Collaborating with other disciplines

Starting from the essential bibliography for this research, there are some elemental concepts that the readings from Frederick Brooks (1995), Peter Harris  (2008) and Brian Wilson (2001).  The methodological process to undertake this project will be very important.  The interdisciplinary quality will bring big challenges in the managerial aspect of the project. At this early stage, I believe the project being an intrinsic part of Web Science will invite collaborative work from Computer Science, Museology, Business Management and Visual Communication among others.

Developing Software?

I will argue that the project will contain a product similar to a computer software product.  This product I believe will be develop similar to software, by this I mean a “collection of programs and the algorithms they represent” (Brookshear, 2010).

The complexity within the development of any kind of software of application requires an understanding of the methodology and the environment in which these products are created. It is also important to learn how to communicate with the team and how to make the team communicate with each other as a managerial task (Brooks, 1995). In the development of software, Brooks (1995) defines some essential tasks:

• Planning
• Coding
• Component test and early system test
• System test, all components in hand

Its about time!

It is important to know how to calculate the time needed for the development of the project and the time needed for each one of the tasks, not only for the implementation of these digital tools, but also for all the research tasks of the project.  If there are some ‘hold backs’ within the project, Brooks (1995) explains that bringing more man work will not only be the solutions due to the tasks required for the development of software.  Therefore it is important to analyse and understand all the different solutions applied within the Computer Science discipline and all the other disciplines involved.

It is recommended to use as little people as possible for the construction of a ‘soft system’. This is due to the managerial problems that big teams create. But sometimes small teams won’t be able to cope with the workload. Based on this, I will argue that it is also important to plan correctly the size of the teams in order for the research project to flow smoothly and with minimum communicative problems.

Assembling the team

It is my perception that is important to understand how a big system team is built in order to continue or to blend the methodological process into that work structure.

Although there are other organizational proposals, the one that seems more traditional is where we find a chief programmer defining the original program and codes and even testing the software. Followed by a co-pilot working as a second hand. There are other team members like the administrator, the editor, secretaries, program clerk, toolsmith, language lawyer and the tester (Brooks, 1995).

Problem solving

The main objective of a program or software is to solve a problem (Brooks, 1995; Wilson, 2001; Harris, 2008).  For this it is essential to define the problem.  What is this set of tools or applications going to solve. Wilson (2001), defines two types of problems: hard problems and soft problems. “The design of a piece of software to meet a given specification is a hard problem (as long as the specification is ‘a given’) whereas the specification of information requirements to meet business needs is a soft problem…”.  The perception of what is a problems is also important.  Being a multidisciplinary project means that what seems to be a problem, it could not mean anything to the person working in the museum or the audience or even the cultural heritage manager.  To solve this, Wilson (2001) suggest that instead of trying to solve a problem, it would be more helpful to try to solve the situation that is creating the problem. For this he proposes the next methodology.

1. Define the situation that is problematic
2. Express the situation (top mapping, rich picture, etc.)
3. Select concepts that may be relevant
4. Assemble concepts into an intellectual structure
5. Use this structure to explore the situation
6. Define changes to the situation (i.e problems to be tackled)
7. Implement change processes

Its all about the good manners.

Both Wilson (2001) and Brooks (1995) express the importance of the way to communicate with other team members.  The ‘hierarchical’ level of communication. During the production of this research project (and any other), which I completely agree is to break the ‘tree’ system in which one person is the boss and the people below are reporting or working for this person.  The responsibilities have been already defined and in the communicative structure, everybody is allowed to participate and to provide solutions to the situation problem solving.

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I pick up from where I left off last week – in particular, consideration of the field of management studies from the perspective of an organization (to be managed) as an ‘open system’. This conceptualization implies that various sub-systems should be considered from a management engagement viewpoint: the internal (towards maintenance of the system) and external (towards the competitive position of the system). One of the challenges under management theory is how to balance these competing values upon management time: in particular, how to trade-off the encouragement of flexibility and change, while still retaining control to ensure employees act appropriately.

