Inside the IMF: An Ethnography of Documents, Technology, and Organizational Action

From the Publisher: Inside the IMF is the first book to reveal the inside workings of the International Monetary Fund, an increasingly high profile organization. The text studies the culture of organizations, and uses sociological methods to understand the technology which underpins office and commercial life. Inside the IMF advises how to improve work processes and computer systems by exploring systems which use search and retrieval applications, hypertext documents, and shared database applications like Lotus Notes. The author, Richard Harper, had unique access to the International Monetary Fund to prepare his case study. He uses the IMF to illustrate how thinking differently about IT systems can dramatically improve the manageability and accessibility of documents in organizations.