Mission

Scope
Working Group 8.2 is concerned with the generation and dissemination of descriptive and normative knowledge about the development and use of information technologies in organizational contexts, both broadly defined. By information technology (IT), we mean technologies that can be used to store, transfer, process or represent information. By organizational context, we mean the institutional arrangements in which information is used or created. Descriptively, the WG seeks to generate and disseminate knowledge about and improve understand of the role and impact of information technology across a range of social levels (society, organization, individual) and across a diversity of spheres (marketplace, workplace, home, community). Normatively, it seeks to improve the design and application of information technologies that are both useful and effective for individuals, groups, organizations and society at large.

Aims

To develop integrative frameworks that facilitate recognition and transfer or relevant knowledge about the role and uses of IT. Such frameworks can be based on a wide range of disciplines. These frameworks should be open to all research traditions and lines of research which further the study of the uses of IT in organizational contexts, and can also include the critical questioning of their relevance for the scope and aims of WG 8.2.

To build theories and generate evidence about the role and impact of IT in specific organizational contexts.

To improve the ways and means by which organizations design, implement and maintain IT.

To nurture a critical discourse about the role which IT plays in the lives of people as individuals and as members of complex social institutions such as government, community, business, professional societies and other forms of social associations.

To engage in ethical discourse about the practices and dilemmas which arise in the development, use and consequences of IT, or in research about such technology.

(As revised 15 December 1996)