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Cross-Boundary Information Systems Development:
A Practice Theory Based View
(Research Seminar, September 19th, 2002)
Natalia Levina
Stern School of Business, New York University
Abstract:
Growth of consumer-faced information systems (IS) applications shifts IS
designers from seeing their work as “capturing and automating requirements”
to seeing it as “innovation in product development.” The new metaphor engenders
organizational practices targeted at fostering innovation. One such practice
is establishment of professionally and organizationally diverse development
teams charged with creatively combining individual competencies within the
resulting product. A longitudinal field study of one such team was conducted
in order to build a practice-based framework for understanding cross-boundary
collaboration on IS development (ISD) projects. The frameworks shows that
multi-party ISD collaboration can be understood as a struggle of agents situated
in nested and intersecting industry, organization, profession, and project-based
settings or “fields-of-practice.” The development practice is situated at
the nexus of these fields. It can be seen as a collective “reflection-in-action”
process that increasingly defines the product. Whose competencies get to
be reflected in the product and the degree of novelty the product achieves
depend on agents challenging or following established status relationships
within project teams and across organizations and professional groups.
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