Category Culture

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Working def: “Culture is an effort to provide a coherent set of answers to the existentialist situations that confront all human beings in the passages of their lives.” ~Daniel Yankelovich

One Perspective on Information Systems

Dec 10, ’10 1:30 PM

A semester has ended and I have been loaded with essays and articles on the basics of information systems.
What is information systems? One major purpose for the massive amount of reading materials was to train us to read for themes (as opposed to semantics). A thematic reading demands an understanding of form and also content/subject matter.

I hope to go back on all the readings for the purpose of differentiating as well as comparing the various ways in which a specific topic/subject matter can be explored. For example, I’d like to go back and see how the different authors understand “information,” “technology,” or “systems.”

One of the viewpoints that I find very interesting is Horst Rittel’s view of information systems. He has a lot to say about planning systems and planning information systems. I believe it’s one form of what others call the “social technical” (social technology) and his is a system that is filled with politics. In the vein of C.W. Churchman, it is a human information system that is composed of people and the fundamental elements are the values and worldviews of human beings.

I just read an article by a Libby Liu from the Huffington Post: “What are they hearing in North Korea These Days?” What kinds of information are the citizens getting and NOT getting? It’s interesting to think of the various types of information embied in various forms. There are communication channels that are controlled such as the internet and telephones. People are finding ways to work around the system by picking up telephone signals from China  as well as radio stations from South Korea to learn about what’s going on in their own country. There are also artifacts such as “Radios, issued by the state, have their dials fixed only to the regime’s broadcasts.” Even in this very common device, there is a summary of society’s politics, control, and oppression. It’s quite different from only having a few stations to listen to (in various rural areas I presume) because of the limitations in transmission service not the functionality of the device itself. There are also the interactions within the society for propogating information. Liu writes, “Through our contacts inside North Korea, we know listeners sometimes gather and listen together, and then spread information by word of mouth among friends and family.” This is a very powerful form of communication. As these intimate interactions are put together, they form an organized group of people who are building towards some kind of critical mass (article states 1 out of 24 million shortwave listeners). A North Korean defector says, “Relationships forged listening to broadcasts together are almost equal to [a] secret society that is simply not organized yet.” This is one form of an information system. Perhaps a self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, and learning from itself … or should I say, themselves.

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Creativity, Organizations, and Identity

Dec 30, ’08 6:17 PM

Teresa M. Amabile & Mukti Khaire wrote an interesting article for October 2008′s HBR titled “Creativity and the Role of the Leader.”

To answer the question, “How can organizations foster a culture of creativity?” they propose 6 guidelines. One of them is open the organization to diverse perspectives. When they discuss enhancing diversity, they state three main points:

  1. Innovation is more likely when people with different backgrounds/disciplines participate.
  2. Open-source innovation is relevant today and may very well be the “future of innovation.”
  3. Diversity within an individual enhances creativity.

It’s the last point that I’m interested in. There has been a study of individuals and how their diverse identity can enhance creativity (Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks and Fiona Lee from Univ. of Michigan, and Chi-Ying Cheng of Columbia Univ.). Here is an excerpt from the HBR article:

Their reserach (Sanchez-Burks, Lee, Cheng’s) focuses on people who have multiple social identities, such as people who are both Asian and American, or who are both women and engineers. Social identities often have distinct knowledge associated with them, and to the extent an individual is comfortable integrating multiple identities, his or her knowledge sets can combine productively. Indeed, through two experiments, these researchers found that people with higher levels of “identity integration” display higher levels of creativity when problems require that they draw on their different realms of knowledge. (One experiment asked Asian Americans to invent new forms of Asian American fusion cuisine, and the other asked female engineers to imagine new features for a cell phone for women.) This research sparked a great deal of personal interest and has implications for management. If managers cause people to suppress parts of their identity, they limit potentially valuable sources of creativity. If managers can encourage identity integration – think of female engineers working in an environment where they don’t feel they have to dress like men – people may be more innovative.

