Abstract

My research project is concerned with developing an account of the organising and strategising practices of small e-commerce firms in the South of England, with a particular focus on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in these practices. I am interested in describing the ways in which organising competence, the ability to organise and sustain a small firm as a coherent entity, is developed and sustained over time. Drawing primarily on actor-network theory, I have been undertaking a relational approach to studying my empirical objects. My investigation has led me to consider the wider networks and flows in which these e-commerce firms participate and also to raise questions about the nature of the knowledge-based economy.