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SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES:
A CASE STUDY IN THE UK BANKING SECTOR
Susan V. Scott
Information Systems Department
The London School of Economics
United Kingdom
Geoff Walsham
The Judge Institute of Management Studies
University of Cambridge
United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper describes case study based research on the use of innovative computer-based decision support
systems introduced into corporate lending processes in a major UK bank. It describes how the new technology
was implicated in shifting boundaries: within the sector as a whole and in specific organizational de-layering;
between local/global dimensions of the loans process; and in the status of expertise and personal/professional
risk. The case study is connected to broader debates in IS and social transformation through an analysis that
relates aspects of the empirical material to themes from social theories of reflexive modernization. Some
implications and conclusions are drawn for both the banking sector and IS research.
Keywords: Interpretivist perspective, banking industry, organizational change, strategic IS, computers and
society.
1. INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technologies highlight and accentuate some of the most important characteristics of the era in
which we live. Indeed, the radical impact of these technologies on modern western society may be compared to that of the
printed text. Together with the printed text, they can be regarded as modernity's "own media," bound up in the development
and expansion of modern institutions and increasingly mediating our experience of the world, especially certain important social
and economic exchanges (Giddens 1991). One such exchange, the risk assessment ...