Communication as Design

Getting pragmatic

“…Going back to Lyytinen's (2006) point about co-constitutiveness, defining anything in any coding system using any process is a theoretical enterprise with (perhaps non-explicit) reasons for the codes and their application. In defining the world we also create worlds and these have to be undone whenever a system is changed (Aakhus, 2007). How then, do we judge coding systems and other kinds of actions?…”

Symbolic Action Research in Information Systems: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…It seems that the foregrounded psychologism paired with a strong bias toward representation theory anchored in the IS community impedes developments of information systems design approaches grounded in symbolic action. Of great importance for improving IT design practices is to recognize how IT artifacts embody theories of communication and therefore their design is concerned essentially with theorizing about communication (Aakhus 2007). The challenge, then, is how to impact these biases in a positive way (i.e., how to change the way people conceive the ontological, deontological, and axiological nature of an information system).…”

“…As noted, each information system designed to support human interaction makes assumptions about a range of matters, including but not limited to the symbolic acts to be performed, the taking of turns, identities to be managed and displayed, commitments invoked, the means to repair coherence and coordination, and, finally, what the system use is about (Aakhus 2007;Ågerfalk 2004). Information systems design and the process of design is thus implicitly theory laden (Jackson and Aakhus 2014).…”

CSR Infrastructure for Communication and the Nike Controversy

“…To emphasize the importance of misunderstanding, disagreement, and opposition, communication and interaction is defined here in a pragmatic sense (Aakhus, 2007). Recently there has been a turn to apply design to managerial and professional practices because it explains the construction of forms of communication that are otherwise difficult, impossible, or yet to be imagined.…”