The role of professional discourses in the organisational adaptation of information systems

This paper focuses on the role of professional discourses in shaping the contexts upon which the organisational role of information systems is constructed and adapted. It presents the results of an exploratory case study conducted at a Higher Education Institution in the UK during the implementation and post-implementation periods of a University-wide management information system. It analyses how different professional discourses explored tensions in the management of the information environment articulated around two major categories of issues, which acted as interpretative repertoires and discursive resources:

(i) representations of the information environment, expressed through the tension between information centripetalism and information centrifugalism;

(ii) models of information management approaches, expressed through the tension between a focus on controlling process and a focus on negotiating meanings.

While simultaneously discursively exploring these tensions and establishing contacts across them through activities of organisational translation, different organisational actors reshaped and adapted the role of information systems from an initial centripetal agenda to a much more negotiated and distributed role.