Hypermedia, Information Systems and Organizations: an Agenda for Research

Although hypermedia systems are becoming more sophisticated and readily available as oo the shelf products , there are few hypermedia applications within business and industrial organizations. This paper argues that this phenomena is rooted in the concept of hypermedia applications as standalone programs. Larger acceptance of hypermedia within organizations will occur once this technology is better integrated with other organizational systems and applied to carefully selected tasks. The paper identiies three areas for research in this context: the tasks perspective, which deals with selecting tasks for which to develop hyper-media applications, the knowledge perspective, which deals with representing and managing the knowledge processed by organizations, and the integration perspective , which deals with technical issues in software integration. This paper suggests that solutions to the problems presented will prompt the acceptance of hy-permedia technology within organizations.