In returning to the main research focus – how the Web/Internet is changing the nature of competition between businesses – an open system emphasizes how objectives, plans and solutions must adjust rapidly to changes in the external environment. These changes can come from a variety of sources. Boddy gives examples of the increasingly global nature of the economic system at large, deregulation in certain industries, the closer integration between many different areas of business (such as telecoms and entertainment), increasing consumer expectations and computer-based information systems. Many modern-day organizations operate in non-linear systems in which small changes are amplified through many interactions with other variables so that the eventual effect is unpredictable. In other words, management decisions should be grounded in the external context in which the organization is situated and the long-term consequences of a management decision can be majorly disrupted by circumstances in the outside world in an unforeseen manner.

Boddy goes on to introduce the idea of the competitive environment (defined as “the industry-specific environment comprising the organization’s customers, suppliers and competitors” or “micro-environment”). He distinguishes it from the “general environment (defined as the “political, economical, social, technological, (natural) environment and legal factors that affect all organizations” or “macro-environment”), as illustrated below:

Together, they make up the “external environment” or “external context”. Forces in the external environment become part of an organization’s agenda when internal or external stakeholders pay attention to them and act to place them on the management agenda. In turn, these demand a response (see next week for more on management theory related to the type of response).

In terms of analyzing the competitive environment, Porter put forward a theory of five forces which most directly affect management and the ability to earn an acceptable return. These are also found in economic theory and competition law: the ability of new competitors to enter the industry, the threat of substitutable products, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers and the rivalry amongst existing competitors. This analysis can also be applied at an industry level to determine overall profitability, being factors which influence prices, costs and investment requirements, as illustrated below:

To give one example, technological change can affect the proximity of competition between products which in turn can constrain a firm’s ability to raise price (Boddy gives the example of YouTube threatening established media companies and online recruitment threatening the revenues that newspapers receive from job advertisements).

Where management differs from economics is the nature of the response. Through analyzing the forces in the competitive environment, managers aim to seize opportunities, counter threats and generally improve their position relative to their firm’s competitors in the future. Like economics, however, management also looks at trends, such as the state of the economy which is a major influence on consumer spending and capital investment plans. Sociological trends can also be relevant. For example, many consumer businesses are changing direction from a strategy aimed at mass market towards developing much small brands directed at small, distinctive groups of consumers. This reflects the growing diversity of the population, with many personal and individual preferences more apparent (such as through the Web). Again, in turn, this shift has severe implications for media that relied on advertising from mass market advertising. There are also many examples of digital technologies affecting established markets (such as DVDs, MP3s, broadband services offering delivering online content, VoIP and digital photography).

In summary, critical reflection on business environment conditions is essential to the type of management strategy adopted. Next week I turn to theories of generic management activities of planning and decision-making, including strategy and marketing (to lead into discussions of how e-marketing has revolutionized the business world).

What is sociology? Sociology is the systematic, sceptical and critical study of the social. It studies the way people do things together. [..] it becomes a form of consciousness, a way of thinking, a critical way of seeing the social. Sociology, a global introduction, Macionis and Plummer. As I was reading Chapter 6. Groups, organisations and the rise of the network society, Manuel Castells‘s ideas about the network society and the Information Age (this is the name of his 3 books on this topic) were described: people, cities, businesses and states are nodes in networks through which information, money and people flow. These flows make time become a perpetual present and space becomes global, being everywhere at the same time. A guide to this trilogy is David Bell’s Cyberculture Theorists which discusses the ideas of Castells and Haraway.

Haraway, the other theorist besides Castell discussed by Bell, is a professor at the University of California in the History of Consciousness. She published in 1985 a cyborg manifesto suggesting enhancing our human bodies to transgress the boundaries of nature. She is recently interested in the links between humans and animals.

A quick browsing through the Cyberculture Theorists google book http://goo.gl/yS4n1 brought me to Carl Popper‘s World 3 about which I read last year. Popper’s elegant philosophy explains the world on 3 levels:

World 1: the world of physical things
World 2: the world of mental events and objects
World 3: the world of abstract objects produced by the mind such as scientific theories

Bell states that world 3 is sometimes referred to when cyberspace is discussed. Cyberspace is a term coined by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer. In this novel cyberspace is entered as disembodied consciousness by joining the network which is the battleground over ownership and access to data, much like today’s internet where Google, Facebook and other players are crunching user data to provide the best sponsored ads.

