A human activity system can be analysed at different levels of granularity, from the most fine-grained, personal level to the societal level.
Research at the personal level involves issues of motivation, personality, knowledge and skill that the individual researcher brings to their work. The kinds of activities researchers undertake include literature work, research design, data collection and analysis and research reporting. The technologies they use are:
document management technologies, which are used for document access and retrieval (the Web, library databases), document tracking (Endnote and Procite), and document generation and publication;
data collection and management tools, including data loggers of various kinds, Web surveys and focus groups, data mining and the recording of laboratory records in image, text, recordings and video;
analytic tools, for dealing with quantitative data (SPSS) and qualitative content analysis (NVivo and Leximancer), and visualisation and simulation software, which are examples of special purpose technologies used in particular kinds of projects.
The social level of human activity consists of the personal networks, the public behaviours, norms and culture that are exhibited by research groups and collaborations. These are supported by communication technologies, email, videoconferencing and collaborative tools such as Sharepoint, Yahoo and CommunityZero.
The organisational level of human activity systems concerns the processes, accountability and power structures in organisations such as universities, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Defense and parts of industry. Typically, ICT infrastructure is owned at this level. Systems like ResearchMaster are well established in universities to help manage the flow of research projects, publications, and so on, but such systems are probably not part of the research human activity system as they are not concerned with research content.
The societal level addresses questions about who pays for, and who benefits from, research.
These levels are not hierarchical. For example, a social network exists independently of organisations and societies. Nor is it necessary that human activity systems are purposeful. In fact, from an IS perspective, we are often more interested in the ‘metabolism’ of these systems than their justification. The ways people act are what IS contributes to, and social, political and cultural factors are always active in all human activity systems (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) .
As demonstrated above, the research human activity system, like all data, information and knowledge systems, can make effective piecemeal use of information technologies. ICT is most active at the personal level, with the adoption of tools for individual tasks. Research infrastructure is a feature of the organisational level where there is finance and ongoing structures to manage the assets. Technology is an instrumental component of the IS approach to human activity systems; one that offers opportunities and limitations. At the foundation of the IS approach, however, are the very significant human, social and use aspects of technologies, and IS as a discipline has the role of systematising a range of ICT breakthroughs that, combined, can address a problem more effectively than can individual technologies. In the research human activity system there is plenty of technology push, but little systems-pull.