Julien Malaurent

ESSEC - Ecole Supérieur des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales · Department of Information Systems, Decision Sciences and Statistics

This 15th OAP workshop jointly organized by LSE (ISIG, Management department), Université Paris Dauphine-PSL (DRM) and ESSEC (Metalab) will be an opportunity to come back to the issue of democracy and democratic practices in and through organization(s). In particular, we will explore the following questions: how can communities and citizenship be f...

Call for papers of the 14th Organization, Artifacts & Practices (OAP) workshop jointly organized by Université Paris Dauphine-PSL (DRM), ESSEC and ESSEC Metalab. This event will be an opportunity to come back to the issue of Artificial Intelligence and its relationship with the history, philosophy and politics of management and organization.

The close relationship between the concepts of information systems and information technology creates issues for researchers. Usefully distinguishing between the concepts is problematic. We investigate the use of the systems concept in practice, finding a pragmatic distinction between an information system (IS) and an information technology system...

CFP of the 12th Organizations, Artifacts and Practices (OAP) workshop about "Posthumanist Organizing and Posthumanist Management".

Action research (AR) has developed extensively since the 1970s. We reviewed the AR literature within the information systems (IS) discipline and found 16 different methods, which constitutes a problematic situation for researchers. We describe and critique those methods before integrating their strengths to improve the AR method that is most freque...

This paper illuminates the role of activity theory in addressing theoretical and practical challenges raised by the growing role of digital technology in human activity. We explore and review the role of activity theory in the study of crucial digital technologies such as social media, smartphones, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and algorithm...

The focus of this edited volume is first enunciated, in the context of the Organizations, Artefacts and Practices Workshop Series, together with its intended readership. This is followed by a short literature review of the literature on New Ways of Working (NWW) in order to position the contribution of the volume, compared to recently published boo...

Living labs gather individuals and organizations with different interests (private, public, non-profit) in open infrastructures around common goals. They are clusters aiming to organize partnerships on a territory, support interaction among stakeholders, and bridge academic knowledge with lay knowledge by providing “access to technology-related fac...

This volume focuses on new ways of working, and explores implications of these new practices with a particular emphasis on the place occupied by technology, materiality and bodies within contemporary working configuration. It draws together an international range of scholars to examine diverse subjects such as: the gig economy, social media as a wo...

Action research (AR) has developed extensively since the 1970s. We reviewed the AR literature within the information systems (IS) discipline and found 16 different methods, which constitutes a problematic situation for researchers. We describe and critique those methods before integrating their strengths to improve the AR method that is most freque...

Theme and objectives of OAP 2021 Time and temporality have long been central issues in Social Sciences and in Management & Organization Studies (MOS) in particular. Designing the Gregorian calendar was both theologically and politically meaningful for the Catholic Church. Likewise, many ‘temporal’ artifacts, such as the mechanical clock, time cloc...

Based on a four‐year longitudinal case study of a French multinational corporation (MNC) this research explains how a global enterprise system, initially designed to provide greater control by headquarters across its MNC sites, led to the emergence of unexpected practices – known as workarounds – in its Chinese subsidiaries. Drawing on concepts fro...

CFP of the 10th Organizations, Artifacts & Practices (OAP) worksop which will be hosted by University of California, Berkley on June, 24th-25th 2020. The topic will be "Responsibility and Accountability in the Digital Era".

The concept of territory is important, because the history of information systems (IS) is linked to the issue of representation. This chapter presents different visions of the concept of the organizational territory and the information systems territory. Territory can play a strategic role in the organization thanks to learning processes and can pr...

Territorial trajectories are more uncertain, because the stakeholders who shape these trajectories are more mobile and less attached to and dependent on a certain territory. Global players choose their territories and their locations on a global scale. Production processes become fragmented, with the companies involved constantly making choices bet...

This chapter focuses on global organizational governance and the nature of information systems (IS) governance. It reviews the challenges of global governance. The chapter defines IS governance and its objectives. It considers IS governance viewed through several possible scenarios: an outsourcing strategy, the potential pooling of resources and a...

Alignment requires an objective, an outcome and a measurement. This chapter propose an analysis of information system alignment and governance by audit. This approach tends to demonstrate the importance of existing frameworks and repositories for the management of an open, multi‐stakeholder territory. The information system audit adopts the general...

The information systems strategy sets objectives that are then defined by the modalities of information systems governance. The strategy helps define how the information system should contribute to value creation for the company and clarifies the role of the various stakeholders. Steering is an important aspect of governance, since its effectivenes...

Urbanization is a historical movement portraying the increase in the numbers of city dwellers in relation to the general population. Corporate management draws on the principles of urban planning and translates them within its business for its information system. The urbanization of an information system is an advanced process that provides a frame...

Information systems (IS) governance is strongly correlated to the governance model implemented by the company directors in relation to their strategic business units, regional offices and subsidiaries. In large, centralized organizations, the IS management committee plays a key role. Responsibility for the strategy and steering of the information s...

This chapter describes the development of the technological environment of information systems (IS) stakeholders. It shows the impact of this development on organizational management. The chapter defines the unit of analysis required in order to conduct appropriate IS management. The integration of organizational IS led to new, networked patterns o...

A business strategy is a vision, a strategic intent. This chapter describes the alignment between business strategy and information system strategy. It focuses on the contribution of the information system and new technologies to the strategy, and the information system's transformative contribution both to operational excellence and to new busines...

