DEVELOPMENT OF ICT IN PROFESSIONAL WORK
Ann Johansson
Department of Economics and Informatics
University of Trollhättan/Uddevalla
Box 795, 461 29 Uddevalla, Sweden
Keywords: professional work, profession, knowledge-intensive, systems development
Abstract: ICT plays a critical role in many organisations of today. It is important in well-tried systems development
methods as well as in recently improved object-oriented methods to support development of information
and communication technology in many different organisations. The methods provide prescribed and formal
ways to perform the development. This paper reports the results from two different studies performed. The
first is an ethnographical study in the NU health care organisation in Sweden and the second is a case study
carried out at the Wing of Såtenäs, an airbase within the Swedish Air Force and at Volvo Aero Corporation.
The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the character of professional work and its impact on
development of information and communication technology. Professions consist of special competences and
attitudes to the work they are performing. The professions of the health care workers and the flight
technicians can also point this out.
1 INTRODUCTION
The development of information and communication
technology can be made in many ways. Some
development projects are characterised by a hard
systems approach, where the system is clearly
specified from the beginning. This approach has
been the predominant way to develop systems from
the beginning. Other development projects have a
soft systems approach, where systems developers
and people from the user organisation in various
degrees are working together in the process of the
development (Checkland, 1993), (Dahlbom,
Mathiassen, 1993). Systems development methods
are often used within development projects, both
well tried as well as the recently improved object-
oriented methods. Methods are important because
they give experience and inspiration in collaboration
between systems developers (Mathiassen, Munk-
Madsen, Nielsen, Stage, 2001).
In the development process ICT aspects can be
found on of how different professions and
occupational competencies have an impact. In this
paper the development of ICT for professional work
is considered, in difference from systems to support
pure administrative routines. To develop ICT for
more knowledge-intensive work demands a deeper
understanding for the complexity of the work. This
problem of complexity is going to be of more and
more importance as both the knowledge-intensive
organisations and the intensity of the knowledge
increase (Alvesson, 1993). A definition about
knowledge-intensive work and professions is
therefore needed.
In different professions there can be used
different ”languages” and how they talk to each
other are important to stress. Different professions
are characterised by different cultures, which also
can have an impact on the ICT development. Some
professions can have more experience of ICT and its
facilities than others. Professional workers are often
influenced by its profession’s prestige, authority and
monopoly (Schön, 1991).
An ethnographical study has been performed in
the NU health care organisation in Sweden. Another
study is performed as a case study carried out at the
Wing of Såtenäs, an airbase within the Swedish Air
Force. The aim of this paper is to analyse the
character of professional work and its impact on
systems development.
2 RESEARCH METHOD
The ethnographical study is performed at a health
care organisation in Sweden, the NU Health Care
(Johansson, Lundh-Snis, Stahl-Falck, Svensson,
2001). Ethnography has been the method for
535
Johansson A. (2004).
DEVELOPMENT OF ICT IN PROFESSIONAL WORK.
In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 535-537
DOI: 10.5220/0002641205350537
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

collecting and analysing data from the empirical
settings (Hammersley, Atkinson, 1995).
The case study has been carried out at Volvo
Aero Corporation, where the development,
manufacturing and maintenance of jet engines take
place. Interviews and studies of the work practice
have also been made at the wing of Såtenäs
(Johansson, 1999), (Johansson, Snis, 1998),
(Johansson, 2003).
3 THE ANALYSIS OF WORK
In this chapter an analysis is done due to the
character of professional work in the studies
performed. The impact of the professional work on
ICT development is analysed in the two cases.
3.1 The Work in the NU health Care
Often the personnel in the NU health care, in ICT
development projects, experience that the IT
personnel express the specification of the ICT in
their own technical words. Words and expressions
are used, which the health care personnel do not
fully understand. However they think that the IT
personnel have got a good understanding of the
problems, that they only express themselves in their
own words. But the problem is often that the IT
personnel not have the fully comprehension of the
work activities and the systems under development,
which will be supportive to the organisation. Instead
they have a good knowledge of the technical
requirements of the system. The IT personnel know
very well how the new system should be adapted to
the network and so on.
