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With inspiration from role-play and improvisational theater, we are developing a framework for innovation in software teams called Essence. Based on agile principles, Essence is designed for teams of developers and an onsite customer. This paper reports from teaching experiments inspired by design science, where we tried to assign differentiated roles to team members. The experiments provided valuable insights into the design of roles in Essence. These insights are used for redesigning how roles are described and conveyed in Essence.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a complex ICT application. Adoption by organizations has been relatively slow. This paper assesses the contribution that research into information systems adoption and diffusion can make to\ud understanding and predicting the diffusion of RFID. The paper concludes that traditional research methods are inappropriate for such applications.\ud Information systems stage research and diffusion research offer morepromising models.

This paper argues for a model of information systems in terms of cyborgs – a boundary-crossing mixture of the technical and the social. The argument for this model is substantiated from the personal experience of the author, presented as examples of being a cyborg researcher within a disciplinary context. Lessons for information systems are drawn.

This paper presents a validated measurement model and instrument for assessing enterprise systems success from multiple perspectives. The final validated study model employs 27 measures of the four dimensions: information quality, system quality, individual impact, and organizational impact. The model is empirically tested with survey data gathered from 27 public sector organizations that implemented SAP R/3 in the late 1990s. The study consists of an exploratory inventory survey (model building) to identify the salient success dimensions and measures, followed by a confirmatory weights survey, for testing model validity (model testing). Test results demonstrate the discriminant validity of the four dimensions, as well as their convergence on a single higher-order phenomenon: enterprise systems success (ESS). Criterion validity testing further demonstrates the additivity of the four dimensions of success, and the completeness of the resultant overarching, second-order measure of ESS.

The technological is often in the background of our research, despite claims of being socio-technical. Following from Orlikowski and Iacono’s call for research on the ability to theorize the technological within IS research, this research note reviews the literature on society and technology to understand how we may interrogate the technological within a discourse. This article then proposes that within a discourse there are moments of interest where we can observe, interrogate, and develop an understanding regarding the form of the technological. In turn, this may complement our understanding of the social, and allow for further research on how the socio-technological world takes form.

Over the past 20 years, the field of information systems has grown dramatically in theoretical diversity and global reach. This growth is reflected in the language that policy makers and organizational stakeholders use when they talk about their IT plans. As information technology penetrates further into organizational and global life, it becomes ever more important to articulate assumptions embedded in the discourse. This will help to clarify the complex and yet conceptually improvised or pasted-up worldview that becomes embodied in systems. The assumptions point to particular domains of discourse. The discourse sets up conventions and boundaries. It thus shapes what can or cannot legitimately be talked about, researched, addressed, or solved within the scope of IT. A number of practical and theoretical topics are discussed in detail, including: *Globalization, development, and space; *Mobilization of power; *ERP systems; *IS planning and projects; *Critical research and the study of discourse; *Public institutions; *Analytical frameworks. This book contains the selected proceedings of the Working Conference on Global and Organizational Discourse About Information Technology, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Barcelona, Spain in December 2002.

There is much discussion among IS academics in general and those who belong to IFIP WG 8.2 in particular of appropriate research methods and their underlying philosophical foundations. Discussion on research methods has tended to focus on the debate between those who advocate empirical methods based on validating models, frameworks, and hypotheses by means of surveys buttressed by an array of statistical tests, and the advocates of interpretive, qualitative research based on observation, interviews, and case studies. The debate has resulted in the publication of a comprehensive literature, part of which questions the validity of one or other of the approaches, but part of which attempts to define under what circumstances each is appropriate. Yet other discussants suggest the virtues of pluralistic approaches.