Organisational usability of mobile computing—Volatility and control in mobile foreign exchange trading

Abstract

The past two decades have presented significant technological developments of mobile information and communication technology (ICT) such as portable technologies (e.g. mobile phones, notebook computers, personal digital assistants), and associated wireless infrastructures (e.g. wireless local area networks, mobile telecommunications infrastructures, bluetooth personal area networks). Mobile ICT offers a range of technical opportunities for organisations and their members to implement enterprise mobility. However, the challenges of unlocking the opportunities of enterprise mobility are not well understood. One of the key issues is to establish systems and associated working practices that are deemed usable by both individuals and the organisation. The aim of this paper is to show that the concept of organisational usability can enrich the understanding of mobile ICT in organisations. As an addition to the traditional understanding of individual usability, organisational usability emphasises the role of mobile ICT beyond individual support. A large-scale study of four different ways of organising foreign exchange trading in a Middle Eastern bank serves as the concrete foundation for the discussion. The empirical study showed how the final of the four attempts at establishing 24-h trading deployed mobile ICT to enable mobile trading and by providing a solution, which was deemed usable for both the organisation and the traders. The paper contributes to the understanding of how usability of mobile ICT critically depends on carefully balancing individual and organisational requirements. It also demonstrates the need for research in enterprise mobility to embrace both individual and organisational concerns in order to grasp the complexity of the phenomena.

Introduction

Mobile information and communication technology (ICT) is both portable and increasingly also wirelessly connected. When used in organisations for enterprise mobility a range of issues emerges, from individual task support to organisational concerns for the coordination and management of distributed work. Compared with previous organisational technologies, such as networked mainframes and personal computers, this marks a widening of the scope for support. The technology is placed near the bodies of mobile members of the organisation at the same time as it allows direct access to enterprise infrastructures. Individuals may have access to personal information and interaction management functions as well as corporate e-mail systems and specific enterprise systems.

A growing body of human–computer interaction (HCI) research explores mobile ICT in general and the mobile phone in particular, for example those reviewed by York and Pendharkar (2004). Individual user interaction traditionally forms the core concern of HCI and the study of mobile ICT is no different. As an example, of the 27 papers on mobile ICT at the CHI 2007 Conference only two considered the use of the technology beyond the individual—the papers by Landgren and Nuldén (2007) and by Jacucci et al. (2007). Furthermore, HCI research into mobile ICT mainly focuses on technical issues of systems design and there is, in general, a lack of detailed HCI studies of how innovations relate to detailed work processes (Whittaker et al., 2000; York and Pendharkar, 2004).

Information systems (IS) research on mobile ICT generally analyses the organisational role of the technology. Enterprise mobility is here seen as an organisational means of re-shaping the way work is both conducted and managed through the application of mobile ICT. This research tradition, for example, discusses the modalities of organisational mobility in terms of travelling, visiting, and wandering (Kristoffersen and Ljungberg, 2000), or as micro-, local-, and remote mobility (Luff and Heath, 1998). The mobility concept has been sought extended beyond human physical movement towards the organisational role of spatial, temporal, and contextual mobility linked to the mobilisation of interaction (Kakihara, 2003). This is an organisation interpretation of the general analysis of social life in terms of global fluids of people, objects, and symbols (Urry, 2000). The discussion of mobile usability has been brought into an organisational context of work, for example in studies of how to support mobile workers with relevant information through mobile ICT (Fagrell, 2000); the degree of coupling between work processes, their management, and mobile ICT when embedding radio frequency identification technology in the work environment (Kietzmann, 2007); the role of mobile ICT for flexible working arrangements (Ljungberg, 1997); the importance for police officers of rapidly being able to couple and de-couple mobile ICT in rhythms of mobile interaction (Pica, 2006); the importance of support for decisions when moving across different mobile contexts (Wiberg, 2001); the failed attempt to remotely control activities through mobile ICT within the health sector (Wiredu, 2005).

Enterprise mobility implies close physical connection between information and communication technology and the user engaged in an organisational context of mutual interdependencies. This makes it pertinent for research to bridge individual and organisational concerns. Lyytinen and Yoo (2002) summarise the challenges of understanding enterprise mobility at the levels of individuals, teams, organisations, and between organisations. They argue that in order to address these challenges new perspectives, methods and assumptions are needed.

The aim of this paper is to address the issue of usability as it forms one of the core concerns of HCI research. It is our hypothesis that by framing the discussion in terms of usability this may provide a bridging of concerns for individual use and organisational performance. We do so by exploring how the concept of organisational usability can contribute to a better understanding of the organisational use of mobile ICT, and thereby serve as an addition to the traditional discussion of interface- or individual usability. The paper explores the research question: How can organisational usability of mobile ICT be understood and thereby contribute to the wider understanding of enterprise mobility?

This question is researched through the analysis of individual and organisational implications of expanding foreign exchange trading in a large Middle Eastern bank—MidEastBank—from normal working hours to 24-h trading. Detailed analysis of the usability of systems and associated working practices demonstrates the challenges of establishing organisationally usable solutions. Extending trading hours through having traders working in shifts, by traders operating from fixed workstations at home, or by globally distributing trading activities across branches in four time zones, all proved to be solutions with a low degree of both individual- and organisational usability. Balancing the organisational demand for 24-h trading with trader demand for reasonable working arrangements was established through enterprise mobility. Traditional trading during the day was extended with mobile trading during evenings and nights for a small group of traders.

The empirical analysis provides an illustration of how mobile ICT questions established institutional barriers between academic fields of inquiry, leading to an increased complexity of both individual and organisational concerns. The core academic challenges of informing this debate can only be met by comprehensive integration of individual and organisational concerns. Mobile ICT adapted by individual users represents organisational presence on the bodies of organisational actors. It is, therefore, essential to understand the relationships between individual use of the technology and the organisational requirements for the management of such work. The paper contributes to existing research within both HCI and IS by highlighting the need for closer integration of research efforts and by demonstrating that successful application of mobile technologies in an organisational context is both an issue of organisational- and individual usability.

The following section discusses existing research on usability of mobile ICT, presents the concept of enterprise mobility, and narrows the focus of concern to the issue of organisational control and individual discretion. Section 3 outlines the case study, the research approach and provides a background for understanding foreign exchange trading. Section 4 discusses the process of establishing 24-h foreign exchange trading at the MidEastBank. Section 5 presents and discusses mobile trading in detail. Section 6 draws out the implications of the empirical study for our understanding of individual and organisational usability, and Section 7 concludes the paper.