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The University of Southampton
CORMSIS Centre for Operational Research, Management Sciences and Information Systems

CORMSIS Seminar "An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove": The Embodiment of the Platform Logic in the Emergency Sector" - Stan Karanasios Event

Date:
25 February 2021
Venue:
Please email Huan Yu for a link to the virtual seminar

For more information regarding this event, please email Huan Yu at Huan.Yu@southampton.ac.uk .

Event details

Despite increasing attention to the role of social media platforms in emergencies, research has tended to focus on citizen use or how they are deployed by single organizations. We draw on the concept of institutional logics to examine the transformative impact of social media platforms in the emergency sector. A qualitative theory-generating case study of the emergency sector is undertaken, comprised of interviews with 29 organizations including emergency response organizations, government agencies, NGOs, private organizations, and community groups. Our contribution is to articulate a theoretical understanding of the influence of platforms on dominant ‘command and control’ and ‘community’ logic, the organizational responses that such influence generates, and the rise of new information practices. We show that the information practices adopted by the organizations are dependent not only on the dynamics of the organizational field, but also on which logic an organization mostly embodies, and the resultant tensions that shape how organizations enact platforms. We propose a model that reveals that organizational context and sector dynamics are pivotal arbiters of how the organizations reinforce, compartmentalize, or hybridize of the command and control logic with the community logic. The model suggests that the way that platforms are interpreted and enacted can reinforce and alter the logics. We also develop a matrix to capture the interconnections of information practices at sector level and how they embody both logics to account for diverse needs of citizens.

Speaker information

Associate Professor Stan Karanasios, recently joined the University of Queensland Business School. Previously he worked at RMIT University and the University of Leeds, where he has a visiting position. His current research focuses on the interaction between new information and communication technologies and society and in particular the impact of digitalisation/digital transformation in a range of settings. His research has been used to inform policy, drive organisational change and design systems. He has published in leading information systems and information management journals, including: MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, and the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. He has been awarded research grants from a range of government and industry sources and worked on large scale European Union funded projects. In addition to his research work he has undertaken a range of consulting work for industry and international bodies such as the United Nations.

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