People like to spread information and social networks, microblogging  helps them do that easily through webpages like Twitter or status updates on Facebook. For example, 100 billion updates are processed each day on Facebook. People care what others think, more than what Google thinks. This is why rating appeared recently on Wikipedia and that is what the Facebook Like button is all about. Socialnomics, Erik Qualman

The Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, our common consciousness is the one leading us in this connected, common, social direction.

By selectively reading through these books, I think that the most comprehensive is the Sociology book. I was particularly interested in the chapters about the future of society and the internet. It contains valuable information regarding these topics. I have the feeling they are all predicting the future. We don’t really realize where we are heading, but the change is already here, we are already this cybersociety.

I also read 3 chapters on Social Marketing (Marketing to the Social Web – Larry Weber), but I couldn’t find some valuable information, something that Qualman didn’t mention in his book – the main idea emphasized is what I already mentioned in my previous post – that the new marketer’s perspective should take into account the customer,  he should be an aggregator and not a broadcaster.

I will keep on reading about Social Marketing and Sociology.

Am now looking at a book on economics called, ‘Markets not Stakes: The Triumph of Capitalism and the Stakeholder Fallacy.’ This is written by Professor Patrick Minford and was published in 1998. He outlines why he thinks that the stakeholder culture was mistaken and how capitalism was thriving. The stakeholder concept was supposed to find the middle way between ‘failed socialism and free-market capitalism.’ The blurb discusses the way in which regulatory proposals were to create more rights for workers, allow the government to override the pull of market forces on investment in an attempt to curb the 80s short term corporate culture.

I am particularly interested in this because it would seem very easy now to say how obviously mistaken this view was. However, it goes on to say that ‘Stakeholding is no different in essence from interventionist and redistributive taxation, its only difference is its lesser transparency, which therefore deceives people into believing it to be innocuous.’ Although he then apparently goes onto argue that it destroys incentives (the meat and blood of economics, according to ‘The Armchair Economist’ ) I’m initially quite interested in the transparency issue.

When I worked for a FTSE100 company that was quite concerned about corporate governance and hence ‘transparency,’ a word which we hear all too often nowadays, the other word that was always brandished was ‘stakeholders.’ Generally the more your job was to do with explaining figures and processes to people, the more you had to take ‘stakeholders’ into account. This actually meant not just anyone who had a right of some sort (surely just one’s bosses in a monolithically hierarchical company structure?) to poke their nose into what was going on, but those who felt that they ought to have a right. Or those, like me, who were just very, very curious about how it all worked. The more stakeholders there were (in a PLC serving most of the country’s households, that was at least 18 million) actually the less possible it became to be transparent. I’m increasingly convinced that the possibility of transparency decreases exponentially in any very small company (say, 7 or fewer employees) or any company that has over say, 300 employees, just because of organisational factors. I’m also wondering whether this is not accidental, but actually deeply tied into company size (depending on its structure, or how the power gets passed around). So am quite interested to read this book and see what comes out.

Am reading it alongside ‘The Armchair Economist’ which is interesting, but is leaving me feeling vaguely unsatisfied at present.

I have decided to start by learning the principles which underlie criminology and philosophy. I start by asking, what is criminology? Then I go on to give a brief history of criminology.
After trawling the net for some time, paying particular attention to university websites, I decided to use “The Oxford Handbook of Criminology” by Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan and Robert Reiner as my core textbook, almost everything below is indebted to them.
What is Criminology?

Criminology draws from an amalgam of subjects such as law, sociology, phycology, psychiatry, history and anthropology in order to answer questions like, what are the causes of crime? What are the ethnographic s of certain deviant groups? What can we learn from case studies of individual criminals? Can we predict future crimes and future perpetrators of crime? Why are some people criminals and others not?

This begs the question, why did Criminology become a discipline in its own right? Maguire, Morgan and Reiner suggest that it was contingent upon the exertions of discipline forming institutions and dominant individuals.
They then go on to discuss the emergence of criminology as a discipline. It is suggested that criminology is the synthesis of two schools of thought. The first is government – who want to know how to best create laws and govern with respect to crime and criminals. The other school of thought comes from an Italian anthropologist Cesare Lombroso(1835-1909) who thought that people could be divided into two category, criminals and non-criminals, Lombroso went so far as to claim that there is a biological difference between criminals and non-criminals.

