Research Interests

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I study the relationship between technical change and social change. Within those broad boundaries, I concentrate on information technologies and change at the level of social institutions. My current job does not allow as much time for research as I'd like, but I still find the opportunity to continue my studies through consideration of everyday experience -- problems, challenges, opportunities -- arising at the intersection of rapidly changing information technologies in the institutional context of the University of Michigan and higher education broadly.

I got started in this line of work by studying the problem of design and development of sophisticated socio-technical information infrastructures that must function effectively in complex organizational and institutional settings, usually over long periods of time. Although we have demonstrated time and again that we can build such systems (e.g., air traffic control, the Internet), we do not seem to be able to build them on purpose very well. It is estimated that more than half of all intentional efforts to build such systems fail to achieve their objectives. The research into these failures has repeatedly shown the biggest source of the problem to be inadequate understanding of the requirements for the proposed system. To study this problem required working across multiple conceptual levels of analysis, and data collection in a number of highly instituionalized production sectors (explained below). I called this work "high-level requirements analysis," because of its focus on issues of organizational and institutional usability that are seldom considered by software engineers or system developers.

A highly institutionalized production sector is any world of human enterprise affected in dramatic ways by the regulatory and influential efforts of social institutions, both formal (e.g., governmental entities) and informal (e.g., professional associations and scientific societies). The intellectual groundwork for this understanding of institutionalized production is found in a 1994 paper titled "Institutional Factors in Information Technology Innovation" that appeared in Information Systems Research. Implementation of this research program in highly-institutionalized production involved the development of information infrastructure in support of other service and physical infrastructures.

To date, I have conducted research on infrastructures supporting the following highly institutionalized production sectors:

Logistics and transport. Taken collectively, this is the world's largest industrial sector, accounting for between 14% and 17% of global production. The current research focuses primarily on air freight movement, because such movement is inherently intermodal (meaning freight must move on multiple modes such as ground and air transport), and it is highly regulated by institutions at the global level. It is also increasingly dependent on information management. This work was done with Barrie Nault, Amelia Regan and Paul Forster. Support came from the National Science Foundation, the UCI Graduate School of Management Corporate Partners, the International Air Transport Association, Cargo Network Services, and KLM Cargo. CNS sponsored a large baseline survey of information handling among the 1,800 air carriers, motor transport carriers who handle air freight, and freight forwarders. This is the largest and most comprehensive survey of information handling in an entire freight sector ever attempted.

Common carrier communications, particularly global telephony. The international telephone system is the largest networked information infrastructure on earth -- much larger and more penetrating than the Internet. It is also highly regulated and very institutionalized. Working with Kalle Lyytinen and other colleagues from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finaland, I am studying the evolution two key institutional enablers that explain why the diffusion of cellular telephony occurred much faster in the Nordic countries than it did anywhere else on earth, including in the United States, where the technology was invented. This is largely a study in technical history, involving access to original source documentation related to three crucial institutional factors in design of the technological systems: signaling protocols, spectrum allocation, and addressing. A complementary assessment of source documentation on these issues is underway in the U.S. and Japan, the other primary actors in the spread of global cellular telephony. Preliminary analysis shows that the dominant factors influencing the speed of diffusion of these technologies were each region's unique institutional regulatory structure that affected the speed with which signaling, spectrum, and addressing standards could be set. Our analysis will demonstrate conclusively the role of the establishment of the first wide-use analog standard (NMT-450/900) in the subsequent establishment of the GSM-900/1800 digital standard that is now the dominant world standard. In addition, preliminary analysis suggests that the relatively slow start of cellular telephony in the US was due in large measure to the complexities of regulatory structures and policies at the FCC, in which competition for radio spectrum for cellular telephony put the telephone industry into direct conflict with the broadcasting industry, both of which were (and are) regulated by the FCC. This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (roughly equivalent to the NSF), and conducted with Kalle Lyytinen, Joel West, Ashley Andeen, Vladislav Fomin, Ari Mannien and other colleagues.

Electric power generation and distribution. Electric power is also a critical network infrastructure that is highly institutionalized and regulated. It is also undergoing major institutional reform. The research in the electric power area concerns the requirements for systems that facilitate the market-based system of distribution currently being developed and deployed in California, and that will soon be the norm throughout the US. This research was done in cooperation with Scott Samuelson of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, with support from the California Energy Commission and industry sources. Robb Klashner was the primary driver behind this research.

Criminal courts. The criminal justice system is a crucial element of service infrastructure. It is also highly institutionalized and regulated. The research in this sector focuses on computerized case management systems in felony courts, and in particular, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County -- the largest criminal court system in the US. A large survey and as set of field interviews are substantially completed. Support has come from the State Justice Institute. Margaret Elliott was the principal researcher in this project.

Health care. Health care is one of the largest and most important service infrastructure activities in the US. The research in this area focuses on the problem of defining requirements of advanced patient record systems. Research support has been obtained from the UC Office of the President's Industry/University Cooperative Research Program in Life Sciences Informatics, with company support from a California software firm that specializes in patient record systems. The research program will establish the parameters for the design of patient record automation that will allow multiple uses of patient records for patient care, administration, and medical research without requiring the constant intervention of people in the records process. Fellow researchers on this work were Mark Ackerman, Wanda Pratt and Madhu Reddy.

Global Electronic Commerce. This study concentrated on national policies and conventions related to enterprise in the spread of electronic commerce in the United States and nine other countries. It was supported by the Naitonal Science Foundation, and was run by Jason Dedrick and Kenneth Kraemer. My main collaborators in this work were Kalle Lyytinen and Vladislav Fomin.

Epistemic Infrastructure. This refers to major collections -- libraries, archives, museums, galleries, zoos, aquaria -- that together are often referred to as "cultural institutions," but that more importantly constitute the primary mechanisms for creation of knowledge communities. This research was primarily historical, tracing the rise of such institutions from classical antiquity through the early modern period, and on through the scientific and industrial revolutions. A major focus was on the implications of the Internet and other information infrastructure on the role of such institutions. This work was done for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). My collaborator was Margaret Hedstrom.

Higher education. This is the area in which I am now working, mostly as a "doer" and less as a researcher. However, I still get a chance to do research, mainly in the form of reflective practice. I started working in this araa through study of the University of California's systems for articulation agreement (the way students from community colleges get into the UC system). This work was done mainly by Suzanne Schaefer. I also looked at the California Virtual University's information systems support. Since moving to Michigan I have been a member of the Board of the Michigan Virtual University (a misnomer: all of MVU's work is in K-12), but it started in higher education; and in work conducted for the National Science Foundation and the Computing Research Association.

The key objectives of the work remain to identify the ways in which major organizational and institutional constraints on system use arise, and how they can be addressed in design and development.