Organizing technology

of hospitality

pp. 276-304

in: Chrisanthi Avgerou, Lanzara, Leslie Willcocks, Bricolage, care and information, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

"In a world populated by mobile, nomadic "hordes' … there will hardly be a hotter issue than the one of hospitality", so said Claudio Ciborra a decade ago (1999: 193, emphasis added). But what does or might hospitality denote now? And more specifically for our purposes, what kind of insights does the concept of hospitality offer to those studying the deployment and use of information technology? Ciborra suggests that an interest in hospitality is part of a fresh vocabulary and emerging landscape of inquiry for thinking differently about our relation to information technology. The implications of this preoccupation with hospitality for the field of information system research, with its long-held concerns for alignment, control and planning and related aspirations that privilege integration, coherence and complementary practices, is the focus of this chapter.