With a hard science a scientist or group of scientists produces a theory and evidence to back it up. Then they write it down in the form of a paper which is peer reviewed and then either accepted or not accepted into the scientific community. If a theory is accepted within the scientific community it is then accepted in the general public for example the theory of Black Holes. On the other hand a scientific theory accepted in the criminology community is not always accepted by the general public. The “common sense” view of the world is often much more powerful.
In order to understand the principles of Criminology it is useful to detour into some History.
 

A Brief History of Criminology

The history of criminology turns out to be a fiercely contested, vague and ugly. In fact the word criminology was only coined in the 1890’s and what we think of as criminology today (the current paradigm if you like) only crystallised in the 1960s and 70s, and even that’s debateable. The history of criminology is further confused, because what was thought of as “criminology” differed in France, Germany, England, Italy and the U.S.

To illustrate the history of criminology I have created a timeline with significant events and the socio-economic backdrop for these events. My apologies, especially to Paul and Javier that it’s not fantastically beautiful! Hopefully the timeline helps to elucidate the history of criminology, which is contingent upon sociological events. For example, criminology, it is argued by Maguire, Morgan and Reiner, really started in the 18th century, which was also the time when a network of insane asylums and doctors attending these asylums emerged in Europe. Maguire, Morgan and Reiner further argue that since a significant proportion of inmates in the asylums were also criminals, for the first time doctors were concerned with understanding the criminal mind.

Then throughout the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th prisons were invented and governments became stronger. As a result governments, especially in the UK, became interested in how to control their citizens and demanded reports about criminal behaviour, crime rates prisons and laws. As a result most of the work done in the UK was modest and respected legal principles.

Then WW2 happened and shortly afterwards the modern British welfare state was created. There was a political move towards greater social and economic equality. Coupled with this many great crime researchers came to Britain from Germany where ideas about social demographics and crime were far more advanced. Add into the mixing pot a government and public fear about juvenile delinquents in the 50s and it should come as no surprise that criminology entered the academic arena in 1961 in Cambridge.

Since then criminology has pulled away from a study into how to cure/correct a criminal towards a more interdisciplinary subject concerned with social, philosophical and psychological aspects of crime.

I’m currently reading ‘Information Technology Law: The law and society’ by Andrew Murray. Interestingly, the author proposes that this area of Law differs from others in one important way.

“The question at the heart of most legal textbooks is: ‘how does the rule of law affect individuals within the environment over which this law is effective?’”. However IT Law is, by necessity, the other way around. Namely, it asks ‘How does the web affect the law?’, rather than how the law effects the web. This is because technology changes so quickly that the rule of law cannot keep up. Instead, old laws must be interpreted to deal with new situations.

This presents a small challenge for me as a novice trying to understand the basics of Law through it’s application to the web. If Murray is right, and IT law is an inherently atypical topic within Law, it won’t generalise to other topics and so I’m bound to get a warped idea of what Law is. However, by reading up on some of the basic concepts, terminology and key statutes etc., I should be able to develop an understanding of how my topic can be approached from a legal standpoint – even if that approach is slightly different to that taken by legal scholars working in other areas.

With that in mind I’ve also been trying to familiarise myself with the basics of Jurisprudence, the theory or philosophy of Law. I’ve chosen to look at this first for two reasons. The first is partly down to intellectual cowardice: given my philosophical background, it should be less of a challenge than other aspects of Law. Second, and more importantly, I think Jurisprudence will be an important aspect of understanding my topic. The Wikipedia entry for Jurisprudence divides it into two areas:

1.) Problems internal to law and legal systems as such.

2.) Problems of law as a particular social institution as it relates to the larger political and social situation in which it exists.

Because my topic is about the way an aspect of law (intellectual property) relates to a social phenomenon (information goods on the web), the second area is particularly relevant to me.

Within this area, there are several approaches to understanding what drives the law. The oldest tradition is ‘Natural Law theory’, the dominant position for much of the history of jurisprudence. According to its proponents, man-made laws are attempts to reflect or approximate natural moral laws. These are moral truths which exist independently of human judgement or reasoning. They could be understood by theists as derived from a deity, or by atheists as simply a feature of reality. The important point is that our man-made laws should reflect these pre-institutional moral realities. Indeed, if they do not, they aren’t real laws at all. A common maxim of natural law theory is ‘lex injusta non est lex’; an unjust law is not a (real) law.

