Table Of ContentINFORMATION SYSTEMS AND GLOBAL DIVERSITY
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Information Systems and
Global Diversity
CHRISANTHI AVGEROU
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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ISBN 0-19-924077-9
To the memory of my mother
Angeliki Economou-Avgerou
Enthusiastically modern, she taught me
how modernity can take human proportions with
large doses of affection and common sense
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Preface
This is one of those books that has been written over a long period of time. My
curiosity for its core subject, the way the exploitation of the potential of information
technologies takes different courses in different social contexts, was triggered in the
mid- 1980s while I was studying the practices of systems development in social secur-
ity organizations in four European countries. At that time I was impressed with the
differences manifested in the computerization efforts pursued in similar organiza-
tions of different countries. Although all four organizations were engaged in devel-
oping very similar applications through quite similar professional systems
development practices, the motives and background against which the development
processes were deployed, and the consequences of innovation projects in their socio-
organizational context differed substantially.
Since then I have had the opportunity to hear numerous stories demonstrating the
'way the IS development is shaped by local social factors' from students participating
in the graduate seminars on 'IT in Developing Countries' at the London School of
Economics. Invariably those seminars involved over a dozen nationalities, and many
students had considerable professional experience from a cross section of industries
and public sector institutions. It is not, therefore, surprising that discussions on IT
innovation exposed variation. What is surprising is how little supporting theory the
seminar discussions could find in the information systems literature to make sense
of the variation revealed in the stories of the students' experience. In fact, I noticed
that the information systems literature had an insidious influence on the seminars'
discourse. Like a deforming lens, it made students see the images they were familiar
with in a particular shape, to express roles and titles in particular terms, and to judge
them by particular 'success' criteria. The variety of actors and interests they were
familiar with—big and small business proprietors, administrators, government
appointees or politicians, workers or civil servants—were all transformed to man-
agers in pursuance of competitive advantage. No wonder few 'successful' outcomes
could be seen in such caricatures.
In addition to the students of my seminars, many other people helped me to shape
and refine the ideas I discuss in this book. First, I am indebted to those who made the
case studies that form the empirical backbone of the book possible, both by provid-
ing valuable information themselves and by opening access to the data resources of
the organizations I studied: Horacio Guevara, Gustavo Mohar Betancourt, Carlos
Hentschel, Jose Alfredo Perez Aguilar, Aris Sissouras, Nikos Varelidis, G. Hiotis, Paul
Matsiras, I. de Zegher, Olymbia Stylianou, Alexandros Michaelides. Also I feel
indebted to the many people who contributed to the tracing of the history of events
that constitute these case studies and the understanding of their context by formal
interviews, informal discussions, demonstrations, group brainstorming, or by pro-
viding me with relevant documentation. I cannot name them all here, but I owe them
sincere thanks for the time they gave me, invariably out of very busy work schedules,
viii Preface
and for sharing with me their personal interpretations of the ICT innovation of their
experience.
I am particularly grateful to the fellow researchers who helped me to make sense
of and interpret the case studies data. Natalia Volkow, with her passion for the his-
tory and culture of her country, Mexico, answered an endless stream of questions
about the case of Pemex. Phyvos Chysohos helped me to make sense of the flexible
specialization case in Cyprus and challenged me with his belief that that experiment
shouldn't be seen as a 'failure', even when all the officials we interviewed were keen to
leave it behind and move to a new policy. The researchers in the 'DUR project' of the
LSE, Elias Mossialos, Paul Matsiras, Nancy Pouloudi, Rogerio Barbosa, Tony
Cornford, Angeliki Poulymenakou, and Shakir Merali helped me enter a totally new
and particularly challenging area of ICT innovation.
I would like to thank several other people. Four years ago Alexandros Kyrtsis read
the draft of the first thirty pages and suggested, subtly, that I should start again and
try to do better. I have not had the chance to benefit from his advice since, but
his influence at the beginning of my journey of the writing of this book had a long-
lasting effect. I am grateful to my colleagues at the LSE Frank Land, Tony Cornford,
Shirin Madon, Edgar Whitley, Susan Scott, and Mike Cushman who read draft chap-
ters and provided valuable critical comments. Also I wish to thank David Musson
and Sarah Dobson at Oxford University Press for their support and guidance, and
Lynn Childress for the much needed editorial improvements of my typescript.
Finally, a great thank you to my daughter Margarita, who so easily learnt to live
with a mother who could disappear to her books and computer at any time of any
day or night. I understood at some point that she had no sense of the institution of
'working hours'; she was surprised to realize that there are people who work for spe-
cific periods of the day, and specific days of the week. But, this may not have been the
wrong example for a woman-to-be in the information age. I just hope that she will
also maintain the wonderful cheerfulness and resoursefulness for 'fun' that made all
the difference at those very frequent occasions that my writing was slow and poor.
C.A.
Contents
Introduction 1
Part I. Theory
1. The Institutional Nature of ICT and Organizational Change 23
2. The Socio-technical Nature of Information Systems Innovation 50
3. Multiple Situated Rationalities 72
4. The Global, the Local, and the Disembedded 98
Part II. Insights from Case Studies
5. Pemex—Transforming a National Company 123
6. IKA—Striving to Modernize a State Bureaucracy 152
7. An Experiment of Flexible Specialization in Cyprus 175
8. Medical Drug Utilization Information Systems in the 199
United States and Europe
9. The Nature and Significance of Global Diversity for Information 230
Systems
Appendix 253
Author Index 257
General Index 263
