Making a World of Difference—IT in a Global Context. . - book review

Geoff Walsham:

2001, Chichester and New York: John Wiley, 272 pages.

The catastrophic events of 11 September 2001 have radically changed what a reader might expect of a book entitled Making a World of Difference -- IT in a Global Context. These new expectations highlight a critical ambiguity in the book title. On the one hand, such a book might -- and indeed this book does -- show how individual, social and cultural diversity continues throughout the design, implementation and use of information technology in Western as well as non-Western countries. In effect, IT reproduces existing differences and, in some cases, creates new patterns of difference between people and within and between organizations globally. This emphasis on diversity is a welcome change from some management approaches to the introduction of new technology that appear to be straining to hear the music of the spheres.

Notwithstanding this criticism, the book has considerable strength. The book is divided into four main parts. The first part, 'IT in Society', presents the plural theoretical perspectives on contemporary society and on the development and use of IT in the workplace, and the methodological approach -- Actor-Network Theory (ANT) -- that is used to collect, structure and interpret case study data and inform the development of situated 'stories' from these data.

The main value of the book lies in the numerous and wide-ranging case studies drawn from existing research, conducted by various authors over a number of years, that are summarized, clustered together into chapters, and re-interpreted through the lens of a series of central themes. These are presented in Parts 2 and 3 of the book, where the focus, respectively, is on 'Changing Ways of Working' predominantly, although not exclusively, in industrialized countries, and on IT development and implementation in 'Different Worlds' (Thailand, Mexico, South Africa, Jamaica, Nigeria and China).

The case study analysis is oriented towards the micro-level, for example on shifting identity, teamwork, enterprise reorganization, trust in networks, culture as context and working across cultures. The central themes developed at the chapter level attempt to link these micro-level analyses to meso- and macro-level concerns -- for example, to processes of globalization, the role of IT in these processes, and the implications for knowledge--power relations. In this respect, the book is too ambitious; often the links are tenuous and the data and analysis on which they depend are over-stretched.

Some of the case studies, especially those that are drawn from research conducted in the early to mid-1990s, are reminiscent of the first flush of situated analyses of information systems that were previously executed so excellently through grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990) and structuration theory (Giddens 1984), for example by Orlikowski and Robey (1991).

Many of the case studies provide valuable insights, some of which are relatively new, for example that groupware is not inherently democratic (p. 100); that positive outcomes from using groupware are more likely to result from an effective match between technology and practice (p. 116); that multi-skilling does not necessarily empower staff and lead to more rewarding work (p. 135); that successful e-commerce is often achieved through the application of IT to established and conventional business activities (p. 167); that the Internet and its users can constitute a 'stable network of exclusion' (p. 177).

Other findings appear dated but are, nevertheless, worth repeating -- for instance, that technological portability depends on cultural portability (p. 110); that there are problems of standardization when attempts are made to diffuse information systems across cultural boundaries (p. 146); that benefits from technology diffusion are more likely to result from adjusting information systems to, and cultivating them within, local culture (p. 199).

However, there are a number of methodological and analytical limitations that, in this reviewer's opinion, prevent the potential practical and political value of this book from being realized to the full. Two are critical and related: first, problems with the articulation of ANT and its application to the case study data and, second, the startling lack of attention to the role of learning-and-development in processes of socio-cultural and technical change.

The articulation of the ANT methodology and its implementation to case study data fail to adequately capture the dialectical processes that underlie the series of transformations often accompanying the creation, implementation and appropriation of IT. One reason for this is that it privileges activity and interpretations of activity at the expense, for example, of social interaction and negotiation during and through activity.

This problem is reinforced by weaknesses in the review and analysis of the literature, in particular relating to the processes of 'learning-and-development' that are at the root of psychological accounts of situated interactive learning that have been influential in shaping educational practice (Vygotsky 1978, 1986; Feuerstein 2000), that underpin some approaches in the organizational behaviour literature to the production and sharing of knowledge (Lave and Wenger 1991; Blackler 1993), and that have been applied, for example, to the analysis of information systems creation and use (Millar 1996).