In recent years, the topic of trust has become the focus of renewed attention in organizational theory and research and, in particular, where electronic distribution and associated `virtual' forms of organizing are prevalent. The question of trust, always an issue in financial transactions, is exacerbated the more the physical element is removed. The paper focuses on the issue of trust as it currently appears in the newest of these distribution channels, online and Internet financial services, and smart cards. In both theory and practice, notions of trust are often opposed to concepts such as power or control, and are deployed as part of a dualistic either/or proposition. Drawing on ongoing research in the financial services sector, the paper attempts a more nuanced exploration by focusing on attempts to `manage' trust, the problems such attempts encounter, the various techniques employed in their resolution and the power relations in which they are embedded
User involvement is recommended to analysts as a technique of successful system development, but as a process it is little understood. This case study compares four process models of user involvement–learning, conflict, political and garbage-can-with each other and with an empirical example of system development. Different models are seen as appropriate to explaining the nature of user involvement in different stages of development and contexts. Structural conditions and issues of power are shown to be decisive in the development of conflict and conflict resolution. A two-stage model of user involvement based on Robey and Farrow's work (1982) is proposed which distinguishes conflict development from conflict resolution.
Research on the relationship between computers and organization structure has mainly focused on the probable impact of technology on features of structure, while the effects of structure on technology have been relatively little considered apart from the way 'organizationally invalid' systems cause conflict and resistance. In recent processual perspectives, the relationship between technology and organization is seen not as deterministic but as one of mutual influence, with the outcome both for the organization and the technology emerging from interaction among various stakeholders during system development and implementation. This article, using a longitudinal case study, shows how organization structures can impact on the development process so as to alter computer-based systems to a design which is unintended but more consistent with existing organizational arrangements. It also discusses how systems specialists and managers can assess organizational invalidity, and offers a contingent framework for the courses of action to be taken if invalidity occurs.
By the late 1990s the notion of the `virtual' had become a key term in attempts to render meaningful the changes being brought about by new information and communication technologies on extant forms of enterprise and organizing. Many commentators had already identified the financial services sector as a site where the transformative powers of the new electronic technologies would be most visibly enacted. Drawing upon a two-year ethnographic investigation of a range of financial services organizations, the paper analyses fin de siecle enactments of the `virtual' in terms of three closely interrelated problematics: virtuality as electronic mediation, virtuality as mimesis and virtuality as disposal. The paper uses the case of Mondex—a project to implement a smart card alternative to cash—as a vantage point from which to explore the performance of `virtuality' in social organization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.