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Conceptualizing Social Information SystemsWarren S. AllenDrexel University

Philadelphia, PA

wsa25@drexel.edu

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I propose a research agenda based on the conceptof the social information system, a form of information systemdesigned to process information about individuals and theirsocial relationships for the explicit purpose of producing a

particular social order, i.e, organizational culture. The agenda isbased on a review of extant research on organizationally-boundsocial network(ing) sites, categorizing findings according to

labor-oriented and social-oriented uses. The proposed researchagenda establishes as an object of socio-technical inquiry thedesign and use of the social information system as a facilitatorof organizational culture.

Categories and Subject DescriptorsJ.4 [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences

psychology, sociology.

General TermsManagement, Design, Human Factors.

KeywordsSocial technology, social network sites, organizational culture.

1. INTRODUCTION

In response to the radical changes in digital technology and theelectronic communications infrastructure of the late twentiethcentury, information and its attending technologies have cometo play an important role in the design of contemporaryorganizations. Organizations experimenting with new forms ofinformation systems seek to maximize the productivity andinnovation of a workforce that is more geographically diversethan generations prior, has the personal means and often thedesire to move between jobs and careers at a faster pace, andfor whom the post-industrial economy and the production ofinformation- and knowledge-based goods is the norm.

2. THE STUDY AND DESIGN OFORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Early research into the use of information technology inorganizations emphasized technology-mediated communication,individual and collaborative task performance, and changes in

the social order of the environment brought about by thecomputerization of the work environment. The relationship

between IT and the social order of the organization i.e.,organizational culture is not a new focus of study; however,research has typically studied culture as a consequential

byproduct of the application of technology to existing andemergent work practices.

Following the turn in theory and practice of organizationalstudies towards organizational design and culture as objects ofinquiry, [e.g., 2, 7] the application of information technologyhas extended beyond worker productivity and communication tothe explicit construction of organizational culture through thestrategic use of information technology [e.g., 4]. Theimplications of design of social information systems for theshaping of organizational culture is an under-theorized area,situated at the intersection of organizational design, socialinformatics and computer-supported collaborative work.

The proposed research poster will explore this intersection byestablishing as an object of socio-technical inquiry the designand use of social information systems, a form of advancedinformation system currently typified by the social network(ing)site.

3. DEFINING SOCIAL INFORMATIONSYSTEMS

Social information technology is a type ofadvanced informationsystem (AIS): a digital technology which processes informationintegral to the users communication or decision task and isused to transmit, manipulate, analyze, or exploit information.[3] Social information technology differentiates itself fromother forms of communicative and collaborative AIS in that it isdesigned to afford the transmission, manipulation, analysis, andexploitation of social information; i.e., to process informationabout individuals and their social relationships for the explicit

purpose of producing a particular social order.

3.1 Social information technology producessocial telepresence

The context produced by social information technology isdifferentiated from earlier communications technology (such asemail and instant messaging software) in that it establishesvirtuality: the capacity of communicative technologies toconstitute rather than mediate realities and to constituterelatively bounded spheres of interaction. [5, emphasis added.]The virtual spheres of interaction produced by socialinformation technology enables social telepresence. The term

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).GROUP10, November 710, 2010, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA.ACM 978-1-4503-0387-3/10/11.

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borrows from Jonathan Steuers concept of telepresence (theexperience of presence in an environment by means of acommunication medium) and extends the concept beyond itsoriginal emphasis on individual, visual, synchronous mediatedinteractions [9].

Social telepresence thus consists of the experience of anyinformation about a person that is encoded in an informationsystem in order to relay that information to another individualconstitutes social telepresence, whether the medium is visual,audio, or textual, synchronous or asynchronous, and regardlessof whether the information is about their individual or relationalcharacteristics, or a combination thereof.

3.2 Towards sociological research

3.2.1 Other-oriented and labor-orientedcharacteristics of social information systems

Task-oriented information systems are often referred to as socialtechnologies to the degree that they connect individuals(subjects) in order to work together (or socially) towards agiven labor-oriented goal (object). That such a system maytransmit information about coworkers as a result of co-laboronly accidentally and temporarily alters the subject-objectorientation. Conversely, social telepresence is the

phenomenological, experiential byproduct of the use of socialinformation systems. The information produced and retrieved insocial information systems is other-oriented information in thesense that its production by the individual self (subject) is aninstance of what Shutz refers to as social behavior: intentionalconscious experiences directed toward the other self. [8]

The weight of this distinction is most clear by understandingtechnology as a flexible artifact, shaped by factors bothsubjective and objective. Even in cases where the intended useof an information system is relatively prescribed in the design ofthe system and the task towards which it is oriented, there isinevitably variation in its intendeduse and its actualuse. [6] Inremoving the key objective factor the task, which is not tosuggest that the definition of the task is entirely objective onlythe subjective factors that is, the self and the other self remain to shape the rules and norms of the social informationsystem. This is a new situation for information systemsdesigners, and their (subjective) role in constructing objectivedesign factors of social information technology ought to berevisited.

3.3 Research agenda statement

3.3.1 Towards what labor and what task(s) aresocial information system oriented?

The question, of course, is rhetorical. The proposed agenda presupposes a distinction between task- and social-orientedinformation and information systems. However, the diversity ofuse practices and the pace of innovation of social informationtechnology make it hard to form a reliable model of socialinformation technology use; more-so to speculate on therelationship of trends in public social technology use to

emergent work practices that incorporate social informationtechnology. Neither a recourse to the popularity of publicly-accessible social information technology (e.g., social networksites such as Facebook and MySpace) nor labor-orientedexplanations such as the task-technology fit [1] willconceptually accommodate the other-orientation of socialinformation systems.

3.3.2 Proposal: establish labor-oriented andsocial-oriented aspects of social information systems

Simply stated: in their everyday social lives as well as in worksettings, different people will use the same social technologydifferently, and some will not use it at all; the consequences ofsuch diversity have unknown implications for the design ofsocial information technology as well as for the design andexperience of organizational culture.

The proposed research poster will present a visualization of thecurrent terrain of organizational social information systems.The depth of the research is limited by the exploratory nature ofthe inquiry, the meta-review level of analysis of researchfindings, and most importantly by the adolescent state of social

technology in the workplace. The focus of the review will beidentifying task- or labor-oriented and other-oriented use ofsocial network(ing) systems which have been deployed byorganizations such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Accenture, BoozAllen Hamilton, SAP, and many others.

4. References1. Goodhue, D.L. Understanding User Evaluations of

Information Systems. Management Science 41, 12 (1995),1827-1844.

2. Hatch, M.J. The Dynamics of Organizational Culture. TheAcademy of Management Review 18, 4 (1993), 657-693.

3. Huber, G.P. A Theory of the Effects of AdvancedInformation Technologies on Organizational Design,

Intelligence, and Decision Making. The Academy ofManagement Review 15, 1 (1990), 47-71.

4. Margrethe H. Olson. New Information Technology andOrganizational Culture. MIS Quarterly 6, (1982), 71-92.

5. Miller, D. and Slater, D. The Internet: an ethnographicapproach. Berg Oxford, UK, 2000.

6. Orlikowski, W.J. The Duality of Technology: Rethinking theConcept of Technology in Organizations. OrganizationScience 3, 3 (1992), 398-427.

7. Schein, E. Organizational culture and leadership. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1985.

8. Schtz, A. The phenomenology of the social world.Northwestern Univ Press, 1967.

9. Steuer, J. Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determiningtelepresence. Communication in the age of virtual reality ,(1995), 33-56.