Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3. To the extent that autonomous IS share basic IS concepts with standardised defini-
tions, they can be conceptualised as speaking a specific language. The language is
referred to in this paper as the information systems business language or ISBL.
4. Organisational customers interacting with autonomous IS must use the ISBL for
communication purposes.
5. The continuing standardisation of IS definitions in data, process structures and
objects, is contributing to the further development of the ISBL.
6. Implementation of the ISBL has social effects on relationships between organisations
and their customers; the ISBL can therefore function as an instrument of social
power.
7. The emergence of the ISBL as an instrument of social power will tend to encourage
its wider adoption.
8. The wider adoption of the ISBL will tend to inhibit possibilities of structural change,
by lengthening change management cycles and making change management pro-
cesses more complex.
The following propositions relate specifically to social power effects:
9.
The efficiency gains facilitated by adoption of the ISBL will encourage attempts to
impose it as the standard language for conducting some types of business transac-
tions.
10.
General adoption of the ISBL will tend to marginalise some people, and create new
types of 'outsiders'.
11.
Adoption of the ISBL will exacerbate organisations' difficulties in dealing with
exceptional cases.
12.
Adoption of the ISBL will tend to impede people with unusual or exceptional re-
quirements in the pursuit of their transactional interests.
Information systems with social autonomy
The first computer-based IS were essentially data processing systems designed to assist
organisations with the processing and storage of the vast amount of data generated in
the course of contemporary business activity (Somogyi and Galliers, 1987). The extension
of the scope of IS implementations to encompass the installation of systems capable of
acting as autonomous organisational agents has been so gradual as to be almost imper-
ceptible. It has, however, been the case at least since the introduction of ATMs, that
some IS directly substitute for, rather than simply support, humans in selected interactive
organisational roles. The extent to which this type of substitution has occurred is
probably much greater than is obvious on the surface, for it is surely correct to say that
there are many organisations in which front-of-house staff are supporting the systems
that are actually taking the decisions, rather than the reverse. As might be expected
during the early stages of what is in effect a quiet revolution, many situations where
systems and humans share the decision-making powers can be somewhat ambiguous.
This ambiguity can have awkward consequences, as in the case of Australia's Centrelink,
an agency responsible for managing unemployment matters where, during the course
of a recent furore over errors, some were blamed on systems taking decisions, and others
on systems not taking decisions (McKinnon, 2004).
An autonomous IS is postulated as showing three behavioural characteristics that have
traditionally been associated with the possession of intelligence and the capacity to use
language effectively; it can understand meaningful input, it can be meaningfully respons-
ive to that input, and it can take socially significant decisions that are responsive to the
meanings developed in the interaction. The fact that one party may believe that the
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