Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
Information and Organization
Technology choice and its performance: Towards a sociology of software package procurement
Information and Organization
Organizing Visions for Information Technology and the Information Systems Executive Response
Journal of Management Information Systems
Ethics and Information Technology
The sociology of a market analysis tool: How industry analysts sort vendors and organize markets
Information and Organization
Consultancies and capabilities in innovating with IT
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Community learning in information technology innovation
MIS Quarterly
Witty invention or dubious fad? Using argument mapping to examine the contours of management fashion
Information and Organization
Dual materiality and knowing in petroleum production
Information and Organization
International Journal of Business Information Systems
From Artefacts to Infrastructures
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
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We consider naming and categorization practises within the information technology (IT) arena. In particular, with how certain terminologies are able to colonise wide areas of activity and endure for relatively long periods of time, despite the diversity and incremental evolution of individual technical instances. This raises the question as to who decides whether or not a particular vendor technology is part of a product category. Who decides the boundaries around a technology nomenclature? Existing Information Systems scholarship has tended to present terminologies as shaped by wide communities of players but this does not capture how particular kinds of knowledge institutions have emerged in recent year to police the confines of technological fields. The paper follows the work of one such group of experts-the industry analyst firm Gartner Inc.-and discusses their current and past role in the evolution of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. We show how they make regular (but not always successful) 'naming interventions' within the IT domain and how they attempt to regulate the boundaries that they and others have created through episodes of 'categorisation work'. These experts not only attempt to exercise control over a terminology but also the interpretation of that name. Our arguments are informed by ethnographic observations carried out on the eve of the contemporary CRM boom and interviews conducted more recently as part of an ongoing investigation into industry analysts. The paper bridges a number of disparate bodies of literature from Information Systems, Economic Sociology, the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, and Science and Technology Studies.