An example of natural law theory in action today can be seen in the idea of universal human rights. According to their proponents, human rights exist independently whether or not there are man-made laws protecting them; indeed, they are most important where such laws are absent. There is also an understanding amongst human rights advocates that man-made laws should approximate these independently existing moral rights.

Legal Positivism is now the dominant position amongst legal theorists. Unlike Natural Law theory, it does not assume that man-made laws must approximate independent moral laws. Rather, it splits the question in two. Whether or not a law is valid depends on how it was formulated, whether it went through the socially sanctioned systems and processes put in place to create laws. This is not the same as the question of whether or not, morally speaking, it is a just law. A law might be valid, having gone through the appropriate formulation, but we might judge it to be unjust according to some non-legal moral standard. For instance, homophobic or racist laws may be valid in the context of a particularly time and place, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t wrong, morally speaking. Conversely a law might be invalid because, for instance, it contradicts a state’s constitution, but this doesn’t mean it is not a good law, morally speaking.

This distinction between the institutional validity and moral worth of a law may prove important in debates about content on the web. Online ‘piracy’ may be morally wrong, or it may simply be illegal. Likewise, certain uses of information goods on the web may not be illegal, but nevertheless morally wrong. Parties on different sides of the piracy debate frequently allude to both moral and legal considerations – usually adopting whichever is strongest in a particular context. And since most legal theorists adopt some kind of positivist approach, and few adopt the natural law approach, assessments of intellectual property on the web do not usually take the form of moral arguments.

Introduction

During the last week, I have continued reading the book “principles of cognitive psychology”. More specifically, I have focused on the chapters dealing with long and short-term memory including the study of forgetting. The theories themselves were quite interesting to read. However, since the book traces the different theories that were developed over time, I have found myself constantly struggling with new ideas and new theories all the time. This shift in believe of what is going on in our brain reminds me of our lectures on paradigms shift. Therefore, in this blog I will first of all summarise what I have read so far, and then discuss what I think of paradigms shift in the context of what I have read, followed by comparison with my own personal experience in the field of engineering. I will then conclude with a reflection on multidisciplinary research methods followed by plans for future reading.

Summary of cognitive psychology — long and short-term memory

Theories of short-term memory

One of the earlier models for short-term memory is called multi-store model. According to this model there are three types of memory store. They are sensory stores, short-term store, and long-term store. The sensory stores are modality specific, and hold information very briefly. The short-term store has very limited capacity. Information is lost from the store because of interference, diversion of attention, and decay. Evidence from brain-damaged patients supports the distinction between short-term and long-term memory stores. The memory stores differ with respect to temporal duration, storage capacity, and forgetting mechanism.

However, this model is thought to be oversimplified in its account of the unitary short-term and long-term stores, and the notion that access to long-term memory occurs only after information is processed in the short-term store. In addition, the role of rehearsal is also exaggerated.

In view of the shortcomings, a new theory was proposed — working memory. The working memory system consists of a central executive, a phonological loop, and a visuospatial sketchpad. Two tasks can be performed successfully together only when they use different components of the working memory system. A phonological loop consists of a passive phonological store and an articulatory process. Its primary function is to assist in the learning of new words. The visuospatial sketchpad consists of a visual cache and an inner scribe. It is possible that there are separate visual and spatial system rather than a single sketchpad. The central executive is involved in various functions such as switching of which revealed plans, time-sharing, selective attention, and temporary activation of long-term memory. There may be relatively separate verbal and spatial working memory systems. The working memory approach has the advantage over the multi-store model that it can be applied to most cognitive activities rather than only being of relevance to memory tasks.

Another interesting theory is the theory of levels of processing. According to this theory, long-term memory is better remembered when information is processed deeply or semantically at the time of learning. In addition, elaborate on this rehearsal improves long-term memory and maintenance rehearsal does not. Some evidence supports these theoretical assumptions. However, long-term memory depends on collaboration and distinctiveness of processing as well as on depth of processing. Long-term memory depends on the relevance of the stored information to the requirements of the memory test. The theory is more applicable to tests of explicit memory than to those of implicit memory. Finally, the theory provides a description rather than an explanation of certain memory phenomena. In an updated account of levels of processing theory, it was argued that depth of processing and transfer appropriate processing jointly determine long-term memory performance.

