Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Management Information Systems

The University of San Francisco

Human vs. material

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Business

Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter Jan 2011

Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This contribution to the SIGPHIL workshop on reconciling the social and technical in IS research proposes a sociotechnical approach that addresses many issues related to the long-standing duality of the social/human versus the technical/material. It shows that a sociotechnical approach based on work system concepts 1) highlights and potentially bypasses extremely basic ontological stumbling blocks in IS research, 2) incorporates many of the topics and concerns of the original sociotechnical school, 3) illuminates issues related to the duality of the social/human versus the technical/material, and 4) addresses these topics using concepts and terminology that are much easier to understand than …


Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter Jan 2011

Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter

Steven Alter

This contribution to the SIGPHIL workshop on reconciling the social and technical in IS research proposes a sociotechnical approach that addresses many issues related to the long-standing duality of the social/human versus the technical/material. It shows that a sociotechnical approach based on work system concepts 1) highlights and potentially bypasses extremely basic ontological stumbling blocks in IS research, 2) incorporates many of the topics and concerns of the original sociotechnical school, 3) illuminates issues related to the duality of the social/human versus the technical/material, and 4) addresses these topics using concepts and terminology that are much easier to understand than …