Inter-organisational Informattion Infrastructures - Structures, Practices, Development Patterns (IOII)

Basic data for this project

Description

The objective of this research project was to study the evolution of information infrastructures. Our research design aimed at empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions. Empirically we examined and reconstructed the historical development of a number of healthcare information infrastructures, such as drug dispensing, tracing and tracking, e-prescription and electronic patient records across different countries. Our empirical studies combine a historical perspective to explore contingencies and development paths over a couple of years and try to figure out changing rationales, explanatory frameworks as well as a transformation of sense-making. Methodologically we have used a broad range of exploratory methods (interviews, secondary analysis, workshops) and have developed and applied the approach of Practice Probes and Learning Communities. In consequence the research designs include macro level studies (historical development of national infrastructures) as well as micro level studies of collaboration and learning within regional constellation of practices. Theoretically we have continued to develop a practice theoretical notion of information infrastructures and their evolution. We have conceptualized information infrastructures as constellations of practices, which provides us with a level and unit of analysis which seems appropriate and productive for the study of infrastructures. Against this novel theoretical understanding of information infrastructures we have evaluated the power of several existing approaches to explain information infrastructure evolution, including evolutionary, dialectical and life cycle approaches. Many of the theoretical contributions that we have made in this project are (also) based on empirical material collected over the last ten years (as part of this and a previous DFG-funded project); likewise, much of the new empirical material has been collected in view of its role for future analyses; this especially concerns the rich data collected through ongoing work in the several Learning Communities only a small part of which has yet been used for systematic analysis. The establishment of these Learning Communities as well as the richness of the data that have already been created in these communities form the main methodological foundation for our future proposals.