Wamala, Frederick
(2004)
Not invented here: Power and politics in public key infrastructure (PKI) institutionalisation at two global organisations.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This dissertation explores the impact of power and politics in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) institutionalisation. We argue that this process can be understood in power and politics terms because the infrastructure skews the control of organisational action in favour of dominant individuals and groups. Indeed, as our case studies show, shifting power balances is not only a desired outcome of PKI deployment, power drives institutionalisation. Therefore, despite the rational goals of improving security and reducing the total cost of ownership for IT, the PKIs in our field organisations have actually been catalysts for power and politics. Although current research focuses on external technical interoperation, we believe emphasis should be on the interaction between the at once restrictive and flexible PKI technical features, organisational structures, goals of sponsors and potential user resistance. We use the Circuits of Power (CoP) framework to explain how a PKI conditions and is conditioned by power and politics. Drawing on the concepts of infrastructure and institution, we submit that PKIs are politically explosive in pluralistic, distributed global organisations because by limiting freedom of action in favour of stability and security, they set a stage for disaffection. The result of antipathy towards the infrastructure would not be a major concern if public key cryptography, which underpins PKI, had a centralised mechanism for enforcing the user discipline it relies on to work properly. However, since this discipline is not automatic, a PKI bereft of support from existing power arrangements faces considerable institutionalisation challenges. We assess these ideas in two case studies in London and Switzerland. In London, we explain how an oil company used its institutional structures to implement PKI as part of a desktop standard covering 105,000 employees. In Zurich and London, we give a power analysis of attempts by a global financial services firm to roll out PKI to over 70,000 users. Our dissertation makes an important contribution by showing that where PKI supporters engage in a shrewdly orchestrated campaign to knit the infrastructure with the existing institutional order, it becomes an accepted part of organisational life without much ceremony. In sum, we both fill gaps in information security literature and extend knowledge on the efficacy of the Circuits of Power framework in conducting IS institutionalisation studies.
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