[net.ai] Social Impacts Graduate Program at UC-Irvine

Kling.UCI-20B%Rand-Relay@sri-unix.UUCP (11/26/83)

From:  Rob-Kling <Kling.UCI-20B@Rand-Relay>


                                     CORPS

                                    -------

                             A Graduate Program on

                 Computing, Organizations, Policy, and Society

                    at the University of California, Irvine


          This interdisciplinary program at the University of California,
     Irvine provides an opportunity for scholars and students to
     investigate the social dimensions of computerization in a setting
     which supports reflective and sustained inquiry.

          The primary educational opportunities are a PhD programs in the
     Department of Information and Computer Science (ICS) and MS and PhD
     programs in the Graduate School of Management (GSM).  Students in each
     program can specialize in studying the social dimensions of computing.
     Several students have recieved graduate degrees from ICS and GSM for
     studying topics in the CORPS program.

          The faculty at Irvine have been active in this area, with many
     interdisciplinary projects, since the early 1970's.  The faculty and
     students in the CORPS program have approached them with methods drawn
     from the social sciences.

          The CORPS program focuses upon four related areas of inquiry:

      1.  Examining the social consequences of different kinds of
          computerization on social life in organizations and in the larger
          society.

      2.  Examining the social dimensions of the work and industrial worlds
          in which computer technologies are developed, marketed,
          disseminated, deployed, and sustained.

      3.  Evaluating the effectiveness of strategies for managing the
          deployment and use of computer-based technologies.

      4.  Evaluating and proposing public policies which facilitate the
          development and use of computing in pro-social ways.


          Studies of these questions have focussed on complex information
     systems, computer-based modelling, decision-support systems, the
     myriad forms of office automation, electronic funds transfer systems,
     expert systems, instructional computing, personal computers, automated
     command and control systems, and computing at home.  The questions
     vary from study to study.  They have included questions about the
     effectiveness of these technologies, effective ways to manage them,
     the social choices that they open or close off, the kind of social and
     cultural life that develops around them, their political consequences,
     and their social carrying costs.

          The CORPS program at Irvine has a distinctive orientation -

     (i) in focussing on both public and private sectors,

     (ii) in examining computerization in public life as well as within
           organizations,

     (iii) by examining advanced and common computer-based technologies "in
           vivo" in ordinary settings, and

     (iv) by employing analytical methods drawn from the social sciences.



              Organizational Arrangements and Admissions for CORPS


          The primary faculty in the CORPS program hold appointments in the
     Department of Information and Computer Science and the Graduate School
     of Management.  Additional faculty in the School of Social Sciences,
     and the Program on Social Ecology, have collaborated in research or
     have taught key courses for students in the CORPS program.  Research
     is administered through an interdisciplinary research institute at UCI
     which is part of the Graduate Division, the Public Policy Research
     Organization.

     Students who wish additional information about the CORPS program
     should write to:

               Professor Rob Kling (Kling.uci-20b@rand-relay)
               Department of Information and Computer Science
               University of California, Irvine
               Irvine, Ca. 92717

                                     or to:

               Professor Kenneth Kraemer
               Graduate School of Management
               University of California, Irvine
               Irvine, Ca. 92717