Innovation in ISD Projects: A KBV Approach

complexity of projects, and in particular emerging problems, cannot and are not able to be solved through traditional systems or process methodologies. The limitations of traditional tools and techniques that are deterministic and linear necessitate additional but complementary techniques to deal with the complex and dynamic evolutionary nature of ISD projects. Social processes, as distinct from formal structures, address complexity and drive innovation in ISD projects. Actors use knowledge based practices to create interleaved networks of expertise to clarify, brainstorm and innovate solutions. Drawing on an illustrative case study of an ISD project in an Australian Government Department we demonstrate how knowledge based practices were used to address emergent issues in the project and how the formal processes failed. However, the innovation was then re-incorporated into the formal systems to satisfy the rational, bureaucratic process requirements required in tightly governed projects. This clash of the formal versus informal represents a major theoretical and practical problem for knowledge, project management and ISD theory and praxis. We conclude by offering some suggestions on how to reconcile the irreconcilable.

[1]  Henry Mintzberg.  Mintzberg on management : inside our strange world of organizations , 1991 .

[2]  Peter W. G. Morris,et al.  Science, objective knowledge and the theory of project management , 2002 .

[3]  M. Tushman,et al.  Resource recombinations in the firm: knowledge structures and the potential for schumpeterian innovation , 1998 .

[4]  Richard Baskerville,et al.  Information Systems as a Reference Discipline , 2002, MIS Q..

[5]  David Snowden,et al.  The First Age: Information for Decision Support 1995: the Transition to the Second Age Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-awareness , 2022 .

[6]  Tom R. Burns,et al.  The Management of Innovation. , 1963 .

[7]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  The Case Research Strategy in Studies of Information Systems , 1987, MIS Q..

[8]  Peter Checkland,et al.  Soft systems: a fresh perspective for project management , 2003 .

[9]  B. Reich,et al.  Rethinking IT project management: Evidence of a new mindset and its implications , 2009 .

[10]  H. Tsoukas.  The firm as a distributed knowledge system : A constructionist approach , 1996 .

[11]  James R. Connor,et al.  The Sociology of Loyalty , 2007 .

[12]  Sudhir Gupta,et al.  Case Studies , 2013, Journal of Clinical Immunology.

[13]  Frederick P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw , 1978 .

[14]  J. Schumpeter,et al.  The Theory of Economic Development , 2017 .

[15]  J. March.  The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence , 1999 .

[16]  B. Latour.  Social Theory and the Study of Computerized Work Sites , 1996 .

[17]  Karlheinz Kautz,et al.  The Utilization of Information Systems Development Methodologies in Practice , 2004 .

[18]  Sue Newell,et al.  Knowledge management and innovation: networks and networking , 1999, J. Knowl. Manag..

[19]  K. Lyytinen,et al.  Exploring the intellectual structures of information systems development: A social action theoretic analysis , 1996 .

[20]  Ramiro Montealegre,et al.  Trojan actor-networks and swift translation: Bringing actor-network theory to IT project escalation studies , 2004, Inf. Technol. People.

[21]  Eamonn Molloy,et al.  From Organising as Projects to Projects as Organisations , 2008 .

[22]  Jill Owen,et al.  Whole of enterprise portfolio management , 2011 .

[23]  Carlo Trigilia.  Economic Sociology: State, Market, and Society in Modern Capitalism , 2002 .

[24]  P. Kidwell,et al.  The mythical man-month: Essays on software engineering , 1996, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

[25]  Blaize Horner Reich,et al.  Modeling the Knowledge Perspective of IT Projects , 2008 .

[26]  J. Hage.  Organizational innovation and organizational change , 1999 .

[27]  Henry Linger,et al.  Knowledge-based Practices for Managing the Outsourced Project , 2011, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[28]  Linda Dawson,et al.  Active exploration of emerging themes in a study of object-oriented requirements engineering: the "Evolutionary Case" approach , 2008 .

[29]  K. Weick.  FROM SENSEMAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[30]  Peter J. Denning.  Hastily formed networks , 2006, CACM.

[31]  Aaron J. Shenhar,et al.  Project Management Research—The Challenge and Opportunity , 2007, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[32]  E. Penrose.  The theory of the growth of the firm twenty-five years after , 1960 .

[33]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning , 2007 .

[34]  Donald A. Schön.  The reflective practitioner : how professionals think in action , 1986 .

[35]  Geoff Walsham,et al.  The Emergence of Interpretivism in IS Research , 1995, Inf. Syst. Res..

[36]  D. Snowden,et al.  Multi-ontology sense making: a new simplicity in decision making. , 2005, Informatics in primary care.

[37]  Adele H. Stamp.  What is Critical Reflection? , 2012 .

[38]  R. Grant.  Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm,” Strategic Management Journal (17), pp. , 1996 .

[39]  Jan Stage,et al.  The principle of limited reduction in software design , 1990 .

[40]  Jack A. Nickerson,et al.  A Knowledge-based Theory of the Firm - A Problem-solving Perspective , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[41]  Donald A. Schön,et al.  Organizational Learning: A Theory Of Action Perspective , 1978 .

[42]  W. Bodmer.  Principles of Scientific Management , 1993, FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

[43]  Stephen A. Leybourne,et al.  The role of intuition and improvisation in project management , 2006 .

[44]  Thorstein Veblen,et al.  The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor , 1898, American Journal of Sociology.

[45]  M. Gilding.  The new economic sociology and its relevance to Australia , 2005 .

[46]  Lars Mathiassen,et al.  Reflective Systems Development , 1998, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[47]  J.-C. Spender,et al.  Exploring uncertainty and emotion in the knowledge-based theory of the firm , 2003, Inf. Technol. People.

[48]  Catherine C. Marshall,et al.  Designing Qualitative Research , 1996 .

[49]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing , 2002, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[50]  David Obstfeld.  Social Networks, the Tertius Iungens Orientation, and Involvement in Innovation , 2005 .

[51]  John M. Olin,et al.  A Knowledge-based Theory of Governance Choice — A Problem-solving Approach , 2001 .

[52]  M. D. Myers,et al.  Critical ethnography in information systems , 1997 .

[53]  Bonnie Kaplan,et al.  Qualitative Research Methods for Evaluating Computer Information Systems , 2005 .

[54]  M. Callon.  The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case of the Electric Vehicle , 1986 .

[55]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology , 1992 .

[56]  D. Schoen,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action , 1985 .