http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3200 2013-05-18T12:13:03Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3256 Title: The Virtual University as 'Timely and Accurate Information' Authors: Pollock, N. Abstract: This article investigates the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning System in a redbrick university in the UK. The first part is concerned with the way in which the Implementation Project Team has come to conceptualise its task or mission and represent it both to itself and to the rest of the University. On one hand, the discussion is about the rolling-out of a rather mundane information system, purchased simply as a replacement for an out of date system called 'MAC'. On the other, for some people, the system amounts to a large, and complex – almost mythical - model of the University, a kind of ‘Virtual University’. Specifically, the article is interested in one particular phrase, script, or mantra that appears over and over as the accepted rationale, mission and justification for the project: the ‘provision of timely and accurate information’. It is argued that the phrase helps to mediate the boundary between how the Project Team and others understand the University as a whole, and the ways in which it is, could be, and should be changing. The second part of the article is focused on the way in which those implementing the new system are attempting to move the University from an old (seemingly ‘chaotic’) model to a new (supposedly ‘ordered’) ‘informational model’. 2000-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3255 Title: Post local forms of repair: The (extended) situation of virtualised technical support Authors: Pollock, N.; Williams, R.; D'Adderio, Luciana; Grimm, C. Abstract: We address the seemingly implausible project of moving the technical support of complex organisational technologies online. We say ‘implausible’ because from the point of view of micro-sociological analysis and the influential work of Julian Orr (1996) there is a consensus that the diagnosis and resolution of technical failures is an intrinsically ‘localised affair’ (i.e., rooted within a specific place and time). Notwithstanding this view, technology producers have been pushing in the recent period to develop online forms of support. Today, and particularly in the area of organisational software, many technical failures are now repaired at a distance. How is this possible given the consensus amongst sociologists? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a major software producer we show how repair work has been recast and inserted in a new geographical and temporal regime. This has implications for how sociologists of technology conceptualise the nature and practice of technical failure but also the time and situation in which it occurs. We attempt to refocus understandings of technical problems from a preoccupation with their rootedness onto how they are lifted out of local contexts and passed around globally distributed offices in search of requisite specialist expertise. Importantly, whilst virtualisation appears a seemingly effective means to resolve failures it also has negative consequences. Whereas in more traditional types of technical support place-based social relations are seen to bear the burden of controlling and regulating support, in online forms other means have to be found. Our conceptual aim is to move away from a view of repair revolving exclusively around the situation conceived of as a ‘small place’. Rather, since support work is increasingly ‘stretched out’ across a global network of labs connected up by technologies, it now takes place across an extended situation. We work up this notion first to highlight how aspects once seen as central to localist forms of analysis are no longer the only organising features as technical work moves online and second to demonstrate the various ways in which the locales for this work are now mediated by technology. 2009-10-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3254 Title: The 'self-service' student: building enterprise-wide systems into universities Authors: Pollock, N. Abstract: This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with particular roles and responsibilities – a self-service user. The notion of ‘self-service’ is deployed as an integral part of the system rollout where students are to view, input and modify administrative and financial information on themselves and their courses. Drawing from the sociology of science and technology, and material from a three-year ethnographic study, we describe the system’s implementation in a British university. While accepting of the need for an ERP system the campus community reject self-service. However, as we will show, because Campus Management is a ‘global product’ unwanted functionality can be difficult to resist outright and this can have important implications for the autonomy of the university and the reshaping of fundamental principles and relationships. 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3253 Title: Fitting Standard Software Packages to Non-Standard Organisations: The 'Biography' of an Enterprise-Wide System Authors: Pollock, N.; Williams, R.; Proctor, R. (external) Abstract: This paper investigates the development and implementation of a generic off-the-shelf computer package and the competing pressures for standardisation and differentiation as this package is made to fit new organisational settings. The particular focus is on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and its application within universities. In order for the ERP system to fit this setting a new module called ‘Campus’ is being developed. We followed the module as the current ‘generic user’ embodied in the software was translated to a more ‘specific user’ (a number of universities piloting the module) and back once again to a generic form of university user (the potential ‘global university marketplace’). We develop the notion that these systems have a ‘biography’, which helps us to analyse the evolution of software along its life cycle and provides insights into the different dynamics at play as Campus is translated for use in a number of institutions and countries. The study draws on over three years of ethnographic research conducted in a British University and a major ERP Supplier. 2003-09-01T00:00:00Z