iSchool hosts Australian social informatics scholar Bruce Rowlands

Bruce Rowlands, senior lecturer in the School of Information & Communication Technology at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, will speak at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) at noon on Tuesday, Oct. 20, in the Katzer Room (Room 347) in Hinds Hall. His lecture, “A Power Perspective for Understanding the Business Client,” is part of the iSchool’s Brown Bag Series.

Rowland’s research interests are informed by the social informatics literature as a means for conceptualizing the social context of systems development. Rowlands teaches courses in information systems, the organizational impact of information and communications technologies (ICT), information systems management and qualitative research methods.

Rowlands will present reports on case research into the relations between developers and the business client and exploring the role that systems development methods can play in influencing this relationship. The research illustrated how the client is able to exercise power over systems developers by enacting organizational structures and routine operating procedures embedded within a development model.
The presentation will apply Lamb and King’s (2003) “user as social actor” model as a lens to analyze the case, as well as Hardy’s (1985) model of unobtrusive power. This model allows people to understand why in a scenario involving a conflict of interest developers cooperate with the business client.

Rowlands earned his Ph.D. in information systems at the University of Technology in Sydney. He has been published in numerous journals and has been invited to present at leading information conferences across the world. In 2006, Rowlands was a visiting researcher at Brunnel University in London.