Financial organizations, like many others, are undergoing radical change. This is affecting both their organizational processes and the technology that supports those processes. This book reports on the use of sociological ethnography in helping guide these changes, both in terms of helping better understand and redraw work processes and through providing more accurate and flexible understanding of he role technology plays. It places he reported research in context by contrasting it with those approaches more commonly associated with change, including business processes engineering, participative design and soft systems methodologies. The book explains what are the benefits of ethnography, as well as the potential it has in helping achieve more desirable change in any and all organizations, financial services included. The book will be of interest to all international researchers concersed with organizational and technological change, as well as managers of organizational development. It will also interest advanced students in sociology, anthropology, management science and organizational studies.

Chapter 1 Introduction; Part 1 Organisational studies and empirical description; Chapter 3 Approaches to the management of change; Chapter 4 Ethnography and change; Part 2 Taking customers seriously; Chapter 6 The virtual customer; Chapter 7 Taking technology seriously; Chapter 8 Conclusion;

Richard Harper is Director of the Digital World Research Centre, University of Surrey.,
Dave Randall is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University.,
Mark Rouncefield is Research Fellow at the Computing Department, Lancaster University. The authors have published widely in the various disciplines associated with organisational life and technology design, and have built a considerable reputation for bringing new sociological insights into the organisational-change literature.