Complexity and Social Networks Blog: Vendor Driven Theory

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5 March 2008

Vendor Driven Theory

VENDOR-DRIVEN Theory: a vendor's conception or mental scheme of something to be done, or of the method of doing it;

As we are moving into network society, we need to be aware of the phenomenon of vendor-driven theorizing and able to critically reflect vendor-driven theories.

- When we talk about theory, it makes sense to distinguish between theories observing the world and theories shaping the world. Let us call the first, explanatory theories (e.g. Newtonian Physics) and the second constitutive theories ( Liberal Democracy). Of course, most theories are hybrids (think Marxism, Liberalism, or Confucianism), but we can distinguish when hybrid theories observe or shape.

- I use the term vendor-driven theories to talk about situations in which a supposedly neutral software application or management approach introduces a substantive theory into a process. Think of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management in the business world in the 1990s as examples of how the software changed the theory of how business was done.

- ERP and CRM vendors, integrated solution providers, and consulting firms have recently discovered the public sector as the next market for existing software applications. ERP has been re-christened GRP, as in Government Resource Planning and CRM, CiRM, as in Citizen Relationship Management. Government officials and public administrators have been happy to take up the ideas pitched to them and are implementing.

- What is interesting is to ask of course, in how far the analogy between ERP and GRP and CRM and CiRM works and where it breaks down? We also have to ask in how far these vendor-driven theories carry transformative potential and if it corresponds with our ideas about how governance should be organized.

This posting is indebted to Alexander Schellong, Hasnain Bokhari, and Philipp Zimmermann. In discussions with them I developed an appreciation for the amazing/scary transformative power of vendor driven theorizing. I believe it is an important term to introduce into the debate, which I hereby do.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at March 5, 2008 12:30 AM

Comments

A couple of thoughts on this, hopefully to further dialog:

As to 'network society': One view would hold that humans have always been a network society, since the dawn of the race. The ingrained social nature of the species means there are, perforce, networks. Perhaps a useful demonstration is to consider your own affairs: are they embedded, unavoidably, in a web of social connections? Certainly from long before you could use a computer?

_Then_ we can ask: How has externalization of these nets, in more tangible form, via the web, affected age-old practice? The question has arisen here repeatedly. On one end is reinforcement of existing relations, perhaps with new tools now available. On another end is, perhaps, the enabling of new relations.

As to 'theories observing the world and theories shaping the world': Long practice has surfaced the distinction between positive and normative theorizing. Do we need to modify this long-standing distinction, in the new terms suggested? The existing has served well - perhaps there is some need for revisiting?

Maintaining the distinction between thought and action seems to be fundamental. Conceptualization will be with us, whether acting or thinking. But the existing duo - thinking and acting - seems to serve well. No?

Hopefully someone else can take forward the interesting comments here on the evolution to public sector ERP and CRM.

Posted by: David Allen at March 6, 2008 9:52 AM

Dear David,

thank you for your comments. Let me start with your last comment:

(a) I would argue that the explanatory/constitutive dichotomy is as established as the positive/normative or the thinking/acting dichotomy but has a slightly different focus. I agree that 'theories observing the world and theories shaping the world' is a bit over the top, but necessary, when we want to observe/reflect how our theories of society shape the societies we live in.

(a) Network Society: I think your interpretation is valid and an avenue that needs to be pursued (as in mapping or extending the social graph), however, what I meant goes beyond it. The question is not if human relations could always have been described through the framework of the network (explanatory theorizing by an outside observer), but that today humans imagine their societies as networks (constitutive theorizing by the observed). This transformation in our social imagination is comparable to the transformation in the 17th Century, when the image of the "body politic" - society as a body was replaced by contract society (Hobbes, Locke, Rawls, etc.). More on this issue at www.philippmueller.de

Posted by: Philipp Mueller at March 7, 2008 4:19 PM

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