Edinburgh Research Archive logo

Edinburgh Research Archive

University of Edinburgh homecrest
View Item 
  •   ERA Home
  • Business School
  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group
  • View Item
  •   ERA Home
  • Business School
  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Global Software and its Provenance: Generification Work in the Design of Global Software Packages

View/Open
generification to go.pdf (142.9Kb)
Date
01/04/2007
Author
Pollock, N.
Williams, R.
D'Adderio, Luciana
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
This paper addresses the seemingly implausible project of establishing a ‘generic’ organizational information system. The is an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, we are told of the diversity of specific organizational contexts and on the other, we often find the same standardised software solutions being applied across those settings. How do generic software packages work in so many different contexts? Science & Technology Studies provides contrasting accounts of how this contradiction is resolved: either stressing the unwanted organizational change that standardised systems may bring; or, alternatively insisting these technologies can only be made to work through processes of ‘localization’. We argue that the focus on specificity versus localization of application contexts draws attention away from enquiring into the origins and characteristics of generic solutions. Through comparing the design and evolution of two software packages we shift the debate from understanding how technologies are made to work within particular settings to how they are built to work across a diverse range of organizational contexts. Our question is ‘How do software packages achieve the mobility that allows them to bridge the heterogeneity within organizations and between organizations in different sectors and cultures?’ We describe a set of revealed strategies through which suppliers produce software that embodies characteristics common across many users; what we term generification work. One aspect of this process of generification is the configuring of users within ‘managed communities’, but it also includes ‘smoothing’ the contents of the package and, at times, reverting to ‘social authority’. Our argument is that generic systems do exist but that they are brought into being through an intricately managed process, involving the broader extension of a particularised software application and, at the same time, the management of the user community attached to that solution.
URI
http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/37/2/254

10.1177/0306312706066022

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3250
Collections
  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group

Library & University Collections HomeUniversity of Edinburgh Information Services Home
Privacy & Cookies | Takedown Policy | Accessibility | Contact
Privacy & Cookies
Takedown Policy
Accessibility
Contact
feed RSS Feeds

RSS Feed not available for this page

 

 

All of ERACommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsPublication TypeSponsorSupervisorsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsPublication TypeSponsorSupervisors
LoginRegister

Library & University Collections HomeUniversity of Edinburgh Information Services Home
Privacy & Cookies | Takedown Policy | Accessibility | Contact
Privacy & Cookies
Takedown Policy
Accessibility
Contact
feed RSS Feeds

RSS Feed not available for this page