Doctors and nurses belong to different
professions. They work with different activities.
They also have different perspectives on the use on
ICT.
The work in the health care is complex and often
unique situations will occur. The doctors and nurses
have to take care of patients with different injuries
and diseases. In the work they have to find out
diagnoses and treatment for the patients based on
different criteria. Though this work does not only
need knowledge, it also requires experience to find
out treatments for complex injuries and diseases.
They also have to type every kind of treatment and
other information about the patient in the medical
records.
Of cause there is progress within the knowledge
in the different professions. Expert knowledge
within specific areas is to be taken into account.
Therefore some documents have to be rewritten and
updated and distributed throughout the health care
organisation.
3.2 The work in the Aircraft
Maintenance
Sometimes standard systems are implemented and
used in different organisations. They are used as
advanced support to make organisations more
efficient. This objective was also obvious for the Air
Force in the maintenance work a couple of years
ago. An attempt to adapt a standard system to for
saving all the information about the aircraft has
failed. Even though a group from the information
department was involved in the adaptation process,
the system was never implemented. A reason for this
failure can be that it is too difficult to implement a
standard system in an organisation with complex
information handling.
Different professions have its own ranger’s
district. This can be proved when the flight
technicians have suggested photographing faults in
order to easier understanding of the faults. But to
analyse faults further is a work for the control
engineers, so the control engineers do not want the
flight technicians to take pictures.
It is not always easy to localise the faults
occurred at an aircraft. Often the flight technicians
need to use their sense of smell, hearing and sight to
understand what is the fault with the aircraft. The
trouble-shooting and trend analysis system gives an
indication about what the fault has to do with. The
flight technicians have to localise the real faulty
component. It is rather difficult to use and handle
this trouble-shooting and trend analysis system.
Today there is only a few of the flight technicians
who can handle the system. It is difficult to do the
right things in right sequence to not destroy any of
the data in the system. In practice there are
volunteers of the flight technicians who have special
interest to manage the evaluation process with the
computer. These dedicated volunteered flight
technicians have a lot of work to do with the
evaluation of the data. It takes almost the whole days
to analyse the data from all aircraft at the company.
They will be very skilled and capable to do the
evaluation work. It demands creativity and
innovation. But as a consequence they have
difficulties to maintain their knowledge and
competence in doing the real maintenance work with
the aircraft, because they seldom work with the
maintenance work at the aircraft.
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536

4 DISCUSSION
Each systems or technology development project is
more or less unique (Sommerville, 2001). Methods
therefore need to be adapted to each development
situation. It also means that methods and describing
techniques are important to develop unique systems
and technologies. ICT for professional work is
characterised by unique and complex information
use as in the cases of health care and aircraft
maintenance. Methods are used to specify what to do
in developing ICT.
No one of the methods used in development
projects in the studied organisations take any special
consideration to the character of professional work.
This can be proved by both of the described cases in
this paper. The fact that the handling of information
is very complex causes an impact on the ICT
development is evident. Above all it has an impact
on the analysis phase. It is much more difficult to
understand and describe a complex use of the
information. The systems developer must get a deep
understanding of the work performed in the
organisation. For example the different frames of
references between the health care personnel and the
IT personnel should be taken into consideration. It is
important not at least in professional organisations to
analyse the work activities to get a good basis for the
development of new systems and technologies. In
order to understand the professional work in a
deeper way, participative observations could be
performed.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The professional work is often characterised by very
complex handling of information. The cases have
shown some implications in the use of the ICT. The
methods should take into account the increase of
professional work and that it requires a deep
understanding of the unique and complex work
activities. Especially the analysis phases should be
improved in respect to the importance of to deeply
understand the work performed in professional or
knowledge-intensive organisations.
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