Efforts to get workers to change significantly their communication practices often fail. This failure occurs because external consultants, who are often academics, and internal organizational development specialists see changing communication practices as merely introducing new skills rather than altering the way workers habitually think and talk about communication. In this article, the author uses organizational theory and details from his research and consulting experience to explain why changing communication practices is difficult. He proposes a theory-based framework to help the professional and managerial communication disciplines better understand the steps necessary to change communication practice and norms in large, complex organizations.

There is a tension at the heart of multi-functional project organisations between similarity and difference that arguably has a major impact upon the nature of knowing and learning in such settings. It has long been recognised that differences between organisational members can be both a source of creativity and innovation as well as triggering conflict and misunderstanding.

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... individuals, to teams, organizations, markets, countries, and society -- an increasing number of researchers have looked for alternative ways to study technology and organization interactions. One of the main perspectives that have been articulated by several researchers in IT is Giddens' structuration theory. However, the applicability of Giddens' concepts is not without difficulties. Two main points help explain the challenge of using a structurationist framework. First, structuration theory is complex, involving concepts and general propositions that operate at a high level of abstraction. Second, structuration theory is not easily coupled to any specific research method or methodological approach and it is difficult to apply empirically. Arguing that structuration theory is a valuable framework for a rich understanding of management, organization and related subjects of inquiry, this essay aims to discuss and improve the applicability of structuration theory to empirical work using IT research experience. It identifies and analyzes patterns of use of Giddens' theory in IT publications, and then describes how IT researchers using a structurationist framework have attempted to address its major empirical challenges. The paper presents a repertoire of research strategies that might guide students of organization in dealing with three elements that are central to structuration theory: time, context and duality of structure. The systematization of a repertoire of methodological strategies to apply Giddens' ideas is likely to increase the use of structuration theory, encouraging the improvement of existing, and the development of new, methodological strategies that ameliorate its empirical application.

to reflect on his observations as a long-serving, award-winning reviewer of qualitative research for A!vII Over the past two and a half years, I have developed a tremendous respect for Bob's keen eye for evaluating qualitative research submissions, and great admiration for the painstaking advice he provides authors about how to improve their work. As a world-renowned qualitative author himself, Bob is in an excellent position to provide observations about how authors might increase the chances of having their qualitative research accepted for publication at AMI In a three-way electronic mail conversation about the challenges and opportunities of qualitative research, Bob, Tom Lee, and I all concluded that many authors with potentially very interesting data sets don't seem to know how to analyze them to their full potential. This is perhaps not surprising, given the clear predominance of quantitative methods and statistics courses over qualitative ones, particularly in North America, as well as the inherently greater subjectivity involved in designing and analyzing qualitative research. As such, we encouraged Bob to provide a bit of a minitutorial-complete with reference citations and examples of high-quality papers that use particular qualitative approaches-in addition to his observations about qualitative research submitted to AMI The result is a longer-than-usual "From the Editors" column. but one that we believe is well worth the extra reading time for anyone interested in producing, reviewing, or attempting to coax greater insights from qualitative research. We are fortunate to have someone with Bob's expertise share his observations, and we hope that his thoughts will prove useful to researchers for many years to come.

During the last decade, teams working on information technology (IT) development and implementation projects have experienced significant transformations. Nowadays, many members of project teams are working in new and complex organisational arrangements seeded with conflicts. Their firms, pushed by the competitive race and/or regulators, want to implement new IT solutions at frantic speeds while often maintaining old management practices without recognising the new paradigm’s unique needs and nature. This paper focuses in one of these new organisations, the metateam. Metateams are emergent temporal virtual organizations engaged in complex multimillion dollar IT projects. These confederations of networked teams can build IT solutions of high complexity by integrating and capitalizing on expertise from different fields across firms and national borders. However, achieving effective interteam collaboration presents significant challenges. The failure to make sense of the new paradigm results in cost and schedule overruns and has high destructive potential for interfirm relationships. Our theory-building study detected a costly pattern of constant conflict discovery, resolution and realignment. From the analysis of this pattern, this paper presents a theoretical model, grounded on rich empirical data, interrelating key concepts of cost, contract discrepancies, conflict, communication and trust.

Critical professional education about information and communications technologies and social life

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This paper reports on an empirical investigation of a particular computerization movement—the diffusion of automated underwriting in the US home mortgage industry—over a twenty-plus year timeframe. Building on and extending seminal work by Kling and Iacono (1988, 1995, 2001), this paper demonstrates the influences of technological action frames, particularly the productivity master frame, on automated underwriting use practices. We also show, however, that the link between frames and use patterns is not a simple one. Several framings of automated underwriting emerged over time as a result of interactions among the components of technology ensembles and between technology ensembles and social actors. These interactions can confirm or disconfirm the frames, reinforcing or eroding them and shaping new frames. Today, multiple frames and use patterns exist simultaneously in the industry. As Kling and Iacono argued, these results cannot be understood solely in terms of economic forces. At the same time, they suggest the role of the technology ensemble in technology framing and use practices. These findings enhance our understanding of the dynamics of computerization movements.

Abstract: Organizational ambidexterity still remains ambiguous in terms of the concept and vague in terms of feasible realizations, especially for SMEs. We analyze recent classifications of the concept and focus on cyclical ambidexterity as the appropriate means for SMEs to manage the tension between incremental and discontinuous innovation effectively. We argue that cyclical ambidexterity should be understood as a sequence and interplay of quality management processes and internal communities for open innovation. By applying the methodological approach of action research, we investigate an implementation of such an approach to cyclical ambidexterity at Hofmann Personal. The findings confirm our framework of social and technological design elements of internal communities for open innovation. 1