Theories of long-term memory

It has been argued that there is an important distinction between episodic and semantic memory. There is evidence from PET studies that Steve prefrontal cortex is much more involved in episodic memory and then in cemented memory. It remains unclear whether there is a fundamental distinction between episodic and cemented memory, in part because there are several similarities and interconnections between them. There is a major distinction between explicit and implicit memory. PET studies have reviewed that a rather different areas of the brain are activated in explicit and implicit memory tasks. There is increasing evidence that there are different types of implicit memory.

Theories of forgetting

The forgetting function is generally logarithmic with a few exceptions. The is evidence of a repression like repressors, and controversial evidence concerning recovered memories of childhood abuse. There is convincing evidence of the existence of proactive and retroactive interference. However, special conditions required for substantial interference effects to occur, and interference theory is relatively uninformative about the process involved in forgetting. Most of forgetting seems to be due to dependence, and is greater when the contextual information present at retrieval differs from the contextual information stored in memory.

Multidisciplinary issues: Paradigms shift

Overall, I have seen how one theory was proposed based on certain observations or experimentation results. It would appear that this theory stands as long as there are no contradictory observations proposed. That theory represents in the latest knowledge in the area of study. For example with short-term memory, the multi-store theory stood for a long time. However, with new information presented, new theories were proposed and the old ones replaced.

This cycle has happened quite a few times during my reading of this book. It is beginning to dawn on me that the nature of cognitive psychology is such that proposed theories can only be as it is theories. In other words, because we cannot open up the brain and start probing, we cannot be hundred percent sure how things work inside. Because of this very nature, we are forced to accept the theory that best represent our current knowledge and observations. Until such a time when a better model or theory is proposed, the older theory stands true.

This idea of paradigms shift just does not happen in the field of engineering. Therefore, this is a multidisciplinary issue. In engineering, we are predominantly concerned with creating a solution to a problem. It may be creating a new product, or improving the efficiency of a certain procedure. Whatever it may be, there will always be a final answer of right or wrong. For this reason, there is no such thing as paradigms shift.

For instance, the good old television may be using CRT whereas modern day TVs are probably LCD flatscreen. Just because there is a shift of consumer preference, designer preference and so on, the older theory still stands true. It is a case of preference, the old theory does not become wrong because of a preference shift. In the case of at least the part I have read in cognitive psychology, when the new theory replaces the old, the old is considered wrong, incomplete or un-usable. This is more than just a case of preference which is quite different to the field of engineering.

Moving on

Having read that much of the book I have tried to scan read what is left. Since I realise that detailed information therein is not of interest, and the original purpose of reading this book to understand the typical research methods in cognitive psychology has been fulfilled, I have decided not to continue with this book.

Instead, I have picked up from one of the guest lecturers and interesting sub branch of cognitive psychology called social cognition. I am not too sure exactly what it is about yet. However, a glance through of the table of contents seems interesting. It covers theoretical foundations of the subject including social perception, attitudes, attributions, self and identity, prejudice, and ideology.

Since I am interested in the web and education, I think this book will help me to identify how and why people behave on the online education environment.

Museum collaboration // Essential bibliography

In this post I will start to list some of the bibliography to be used to get familiarized with essential concepts and ideas that will allow the project to be carried in the most optimal manner.  The bibliography was chosen from the BSc Information Technology in Organizations fron University of Southampton and readings from Museum Studies and Museology.

Due to my visual communication background the Museum Studies readings I will be focusing on the more challenging theories instead on the basic methodology.  On the other hand, IT in Organizations I will be focusing on basic readings to be able to get familiarized with basic concepts.

