Peter Erdélyi

PhD Candidate
Information Systems and Innovation Group
Department of Management
London School of Economics and Political Science

p.erdelyi@lse.ac.uk

Organising Competence and ICT Artefacts: A Multi-Case Study of Small E-Commerce

Firms in the South of England

What is the nature of organising competence, a firm’s ability to organise itself? What is the role
of technology in organising competence? My study aims to explore these questions via a number
of qualitative case studies of small e-commerce firms in the South of England. The adoption of e-
commerce technologies by SMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises) has been a key
policy objective of the European Union, as part of its strategy to build a knowledge-based
economy in order to maintain global competitiveness. My exploration of the organising practices
of small e-commerce firms inevitably raises some additional questions about what it means to be
a small firm and what the relationship is between a firm’s organising competence and the
‘knowledge-based economy.’

Recent decades have seen knowledge-based theories of organising rise to prominence in a

number of fields, including the economic theory of the firm and organisation studies. However,
efforts to conceptualise organising and strategising in terms of knowledge, learning, competences
and capabilities have also been subject to ongoing criticism, which has often found notions such
as competence or routines as repositories of organisational knowledge too opaque for the
purposes of empirical research. The debate revolves around the ways in which various theories
draw on particular epistemologies and ontologies, the way the relationship between
organisational stability (e.g. routines) and organisational change (e.g. innovation) is
conceptualised, and the way sociality and materiality are defined.

I am engaging with these controversies by drawing on the Strategy as Practice literature, science
and technology studies (STS), and economic sociology, and in particular by deploying actor-
network theory (ANT) as a methodology. Such an approach allows the focus to be shifted onto
the practices and performances that are involved in the sustenance of an organisation, and also on
the role of specific artefacts such as information and communications technologies (ICTs). The
aim is to develop an account of organising practices that articulates the relationships between
organising, knowledge and technology not only within the firm but also within its wider network
of relationships. It is expected that a description of the mechanisms of worth creation
(encompassing both economic and social values) would also emerge as a result.

Supervisors: Dr Edgar Whitley and Dr Nathalie Mitev