Control and Complexity: Reflexive Modernization IT in the context of globalization

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Control and Complexity Reflexive
Modernization IT in the context of
globalization
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Litterature

• Hanseth and Ciborra (eds.) Risk, Complexity and
  ICT. Edward Elgar, 2007.
• Claudio U. Ciborra and Associates From Control
  to Drift, July 2000. Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 0198297343. Globalization and "Risk
  Society Cases.
• Ole Hanseth, Claudio Ciborra, and Kristin Braa.
  The Control Devolution. ERP and the Side Effects
  of Globalization. The Data base for advances in
  information systems. Special issue Critical
  Analysis of ERP systems The Macro Level. Vol.
  32, No. 4, Fall 2001, pp. 34-46
• Hanseth,O., Jacucci, E., Grisot, M., Aanestad,
  M. Reflexive Standardization Side-Effects and
  Complexity in Standard Making, 2006. MIS
  Quarterly, Special Issue on Standard Making.

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Control

• Traditional SE/IS methods (and management models)
  have control as objective
• Beniger The Control Revolution (modernity)
• Limits to control complexity/side-effects
• Novelty, conflicts
• Installed base? Technology as autonomous agent
• Globalization
• ..

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Globalization and modernity

• Modernity
• Aim Increased control
• Institutions (Giddens)
• Rationalization, control systems
• Industrial society, capitalism, ..
• Science and technology
• Essence (Giddens)
• time-space distansiation
• development of disembedding mechanisms
• symbolic tokens (money, .. (information?))
• expert systems (professions, professional
  knowledge,..)
• reflexive appropriation of knowledge

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Globalization and modernity II

• Rationalization and control INTEGRATION
• All organizations try to become more modern
  productive, rational, globally integrated
  internally and with partners, suppliers,
  customers, etc.
• Integration Increased complexity (??)
• Everything has side-effects
• Increased integration gt increased number and
  role of side-effects

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Globalization a la Ulrich Beck

• Risk Society
• Reflexivity
• Self-reflection
• Feed-back
• Globalization of side-effects
• Increased unpredictability, less control
• Side-effects and non-knowledge are the main
  driving forces in today's society

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Effects of globalization (Giddens)

• Up to now More knowledge (and enhanced
  technologies?) gt more control
• From now on More knowledge gt less control!
• Opposite of modernity Tradition
• Tradition Always do what we always have done gt
  no change gt no unpredictability

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The risk profile of modernity

• Globalization of risks in terms of intensity (the
  bomb)
• number of factors we are influenced by depends
  of global division of labour
• Risk from our constructed environment
  (technoligization of nature)
• Institutional risk (black Monday)

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More knowledge less control

• Differential power
• The role of values
• The impact of unintended consequences
• The circulating of social knowledge in the double
  hermeneutic
• Inconsistency between blocks of knowledge gt more
  inconsistency

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Aspects of risk society

• Effects of side-effects generally
• More integrated technological (socio-technical)
  systems gt technology becomes more autonomous
• Patterns of side-effects
• Network externalities is one form of side-effects
• Self-reinforcing processes (adoption of
  standards)
• Propagation of side-effects domino-effects,
  boomerang-effects reflexivity

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Complex technologies in Organization Studies

• Perrow Normal Accidents Theory
• Tight couplings and interactive complexity
• LaPorte (Weick) High Reliability Organizations
• Focus on risks
• Learning from experience
• Who is correct?
• The limits of knowledge and learning
• Giddens/Back More knowledge may lead to less
  control

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General pattern

• Integration to increase control (of complex
  processes)
• Integration increases complexity
• managing complexity by increasing complexity
• gt less control

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Cases

• Hospital EPR
• Telecom (Mobile) Billing
• Bank Global e-mail infrastructure
• Ship classification In house dev. ERP
• Pharmaceutical Intranet
• Computing
• Metal industry
• Chemical industry/conglomerate

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Strategies

• Rationalization, modernization
• The role of IT infrastructures
• Effects Control?
• Technology out of control? Complexities

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Reflexive Integration Electronic Patient Records

• Ole Hanseth, Edoardo Jacucci, Miria Grisot, and
  Margunn Aanestad
• Reflexive Standardization  Side Effects and
  Complexity in Standard MakingMISQ Special Issue
  on Standards Aug. 2006.
• Aim (1995)
• One integrated patient record
• One integrated system
• Norwegian standard
• Better and safer patient treatment
• Result?

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Making a standard gt Killed it

• The beginning 5 Norwegian regional (and
  university) hospitals global vendor
• Integrating data across specialities/units and
  hospitals
• Integration with infrastructure (computers, OS,
  network, ..)
• Integrating practices within and across hospitals
• Integrated with Siemens products and strategies
• Globalized the project (Scandinavia, Europe,
  India, US, ..)
• Slow progress competing products emerged
• Health care reform in Norway Regional standards

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Getting rid of paper gtMore paper

• After 8 years 20-30 of info electronic
• Lots of air in printouts
• Electronic lab reports up to 14 paper copies

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One integrated system gt More systems

• From 5 to 134 EPR systems
• One patient one record order creates
  dis-order
• IVF father and mother
• Birth Mother child
• .
• specialist systems (the wider the scope, the
  lower usability)
• Instruments which include EPRs

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Integrated patient record gt More fragmentation

• More EPR-s
• More paper gt
• Poorer access to paper record
• Crises in the archive
• Crises!!
• Scanning? also added to the complexity

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Patient risks?

