Collaborating on Multiparty Information Systems Development Projects: A Collective Reflection-in-Action View

Natalia Levina ()
Additional contact information
Natalia Levina: Information Systems Group/IOMS, Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 West Fourth Street, Suite 8-78 (KMC), New York, New York 10012

Information Systems Research, 2005, vol. 16, issue 2, 109-130

Abstract: Growth of Web-based applications has drawn a great number of diverse stakeholders and specialists into the information systems development (ISD) practice. Marketing, strategy, and graphic design professionals have joined technical developers, business managers, and users in the development of Web-based applications. Often, these specialists work for different organizations with distinct histories and cultures. A longitudinal, qualitative field study of a Web-based application development project was undertaken to develop an in-depth understanding of the collaborative practices that unfold among diverse professionals on ISD projects. The paper proposes that multiparty collaborative practice can be understood as constituting a “collective reflection-in-action” cycle through which an information systems (IS) design emerges as a result of agents producing, sharing, and reflecting on explicit objects. Depending on their control over the various economic and cultural (intellectual) resources brought to the project and developed on the project, agents influence the design in distinctive ways. They use this control to either “add to,” “ignore,” or “challenge” the work produced by others. Which of these modes of collective reflection-in-action are enacted on the project influences whose expertise will be reflected in the final design. Implications for the study of boundary objects, multiparty collaboration, and organizational learning in contemporary ISD are drawn.

Keywords: system design and implementation; outsourcing; management of IS projects; critical perspectives on IT; interpretive research; ethnographic research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.1050.0055 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orisre:v:16:y:2005:i:2:p:109-130

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Information Systems Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().