Information Technologies in Organizations

Tools and Techniques for IT Modeling

• Peter Harris. Designing and Reporting Experiments in Psychology (2nd ed). OU Press
• Steve McKillup. Statics Explained. Cambridge

Collaborative Projects

• Brooks, FP, The Mythical Man-Month, Addison-Wesley, 1982.
• Checkland, P, and Scholes, J, Soft Systems Methodology, Wiley

Human Computer Interaction

• Dix A, Finlay J, Abowd G and Beale R, Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd Edition. Prentice Hall, 2003
• Norman DA, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2002 new edition

Information Systems Strategy

• Bocij, P. et al. (2005) Business Information Systems Technology, Development and Management in E-business. Pearson Higher Education FT Prentice Hall.
• Turban, E., Rainer, R.K. and Potter, R.E. 3rd editon (2004) Introduction to Information Technology: John Wiley and Sons
• Brown, J.S. and Duguid, P. (2002) The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School
• Simon, J.C. (2000) Introduction to Information Systems. New York: Wiley

Museology and Museum Studies

• Sharon Macdonald. A Companion to Museum Studies, Malden, MA ; Oxford : Blackwell Pub., 2006
• Pearce, Susan. Interpreting Objects and Collections. Andover:Routledge, 2001
• Hein, George E. Learning in the Museum (Museum Meanings) Boulder, Co. netLibrary c2001-c2003
• Poli, C. Mobility and Environment: Humanists versus Engineers in Urban Policy and Professional Education. Dordrecht; New York, Springer c2011

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I have been reading David Boddy’s ‘Management an introduction’ (4th edition). It’s a useful introduction to the different ways in which management has emerged as a social science, including the main theoretical perspectives on management.
Interestingly, the first case study is Ryanair and how its managers were quick to spot the potential of the Web by opening www.ryanair.com as a booking site in 2000. Within a year it was selling 75% of seats online, and now sells almost all seats this way.

In considering what ‘management’ is, an important component is innovation. Computers and network (the new agents of communication) has propelled management into the new economy through innovation. To give one simple example from Boddy, the use of emails has sped up communication enabling managers to strengthen their interpersonal roles.

Thus, it seems to me that technology (including the Web) is both an external and internal force upon management: it facilitates innovation to beat the external competition; while also providing an opportunity for corporate entities to streamline themselves internally via more efficient working practices. In the nature of a double-edged sword, however, it may also be the undoing of those businesses that do not use them efficiently.

As Boddy points out, everywhere the Web is enabling great changes in how people organise economic activity, equivalent to the Industrial Revolution in the 19/20th century. This includes the challenges of coping with the transition to a world in which ever more business is done on a global scale. Those managing a globally competitive business requires flexibility, quality and low-cost production. Thus managers want production processes that help them to organise as efficiently as possible from a technical perspective.

In terms of different models of management, at a basic level we can think of management as the way in which enterprises add value to inputs. Building on this, several perspectives can be taken with no single model offering a complete solution. Models reflect their context in terms of the most pressing issues facing managers at the time. To give one example, sometimes manufacturing efficiency is necessary but not sufficient. Drucker (1954) observed that customers do not buy products, but the satisfaction of needs: what they value may be different from what producers think they are selling. Managers, Drucker argued, should develop a marketing mindset, focused on what customers want, and how much they will pay. As a consequence of business becoming more global (again partly as a consequence of the Web) managers need to react quickly to international trends of changing customer needs and how to scale up to take advantage of global opportunities.

Boddy also discusses the concept of the corporate organization from a management perspective. Just as the Web is compared to the neural functions of brains, organisms, culture, machine, so is a business.

I was also struck by the interdependent links drawn between management and technology (as mentioned above) as compared with our discussions with Cathy in relation to science and technology. For example, operational research teams set up to pool the expertise of scientific disciplines are now used to help run complex civil organisations.

But, like with the Web, technology is only part of the solution. A key plank of management is human relations. Management solutions lie in reconciling technology and social needs (i.e. appreciating that work systems are socio-technical in nature). So whereas I had previously been concentrating on the Web in its influence on external business strategies, this can only be appreciated by considering how it has also revolutionized internal operations, in addition to the links between the two and the outside world which provides inputs (what Boddy calls the ‘open models’ system conception of an organisation).

In a nutshell, I have learnt that management is about relationships between subsystems and whole systems. To what extent, I wonder, is the Web breaking down the boundaries between these and blurring the conceptualization of an internal world / external world hard-line divide in business (i.e. now that consumers can become producers of certain products/services and more flexible and freelance working practices are becoming the norm)?