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
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
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