Editorial

Citation

(2006), "Editorial", Information Technology & People, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2006.16119baa.001

Editorial

This issue of Information Technology & People contains three top quality research papers. The first, by Torkil Clemmensen, entitled “Whatever happened to the psychology of human-computer interaction?” provides a fascinating study of a classic publication in the field of HCI research, namely the “Psychology of human-computer interaction” by Stuart Card, Tom Moran and Alan Newell published in 1983. The author undertakes a detailed bibliometric style study to explore the ways in which this research has been utilised in the literature, showing how this classic piece of research relates to alternative approaches to studying HCI.

The second paper, by Anne-Laure Fayard, entitled “Interacting on a video-mediated stage: the collaborative construction of an interactional video setting” provides a fascinating study of the ways in which the use of video technology mediates interactions. The author describes four waves of observational data of MBA students interacting by videoconference in the context of a distributed course between Europe and Asia, with the students working in virtual teams on a consulting project. She draws on Irving Goffman’s influential theatrical metaphor for understanding interactions and shows how participants develop a number of practices to orchestrate their interactions and construct a stage on which they can interact. It argues that the stage does not only refer to a spatial frame of reference, but that it also refers to a shared social context, a “place” that participants collaboratively construct.

The final paper, by Robert Willison, on “Understanding the offender/environment dynamic for computer crimes” opens up a fascinating new approach for understanding the ways in which computer crimes can arise. In the paper, the author reviews three criminological theories to the IS security context and applies them to the infamous case of Barings Bank whereby the actions of one rogue trader were led to the collapse of the oldest merchant bank in the city (of London’s) Square Mile.

Each of these papers demonstrates ITP’s commitment to developing new methods and theories for perceiving and understanding the relationship between IT and organizations and we continue to actively encourage such innovative research.