Shaping Technology across Social Worlds
Shegaw Anagaw Mengiste - PhD thesis 2010
This thesis aims to address the challenges of successfully implementing, scaling and sustaining ICT interventions in developing countries. The thesis argues that an effective learning process is crucial for successful IS development and implementation. In this thesis, the focus is on understanding the dynamics of learning in IS projects with a specific orientation to the need for mutual learning among members of different social worlds.
Theoretically, the work draws on recent attempts to bridge the practice-based and cognitive accounts of learning, based on the concepts of negotiated order and social worlds from Anselm Strauss. Empirically this is studied in the context of a project aiming to introduce a computerised Health Information System in Ethiopia, where IS developers and public health domain experts collaborated. Specifically, the thesis seek to explore how tensions and conflicts may trigger learning among different stakeholders within and between multiple social worlds. This thesis describes HIS development, adaptation and implementation as a complex and dynamic process of change that involved the interaction, communication and negotiation of several stakeholders from different social worlds with varying interests, commitments, and values. Through the negotiated order of specific learning arenas, diverse stakeholders interacted, communicated and negotiated on a number of problems and issues including: data collection and reporting tools, existing work practices and routines, the application of computerised system to improve existing practices, and type of skills and knowledge required to develop and sustain the system.
Taking an interpretive approach, the researcher has documented the learning process through semi-structured interviews, informal discussions and interactions participant observation during meetings, discussions, workshops, seminars, and trainings, as well as document analysis (including official reports, strategic documents, memorandum of understandings, and e-mail conversations). The thesis contributes by introducing a new theoretical lens for conceptualizing HIS development as a process of learning across social worlds. This approach is useful as it improves our understanding of the role of learning in relation to the challenges of scaling, sustainability, and installed base cultivation.
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