Abstract

This paper demonstrates the use in Social Practice Design (SPD) interventions, of Claudio Ciborra’s phenomenology derived concepts in the social study of IS, while applying Rogers’s attention points specifically addressing communication and relationship. In a large automotive manufacturer, CAR, interested in fostering the sustainable implementation of EES - a long introduced, company wide, experimental, enterprise system -, in the course of a EU research project, innovative model-based approaches are proposed and introduced to refurbish and provide new impetus to EES, furthering its implementation. The human centred, Participatory Design oriented, SPD approach, is proposed within the EU project, and partly deployed in the firm to facilitate the introduction of technology innovation, and organisational change. The case is followed during the 30 months of the project, describing the Action Research type intervention, and identifying steps forward and points of breakdown. To allow success, SPD leverages Carl Roger’s attention points of communication and trust relationship establishment, and Ciborra’s phenomenology derived concepts from the social study of information systems. The SPD approach realised evolved through: a) establishing personal relations of trust with managers and personnel of the company, respecting Rogers’ facilitator qualities; b) the analysis of, and the awareness-creation on, the main traits of the extant situation, through open conversations, meetings, and user workshops, with some EU research project staff as facilitators; c) the joint identification with the company’s personnel of crucial how questions – e.g., how can we foster our mission critical enterprise system; d) the conception and co-production of visions of solution, enabled by Ciborra’s concepts. The case is analysed in the paper by exploiting results of open conversation in user workshops, and of counselling-like sessions with the manager, and the data is discussed within the theoretical framework of the SPD approach - Rogers’ and Ciborra’s strongholds in particular -. An evaluation of the value of SPD in the case is carried out following indications from basic Action-Research-in-IS literature. Contributions of SPD to practice and to theory are identified, together with the satisfaction of pre-set evaluation criteria.

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