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Journal of Information Technology

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

This paper presents a new framework for the evaluation of organizational choice primarily within the context of process redesign issues and the information technology support of those ideas. Through a process of scenario generation, the framework is designed to identify and evaluate choices in work organization and to make more explicit the implications that such choices might have for people and work roles. A central aim is to encourage the participation of different organizational stakeholders in the evaluation process. Process redesign has hitherto tended to be explored predominantly through software engineering and functionally driven approaches. The framework presented here offers a counterbalance to those works by offering an organizational perspective. It is based on a broad, scenario-generating technique which is firmly rooted in the organizational vision of a broad range of interest groups. Some work has already been undertaken in this field. Previous research has demonstrated the value of taking a broader organizational approach to workplace technology redesign and shown that the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders during evaluation can result in some very creative, practical and productive solutions. Nevertheless, this paper identifies some potential weaknesses in that previous body of research and proposes a new approach. The author draws upon earlier work in order to develop a framework which will provide more guidance to stakeholders during the scenario-generating process and which will make even more explicit the values and assumptions underlying alternative choices. The framework enables an evaluation of those technological choices at a fairly deep level, whilst remaining relatively simple to apply. The new approach presented in this paper is currently being adopted by an EPSRC-funded research team exploring issues of the relationship between business processes and legacy systems (for details of the project, please see web site: www.dur.ac.uk/CSM/SABA ). Future work will concentrate on producing further, industry-based case studies of its application and assessing its value when applied alongside traditional and technically focused software engineering methods of technological evaluation and development.

DOI

10.1177/026839620001500103

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