Le management du système d’information dans sa complexité a pour vocation de sensibiliser les responsables des organisations aux enjeux soulevés par les systèmes d’information (SI). Par son caractère pédagogique, il entend faire en sorte que les questions relatives au SI ne soient pas laissées aux seuls experts du domaine.L’ouvrage associe et analy...

We discuss the cyclical nature of action research (AR) in information systems (IS) and contrast it with other research approaches commonly used in IS. Often those who conduct AR investigations build on their professional expertise to provide a valuable service to a client organization while at the same time furthering knowledge in their academic fi...

The relevance of action research as a research method in the information systems (IS) discipline is not disputed. Nevertheless, the extent to which action research is published in good journals is infrequent enough to indicate a serious problem. In this article, we explore the reasons underlying this situation and make recommendations aiming to inc...

In this paper, we argue that reflexivity should be as essential a component of interpretive studies as the much vaunted rigour and relevance. We propose a classification of three forms of reflexivity for interpretive studies: self-reflexivity, domain reflexivity and collaborative reflexivity. We use a case study of a project from a French public or...

In this paper, we suggest an alternative way of producing Information Systems (IS) case studies in which researchers act as narrators of stories following the spirit and techniques of the French New Novel (FNN). As such, authors attempt to represent the richness of a problem situation. The readers’ role is more demanding compared to traditional cas...

Even though the idea of science enjoys an impressive reputation, there seems to be no precise conception of science. On the one hand, there is no unified definition of the extension of activities subsumed under the notion of science. According to the narrow conception that is common in Anglo-Saxon countries, science is restricted to those disciplines...

This paper suggests that there is too much emphasis on the requirement for theory use and theory building in qualitative research published in our leading journals. We discuss six concerns that we have that relate to this high status of theory in such papers. We argue for what we refer to as ‘theory light’ papers where theory plays no significant p...

Cet article etudie le cas de la traduction du Balanced Scorecard (BSC) dans l’armee de terre francaise sous le prisme de la theorie de l’acteur reseau. Cette etude montre que cette traduction a ete chaotique, et a necessite de nombreux retours aux phases initiales de problematisation et d’enrolement. Elle a ete facilitee des lors que l’outil, au-de...

This article follows on from a case study discussed in Avison and Malaurent (2007) which described a largely unsuccessful implementation of a French multinational corporation’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) project in its Chinese subsidiaries. Many features imposed by the ERP template did not fit in the Chinese context. This present article de...

This paper discusses how research with practitioners can help reconcile the top-down requirements of headquarters with the bottom-up local needs in the context of global information systems. Based on a 12-month canonical action research project that took place at the Chinese branches of a French multinational corporation, our research revealed and...

In this rejoinder we discuss six commentaries to our earlier debates and perspectives paper ‘Is theory king?: questioning the theory fetish in information systems’. We argue again for theory light rather than theory free papers, we discuss the potential scope of theories in information systems, we reflect on our terminology and exemplar paper, and...

In this rejoinder we discuss six commentaries to our earlier debates and perspectives paper `Is theory king?: questioning the theory fetish in information systems’. We argue again for theory light rather than theory free papers, we discuss the potential scope of theories in information systems, we reflect on our terminology and exemplar paper, and...

This case study examines the process by which a startup in the resource-constrained environment of India was able to develop an innovative mobile payment solution using resource bricolage, recombining elements at hand. We illustrate how the startup, facing internal resource constraints and operating in an infrastructure and regulatory constrained e...

The association "Pole Bio" has created a multi-tenant project called “Melibio” to support organic agriculture in the Massif Central region, France. Pole bio is intending to manage this project for a three years period (2011-2014) to improve knowledge sharing in the organic farming field. And this focus group is specifically interested in meadows co...

This paper suggests that there is too much emphasis on the requirement for theory use and theory building in qualitative research published in our leading journals. We discuss six concerns that we have that relate to this high status of theory in such papers. We argue for what we refer to as ‘theory light’ papers where theory plays no significant p...

In this paper we attempt to show the actual and potential contribution of qualitative research in information systems. We looked at two recent volumes (2011-12) of MISQ, EJIS and SIM and found that there were a low proportion of qualitative papers in MISQ, a balance of qualitative to quantitative papers in EJIS and a high proportion of qualitative...

In this comparative case study research, we reflect on two enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation stories at two large petrochemical companies in China. These companies implemented the same ERP system in a similar time span (though not at the same time). They are two very large Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and in this paper we...

This paper discusses the potential of qualitative research in providing insights into the domain of information systems through a brief overview of some recent examples: action research to understand information systems development at a bank; hermeneutics to understand the purchasing behaviour of individuals using the Internet; conversation analysi...

This paper looks at virtual teams issues through the lens of the Organizational Behavior (OB) literature. We underline how the actual challenges faced by virtual teams were articulated centuries ago: the management of geographical, temporal and social distance. Nevertheless, it seems that Open Source Software communities succeed in building strong...

In this paper we present potential insights provided by Giddens' structuration theory to study the effects of cultural differences experienced by western companies establishing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in their Chinese subsidiaries. We use the data from a case study of a French firm's ERP project in its Chinese subsidiary to demo...

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are central to the Information Systems (IS) strategy of most international companies. With globalization, general managers put pressure on IS departments to implement such applications at a global level, in order to control and manage all the company processes at the different branches. Rolling out a globa...

ERP systems are central to the information systems (IS) strategy of most international companies. With the global economy, there is pressure to implement such applications at a global level, in order to control and manage all the company processes at all sites. However, rolling out a global template in each of the different countries is risky as it...