Library and Information Science Commons^™

Processes As Theory In Information Systems Research, Kevin Crowston

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

Many researchers have searched for evidence of organizational improvements from the huge sums invested in ICT. Unfortunately, evidence for such a pay back is spotty at best (e.g., Brynjolfsson, 1994; Meyer and Gupta, 1994; Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 1998). On the other hand, at the individual level, computing and communication technologies are increasingly merging into work in ways that make it impossible to separate the two (Gasser, 1986; Zuboff, 1988; Bridges, 1995). This problem—usually referred to as the productivity paradox—is an example of a more pervasive issue—linking phenomena and theories from different levels of analysis. Organizational processes provide a bridge between …