Information Systems Development as a Social Process: Fresh Seed Sown on the Ground of the Discussion

Abstract

Prior research has shown that the social act of adaptation of information systems (IS) by individual human agents is important in order to understand the complex and dynamic processes involved. However, most traditional research largely ignores these issues. DeSanctis and Poole (1994) made an important contribution to the study of social dynamics in IS research with their Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST). Although the concepts have found broad acceptance for the study of IT uses and effects, AST has not been widely used for studying the process of designing IT artifacts and developing IS. In this paper we transfer AST to studying IS development as a social process. We build on Markus and Silver (2008)’s recent redefinition of AST's core concepts “structural features” and “spirit” as technical objects, functional affordances, and symbolic expressions and extend them with relational concepts for agents and activities to a model that describes the IS development process. We illustrate and discuss how IS researchers might use these concepts in IS development studies with examples from case studies in IS development projects in the financial services industry.

Keywords: IS Development, Adaptive Structuration Theory, Conceptualization of the IS Development Process, Materiality of IT, Functional Affordances, Symbolic Expressions, Development Activities, Social Construction of Technology, Linguistics and Communication Theory, Technical Objects

JEL Classification: O3