Diversity in Modeling Diffusion of Information Technology

This paper describes how a diverse set of models of diffusion of information technology brings depth of understanding and a better basis for management decisions. Three dissimilar innovation diffusion models, the interactive model, the linked-chain model and the emergent model, are used to develop an analysis that describes the essential knowledge that each model produces. Rather than develop conflicting stories, each model leads to distinctly different, but complementary, knowledge about the practical setting. The analysis demonstrates how distinct conceptual domains inhabit each model. These domains define the scope of practical management questions that can be addressed by each of the innovation diffusion models.     

Space, Boundaries, and the Problem of Order: A View from Systems Theory

The idea our global polity is chiefly divided by territorially organized nation-states captures contemporary constellations of power and authority only insufficiently. Through a decoupling of power and the state, political spaces no longer match geographical spaces. Instead of simply acknowledging a challenge to the state, there is the need to rethink the changing meaning of space for political processes. The paper identifies three aspects, a reconceptualization of the spatial assumptions that IR needs to address: the production of space, the constitutive role of boundaries, and the problem of order. With this contribution, we argue that one avenue in understanding the production of space and the following questions of order is by converging systems theory and critical geopolitics. While the latter has already developed a conceptual apparatus to analyze the production of space, the former comes with an encompassing theoretical background, which takes "world society" as the starting point of analysis. In this respect, nation states are understood as a form of internal differentiation of a wider system, namely world society.