It’s interesting to see that finding topics (topoi), or the places to find arguments, is not limited to things in this world as well as ideas in our minds. We can be topics, places of invention. The very nature of being an Asian and an American at the same time … or being an Asian American that can’t be broken down into more fundamental parts, is a place for finding new and interesting actions, feelings, and beliefs (For those who lack internal diversity, the article encourages seeking diverse life experiences).

Add to this a third layer, and what can that look like? For example, what would a car for Asian Americans look like? One part of my thesis deals with football + African + Korean + American (Hines Ward). Jackie Robinson is so powerful and interesting because he brought the concepts of baseball, African, and American together for the first time. Another example I can think of is R & B music which has its roots in a number of things. Even Elvis was an “innovation” or brought forth “innovation” because he was a fusion of Caucasian teen + Rock ‘n Roll.

As stated at the end of the quote above, there is a way to enhance creativity (and perhaps much more, such as culture) by simply understanding a subaltern culture – such as women engineers in an environment that understand them. A case I can think of where the people in charge took this to heart is found at the end of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Blink. For years, many orchestras conducted open auditions which resulted in an overwhelming selection of male performers. But in the 1980s, orchestras, as Gladwell writes, “started putting up screens in audition rooms, so that the committee could no longer see the person auditioning. And immediately — immediately! — orchestras started hiring women.” As in this example, organizational change does not have to be a long and strenuous process.

I think I have to think a bit more about management’s role in developing creativity.
From personal experience, I do know that it can kill creativity. There must be a way for management to enhance it or design for it …

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Notes to Self

Dec 20, ’08 9:43 PM

Just spent the afternoon reading and had a few random thoughts:

1. A THOUGHT ON GOING TO THE SOURCE

The origin or primary source of something is very important. Hence, knowing the arts (what guides one’s thinking) is just as important than trying to learn all the methodologies that one can choose from to understand a specific subject matter. It’s like having a framework.

Some examples:

  • When looking for concepts for my thesis, I came upon “assimilation/integration” as a possible process in which culture takes shape. This came from a reading of a book on Asian American cultural politics. I was also vaguely familiar with Raymond Williams. However, Dick’s suggestion to go to the source of both authors’ inspiration, Antonio Gramsci, provided a greater insight into a more fundamental concept – “hegemony,” a complex yet fascinating topic. [download thesis]
  • Donald Schon’s “designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting” = repackaging of John Dewey’s thoughts on “Having an Experience.”
  • Herb Simon’s thoughts on the artificial echo Aristotle’s thoughts on poetics.
  • Thoughts around “service design” started over a hundred years ago (ex. Kodak’s “You press the button, we do the rest“).

2. A THOUGHT ON DESIGNING PRACTICE & DESIGNING MANAGEMENT

Forlizzi writes that “Participatory Design” and “Experience Prototyping” are attitudinal rather than procedural/prescriptive methods [by Forlizzi]. Is this the same way “attitude” is used by Boland & Collopy when they describe design attitude v. decision attitude in Managing as Designing? [see previous post]

Forlizzi writes, “… the Product Ecology approach involves doing fieldwork over an extended period of time” in her article to show that a comprehensive understanding of people takes time. This is an important point about design research.

However in the context of the professional world, this is not as easy to implement. Due to constraints, such as budget issues, there’s a disconnect in taking our thoughts towards action. Perhaps designing management, with a similar attitude, may help in bridging the gap between what we would like to have done to what we can get done in our organizations.

3. A THOUGHT ON USER NEEDS

A lot of people talk about being obsessed with finding and identifying user needs. When new products create new habits (ex. we need toothpaste to support the activity of brushing our teeth but this is a 20th century product that didn’t exist in, say, the 15th century), have we created a new “need” or is this something that’s been a latent need in individuals all along? If this is an example of a latent need, is there an infinite amount of needs we can design for? Probably not. Or maybe there are certain core needs that can be addressed differently with the changing times. Hmm. [see previous post on habits]

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