INVITATION TO WORKSHOP at Centre for Business History, Copenhagen Business School IT in Shaping Organizations 8-9 June 2009 This workshop discusses the role of IT in shaping business practices and organizations, how different ways or fashions emerged of organizing jobs and businesses and how this should be analyzed. It will be based upon presentations of selected cases across trades and countries, and two invited discussants will initialize the discussions. Information technology started entering business organizations in the early twentieth century, as corporate bureaucracies were established to harvest the advantages of scale and scope in big companies. Computers entered businesses since the late 1950s and provided greatly improved technical possibilities, but it proved complicated to establish a fruitful interaction between people, organization, and technology. Several ways or fashions emerged of organizing jobs and businesses but not a single best way across trades and countries. Information technology became an essential component in shaping business since the 1960s and, consequently, business history studies need to pay more attention it. Possible yields from studying the role of IT in business organizations can be seen from JoAnne Yates' study of the United States life insurance industry and from the work of a group of historians studying IT in banking. In contrast most business history studies of businesses for the last 50 years note the emergence of computers, but they do not analyze their role in shaping business practices and organizations. Organizer: Lars Heide, Centre for Business History, CBS Secretary: Jens-Christian Sørensen, Centre for Business History, CBS Registration by Tuesday, 2 June 2009 to Jens-Christian Sørensen, e-mail: jcs.lpf@cbs.dk<mailto:jcs.lpf@cbs.dk> Registration is gratis. Program: Monday 8 June 2009 12.00: Lunch. Location TBA 13.30 - 18.00 afternoon session (coffee break 15.30-16.00) Chair: Lars Heide Commentator: Nathan Ensmenger, University of Pennsylvania, USA Lars Heide: Welcome to the Workshop. Torkil Clemmensen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark National and organizational styles in user interface design Jacob Nørbjerg, CBS The Quest for High Maturity, in a non-IDEAL world Robert Austin, Copenhagen Business School, DK. Research Commentary: Weighing the Benefits and Costs of Flexibility in Making Software. Toward a Contingency Theory of the Determinants of Development Process Design Lau Guldbrandt Dalgaard and Frederik Homann, Copenhagen Business School, DK. TexasPoker: Business Opportunities in the Shadow of Google 19.00: Dinner at CBS. Location TBA Tuesday 9 June 2009 09.00 - 12.00: Morning session Chair: TBA Lars Heide, Copenhagen Business School Punched Cards in German Management of Resources in the Second World War Commentator: David E. Nye, University of Southern Denmark Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, University of Leicester, UK
From cash machine to ATM: The development of on-line, real-time systems in British and Swedish savings banks, c.1967-1985
Commentator: Nathan Ensmenger, University of Pennsylvania, USA Joakim Appelquist, VINNOVA, Stockholm, SE Technical and Organizational Change in the Swedish Banking Sector 1975-2003 Commentator: Nathan Ensmenger, University of Pennsylvania, USA 12.00: Lunch 13.30 - 18.00 afternoon session (coffee break 15.30-16.00) Chair: TBA Commentator: David E. Nye, University of Southern Denmark Jonathan Aylen, Manchester University, UK. "You've got to roll with it": radical adoption of computers and changes to managerial routines at Llanwern steelworks, South Wales Gustav Sjöblom, Chalmars University of Technology, Sweden Computers in business - the Swedish way? Timo Leimbach, Karlsruhe, Germany.
From the flow of material to the flow of information - the challenge of computer systems and the development from MRP to ERP between1960s and 1990s
Jeffrey Yost, University of Minnesota, USA The Evolving US Computer Services Industry as a Lens into Understanding Organizational Boundaries of IT Operations, 1955-1980 Lars Heide Associate Professor, Dr. merc. Centre for Business History Copenhagen Business School Porcelanshaven 18A DK-2000 Frederiksberg DENMARK Tel: +45 3815 3027 Mob: +45 2383 4840 Fax: +45 3815 3635