Editorial

Citation

Whitley, E.A. and Wynn, E. (2004), "Editorial", Information Technology & People, Vol. 17 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2004.16117aaa.001

Editorial

One of the aims of Information Technology & People is to encompass the breadth of scope of its research settings and methods. This issue nicely highlights this breadth. We have papers on ERP systems, accessibility of Web sites, on gender and families. The research approaches range from in-depth case studies to surveys.

This issue contains two papers on enterprise resource packages. The first, by Jannis Kallinikos, is a think piece that questions the procedural standardization of administrative practices. Kallinikos looks at the behavioural side effects of human involvement in administrative work.

The paper by Neil Pollock and James Cornford, in contrast, explores the implementation of an ERP system in a UK university. They have studied this implementation over a number of years and in this paper seek to understand the system in terms of configuring it for a university setting and the role of “business” defaults in these packages. They also analyse the implementation in terms of notions of biography and translation.

Neil Selwyn studies the role that children play in adults adopting and using computers. Selwyn’s results, drawing on survey and interview data, highlight that there are no simple relationships in this area.

The paper by Roma Harris and Margaret Ann Wilkinson is a survey of students’ perceptions of various forms of IT work and provides important insights in perceptions of gender and salary for jobs in this area. With the rapid growth of information-related work, knowing how these jobs are understood is increasingly important.

The final paper by Eleanor Loiacono and Scott McCoy explores another important area of the information society, namely the accessibility of corporate (commercial Web sites). They provide a survey of a number of Web sites and discuss the role of policy mandates (as found, for example, in state-funded Web sites) in making Web sites accessible for all people and for all devices.

Changes to the editorial board

We are pleased to announce a number of changes to the editorial board of ITP. In order to continue the excellent reviewing service we have provided for authors submitting to the journal, we have invited a number of colleagues to join the editorial advisory board.

We have also made a number of changes to the associate editors. Cathy Urquhart has become an associate editor for MIS Quarterly and so has stepped down as an AE for ITP. We wish Cathy every success in this new role and thank her for ongoing support of the journal over the years.

We also welcome Robert Davison and Karl Kautz as new associate editors for the journal. Full details of the associate editors and editorial advisory board can be found on the review management Web site: www.itandpeople.org

Edgar A. Whitley, Eleanor Wynn