Intro -- CONTENTS -- NOTES ON AUTHORS -- LIST OF INSERTS -- Introduction -- Information as if it mattered -- Using this book -- 1 Management, Information, and the Labour Process -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Who uses information systems? -- Technology and the labour process -- Changing the scale and scope of control -- Transforming work and informing management -- Automating the control of machine tools -- Creating management through information -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 2 Information, Representation, and Organization -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- What is special about information technologies? -- Building the pyramids: The informational story of hierarchy -- Representing -- Representational environment and economy -- Representational techniques in practices -- Representational devices and power -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- Other useful sources include -- 3 The Conceptual Basis of Information Systems: Modelling the World -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- From system to System Theory -- Designed by whom? Or what? -- Is everything a system? -- What is 'in' the system and what outside? Or, to put it another way, which parts are 'system' and which 'environment'? -- Is a system a 'thing' or is 'systems' merely a way of looking at 'things'? -- How do we define (or divine) the objective of a system? How do we know that it is the overall objective that we have happened upon? -- What counts as an 'established' or 'designed' arrangement? What is being 'established' or 'designed'? -- If we do not know what the 'whole' is, how do we know if it is greater than the sum of its parts? -- How do we distinguish between elements and process flows?.

What is system and what is element? Or what is system and what is subsystem? Where does the hierarchy end? -- Seeing the future -- Historical precedents? -- How does modelling 'work'? -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 4 Speaking for Information Systems: Analysing and Prescribing Material Information -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Different 'screens' -- Managing refining -- From 'managing imbalances' to 'exchanges and modal planning' -- An associology of translation? -- The translation process -- Defining and coordination roles: the process of enrolment -- Rotterdam refinery -- Mobilizing enrolled entities to act for the enunciator -- Speak for yourself: Screening translation and appropriation -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 5 Representation 2: Representation and Simulation -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Re(-)presentation, mobility, and technology -- Enter the body -- The fold -- Gigantic simulation -- Summary and conclusion -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 6 New Management Practices: Empowerment, Information, and Control -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Why new now? -- What's new? -- Rhetorics of empowerment -- Systems for self-discipline -- Self-scanning? -- Helping oneself with a handset 1 -- Maintaining control -- Helping oneself with a handset 2 -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 7 Accountability and Systems Success -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Being accountable -- The system builders -- Central focus -- The database -- The core application: modelling accountability -- Simultaneous simulation, understanding, and the translation of accountability -- Managing the benefits of OMS: the buck stops here.

Precedent, practice, and practicalities -- Summary and conclusion -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 8 The Virtual Organization? -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Groupware: a new hope for organizational sociality -- Groupware in an organizational context -- Organizational memory or organizing memory -- Just talk? -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 9 Representation 3: Risk, Control, and the Escape of Uncertainty -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Representation and the accomplishment of organization -- Symbols and materials -- Representing objectification in the information age -- A representational communication -- From context-embedded signification to abstract signification -- Connections, contextual knowledge, and oral language -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- 10 Handling Knowledge Management -- Key concepts -- Key themes -- Introduction -- Data, information, knowledge -- Dealing with knowledge in KM -- From individual to collective knowledge -- Organizational learning -- What about organization? -- Understanding knowledge -- A philosophical bent -- A sociological bent -- And back to KM -- Summary -- Discussion questions -- Suggestions for further reading -- Postscript -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- NAME INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- SUBJECT INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.

This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between the abstractions of current theories of organization and the somewhat excessively grounded material that forms the bulk of literatures within the information systems and knowledge management communities. It provides a theoretically informed analysis of the organizational impact of information technologies by examining and commenting upon the myriad ways in which various actors, organizations, and environments arerepresented through these technologies. It deploys a number of different theoretical lenses (including systems theory, social constructivism, labour process theory, post-structuralism, and actor network theory) that offer complementary and contrasting insights into the computerization of (managerial)work and its administration, and uses these theories to consider real examples of the development and implementation of knowledge and information systems.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.