• http//www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nrk_trondelag/1
  .622219
• Krisemøte på St.Olavs
• Datasystemet ved St Olavs Hospital er ute av
  drift. Alle de nye sentrene står uten både
  interntelefoner og datasystemer.
• Av Elisabeth AasPublisert 20.06.2006 0954
• Problemene begynte å tårne seg opp i går kveld,
  før systemet kollapset i løpet av natta.
• Nær halve sykehuset er uten datanett. Både
  øre-nese-hals-avdelingen, slagenheten
  og laboratoriessenteret er satt ut av spill  som
  igjen påvirker primærleger.
• Konsekvensene ved datasvikt er omfattende.Pasientl
  istene fungerer ikke på grunn av data-problemene,
  journalsystemet er nede og telefonsamtaler til og
  fra avdelingen er ikke mulig.

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New strategy

• 2003-2004 Portal
• Also quite complex .
• ?

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Reflexivity Global Bank

• System risks, near disaster
• Ongoing growth and integration
• Variety of e-mail systems, services, practices
• E-mail from instant messaging to business
  critical archive
• One integrated e-mail system, one integrated and
  centralized support organization
• Integration of cultures?
• Bank Holiday Shutdown
• The system didnt boot to much e-mail
• Booting locally, restoring back-ups
• Access rights full rights to everybody
• Global access to sensitive information
• Booted after a week

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Reflexivity Mobile Phone Billing

• Australian company went bankrupt
• Rapid growth and change over many years
• Customers, employees, services, telecom
  infrastructure, IT infrastructure, ISs, ..
• Going global expatriates
• Consultancies, outsourcing
• Communication
• Matrix
• More consultancies mixture of methods, hiding
  info.
• Risk Management
• Many risks .. To many complex system in itself
• Avoiding blame
• Risk Shuffling (distribution of bads)

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Norsk Hydro

• Established 1907
• Fertilizer
• Light metals, oil and gas
• Rapid expansion 75 - 86
• Independent national companies
• 92 Crisis - decided tight integration in Europe

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Phase 1 Reengineering - no IT

• Plan Fast integration into One Single European
  Learning Organization
• Change agents from the middle - showed the door
• No result
• Extremely heterogeneous IT - decided to go for SAP

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2 SAP Pilot - Involving locals

• Started developing unified SAP solution
• Involving locals
• Pilot installations
• Change process started to move
• SAP - important change agent -allied with top
  management

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3 Fragmentation - Validation/implementation

• Validated the SAP pilot - specifying additional
  local requirements
• Identifying and implementing shared services
• Fragmentation of SAP solution
• From unified common system to heterogeneous
  infrastructure
• SAP becomes allied with the locals

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4 Corporate infrastructure - Future
organizational change

• Integrated with other SAP solutions
• Integrated with underlying infrastructure and
  other applications
• No design - no plans Emergent infrastructure
• SAP is like concrete
• Blocks future changes?
• SAP becomes independent master?

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Hydro Bridge

• Increased focus on collaboration and learning
  across divisions
• Office support, e-mail, Notes, Internet/Intranet
• Heterogeneous organization -gt heterogeneous
  systems (functions, versions, )
• integration
• local infrastructure
• other applications (SAP, SUN, .)
• Standard crumbles out of control
• SAP integration Bad support as side-effect

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The changing roles of IT

• From shared, unified system to complex,
  heterogeneous corporate infrastructure
• Roles (Who is in control?)
• Blocks change
• Helping top management
• Helping locals
• Independent master?

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IBM

• Introducing CRM (Customer Relationship
  Management)
• Unified and integrated interface to all
  products (PCs, big computers, support,
  facilities management, strategic/management
  consulting,...)
• 120.000 affected world wide
• Driven by top management

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IBM, cont.

• Top-down, radical reengineering
• IT Planned total redesign, later focus on a few
  Lotus Notes applications
• Huge problems, small (no?) effect
• Problems Complexity and dynamics, existing
  IT-systems (thousands)
• Installed base (irreversible, out of control)

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SKF

• Ball bearings (22.000), 1907, 43.000 employees,
  20 of world market
• National subsidiaries up to app. 78
• One integrated organization
• Global SNA network
• Common systems (logistics, distribution, sales,
  production, ..)

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SKF

• Centralized, stable, low learning, closed
• Increased collaboration with customers (Ford)
• Service oriented products (surveillance systems
  motor factory, oil refinery)
• Success because
• Loosely coupled (un-modern)
• isolated, stable world

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Hoffman-LaRoche

• 6. largest within pharmaceuticals
• Support for Strategic marketing
• MEDNET
• Design from scratch, expensive, failure, stopped

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Internet/Intranet

• Separate solutions for each unit (therapy,
  country)
• Close collaboration with externals (doctors,
  researchers, patients, ..)
• Informal collaboration across units
• No control, plan, strategy (financed as SAP
  related)
• Success because allied with one powerful actor,
  following this

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Could the risks have been managed?

• Predicted?
• Would best practise make a difference?
• Spiral model/prototyping?

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High Reliability Organizations?

• Learning?
• EPR More integration
• Will experience do it?
• Or institutionalized irresponsibility?