of the individual voices of the researched neglects a key component of both interpretivism and critical theory: the positioning of the researcher on the same axes of reference as the researched (Stanley and Wise, 1993). So situated, the researcher seeks to recount the individual voices of the oppressed in ways they themselves express, and through this self‐definition they may choose what constitutes emancipation, not the researcher. We should not perhaps forget that one person's liberation is another's enchainment. Future work could perhaps consider these and other omissions, and in offering a broad range of papers, the Handbook presents ample ground from which more original and empirically based work may launch, thereby enriching the emerging and maturing critical wing of the IS discipline.