In developing countries, territorial planners are confronted with rapid urbanization and its inherent solid waste management (SWM) which has increased public health risks, and generated environmental and socioeconomic problems too. To analyze these issues, a University campus (as a scaled city) was studied applying the Actor-Network Theory to find key elements to take into account for sustainab...

until her retirement in 2013. This department in fact presents Information Systems: The name may be misleading. Trish is now Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa, a very large distance education university.

The basic argument presented in the paper is that actor network theory has often been forced to adopt the ontology of interpretivism and thus suppress its own ontology. Interpretivism is socio-constructivist in nature but ANT is not. Therein lies the gap, a gap that is traversed by using an assumed flexibility of ANT which thus allows it to be used as a lens within the interpretivist ontology. ...

Recent critiques have drawn important attention to the depoliticized consensus and empty promises embedded in network discourses of educational policy. While acceding this critique, this discussion argues that some forms of network analysis – specifically those adopting actornetwork theory (ANT) approaches actually offer useful theoretical resources for policy studies. Drawing from ANT-inspired...

This paper presents an Actor Network Theory (ANT) analysis of a computer hack at a large university. Computer hacks are usually addressed through technical means thus ensuring that perpetrators are unable to exploit system vulnerabilities. We however argue that a computer hack is a result of di erent events in a heterogeneous network embodying human and non-human actors. Hence a secure organiza...

The dominant view in the information systems (IS) and software engineering literature is that the application of a rigorous pre-investment evaluation methodology is the key to ensuring the selection of the best IS projects – that is those with the highest expected value for the organisation and with the highest probability of success. While the literature is replete with methodologies for the e...

Only 25% of bank customers currently use online banking in Australia. The banks want more people to use their online services, not just for transaction histories and transfers, but also for other services such as loan and credit card applications. This paper discusses the use of actor-network theory as a lens to view online banking practices in Australia. We explore the heterogeneous user group...

Superficially, Actor Network Theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) are radically opposed research traditions. Written from a realist perspective, this paper asks whether there might be a basis for finding common ground between these two traditions. It looks in turn at the questions of realism, structure, and agency, analysing the differences between the two perspectives and seeking to identify...

Pre-investment evaluation of information system (IS) project proposals persists to be problematic and highly risky in practice. Numerous evaluation approaches and methodologies offered in the literature have not contributed to major improvements in practice. We propose here a radical departure from the dominant conceptions in IS evaluation literature by adopting Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to pr...

Business Process Management (BPM) projects deal with two apparently opposite goals: on the one hand, they perform a formalization of the practices by means of business process models; while on the other hand, they simultaneously aim at achieving flexibility. This paper discusses how organizations deal with these two apparently conflicting goals in practice. To accomplish this, a case study is p...