Paris, Carolyn
(2012)
Information technology, contract and knowledge in the networked economy: a biography of packaged software for contract management.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
In this research I investigate the intersection of information and communication technology
(ICT), contract and knowledge in the networked economy as illuminated by the “life” of
contract management software (CMS). The failure of CMS to fulfill market expectations
provides the motivating question for this study. Based on interview, survey and archival data, I
construct a “biography” of CMS from a market perspective informed by the theory of
commoditization as well as studies of markets from economic sociology. From the latter, I draw
upon the theory of performativity in markets to identify in the failure of CMS a series of
breakdowns in performative assumptions and operations normally at work in the making of a
packaged software market, ranging from a failure in classification performativity to a
detachment of marketized criteria, in the form of analyst ratings, from the underlying software
product and vendors. This catalog of breakdown indicates that packaged software production
implicates multiple levels of commoditization, including financialized meta-commodities and
marketized criteria, in a dynamic I theorize as substitution of performance. I explore the
implications of my findings for packaged software and for process commodities more generally,
suggesting, inter alia, that process commoditization may revolve around contract and
information exchange rather than product definition. I go on to propose an open theorization of
contract as a technology of connectedness, in a relationship of potential convergence,
complementarity and substitution with ICT, interpenetrating and performative. My contributions
are to information systems and organizations research on the topics of packaged software and
the relationship of ICT, contract and organizational knowledge; and to economic sociology on
the topics of performativity in markets and product qualification in process commoditization.
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