INFO 202 Chap.11 IT Management in Organizations
IT Management in Organizations
What Week 11 asks you to explain
Week 11 begins the practical part of the course. Its guiding questions concern how information technology is managed inside organizations, how people rather than machines shape the way systems are developed, and how managers can run IT so that it works for the organization and for the employees who use it every day.
The two assigned readings approach this from opposite ends: a software developer's account of the Boeing 737 Max disaster by Travis (2019), and the argument by Kling and Allen (1996) that computer science needs organizational informatics if it is to solve problems that are organizational at heart.
Organizational informatics and socio-technical failure
Kling, Rosenbaum and Sawyer, read in Week 1, give the field its name: social informatics studies bounded within a few organizations are called organizational informatics.
Their central empirical claim is that interventions centered on technology frequently disappoint, and that when they do the cause is seldom a pure technical fault. More often the system was designed around a poor grasp of workplace requirements, sits awkwardly beside the existing work flow, fails to address the problems of the professionals meant to use it, or pulls against the way the organization rewards people.
Project management mistakes account for some failures as well.
The 737 Max as a lens, not a data set
The widely known outline of the 737 Max case is enough for this week: after fatal crashes the aircraft was grounded, and attention turned to automated flight-control software acting on bad sensor input.
Travis is commonly read as arguing that software was being used to paper over engineering and commercial choices.
Use the case to practice a social informatics move: ask which organizational pressures shaped the design, and whether anyone examined the range of conditions in which pilots would meet the system.
Managing the human side of change
As extra background beyond the assigned readings, Rosenbaum, More and Steane (2018) survey planned change models and trace them to Lewin's unfreeze, move and refreeze.
They argue that Lewin is wrongly remembered as linear, because his three steps were bound up with action research, force-field analysis and group dynamics, which make change iterative.
Later models such as Kotter's steps or the Beckhard and Harris formula mostly specify how to carry out the phases Lewin had already set out.
What a strong answer does
A strong short answer resists two easy explanations, bad software and stubborn users, and replaces them with a named mismatch between system and work.
It then recommends involving the people who do the work in redesigning the system and the work practice together, which is the normative conclusion Kling and his co-authors draw from studies of user participation.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Week 11 questions: managing IT, the human factor, serving employees
- 02
Organizational informatics as social informatics bounded within organizations
- 03
Why organizational IT fails: technical, project management and socio-technical causes
- 04
Four socio-technical misfit modes named by Kling, Rosenbaum and Sawyer
- 05
The Boeing 737 Max read through a software developer's eyes
- 06
Lewin's unfreeze, move, refreeze and the action research loop
- 07
Resistance to change as information rather than obstacle
- 08
User involvement as the normative remedy
Worked example · free
Explain an underused workplace system without blaming the users
- 2Reject a purely technical explanation and state the socio-technical alternative.
- 3Name at least one specific misfit mode and tie it to evidence in the scenario.
- 2Recommend a response that involves staff in redesigning the system and the work.
Key terms
- Organizational Informatics
- The part of social informatics that studies information technology within a few specific organizations, especially how computerization shapes work and organizational structure.
- Socio-Technical Failure
- A failure that arises from the mismatch between a system and the work, people and incentives around it, rather than from a fault in the technology itself.
- User Participation
- Involving the people who will use a system in shaping its design and the redesign of their work, which research has linked to more effective use.
- Incentive Conflict
- A situation in which using a system works against how people are evaluated or rewarded, so rational employees avoid it; knowledge management systems are a classic case.
- Unfreeze Move Refreeze
- Lewin's three-step framework for planned change: loosen existing habits, shift to a new level of group performance, then make the new level permanent.
- Action Research
- An iterative cycle of fact-finding, planning, acting and evaluating that feeds back into change, which is why Lewin's model is not simply linear.
- Force-Field Analysis
- A technique for identifying and weighing the forces that drive a change and the forces that restrain it, used to decide where to act.
IT Management in Organizations FAQ
Why do so many IT projects fail even when the software works?
Research in social informatics finds that failures are more often socio-technical than technical. Designers misread workplace requirements, systems are not woven into existing routines, tools do not address users' real problems, or using them clashes with how staff are rewarded. Consultants often cite a 75 percent failure figure, but even Kling and his co-authors treat that as a favorite number rather than a measurement.
Is Lewin's change model really linear?
It is often taught as a simple sequence of unfreezing, moving and refreezing. Rosenbaum, More and Steane argue that reading drops the processes Lewin tied to it: action research loops back through fact-finding and evaluation, while force-field analysis and group dynamics shape each phase. On their account, many newer models add procedural detail to Lewin's framework rather than replacing it.
Exam move
Pick one workplace system you have used, such as a course registration or scheduling tool, and write four lines, one for each socio-technical misfit mode, saying whether it applies. Then sketch Lewin's three steps with the action research loop and place one realistic management action in each phase. Finally, practice rewriting a sentence that blames users into one that names a mismatch between system and work.
Working through IT Management in Organizations in INFO 202? Sia is AskSia’s AI Information Technology tutor — ask any INFO 202 IT Management in Organizations question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how INFO 202 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
