Introduction to the special issue: social construct within an information society

Abstract

Abstract—Managing Information Systems (IS) is increasingly complex,as multiple stakeholders try to communicate, act, and interactfor social and business gain. Understanding and managing thesecomplex stakeholder relations and the contingencies of successfulcommunication among culturally diverse stakeholder groups aresome of the major challenges for professional communicators in thethird millennium. Such challenges have important implications forcommunication between user and developer groups as training andeducation of the users becomes more complex. In an effort to connectinformation system practice with communication theory, this specialissue of IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON P ROFESSIONAL C OMMUNICATION looks atinformation systems as social constructs of an information society. Manuscript received January 11, 2001.The Guest Editors are with theDepartment of InformationSystems and Computing,Brunel University,Uxbridge, Middlesex,UB8 3PH, Great Britain(email: Zahir.Irani@brunel.ac.uk),URL: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~csstzniIEEE PII S 0361-1434(01)02454-7.