RFID/Internet of Things Systems on the Boundary Between Public and Private Sectors: an ANT Study of Multiplicity

© 2017 Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2017. All rights reserved. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are becoming increasingly common in applications that are shared between the public and private sectors. These systems facilitate supply chain, traceability and sensor functions, not to mention the application of RFID technology in enabling the Internet of Things. Despite their increasing ubiquity, the management of public-private RFID systems is under-researched and little understood. This research addresses a gap in literature by using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to uncover the public-private RFID network. It was found that the public-private sector relationship is initially characterised by stereotypical views which diminish as sectors work together. Further, the public sector in this context was seen to be a multiplicity with four different performances, public sector as a member of the public-private partnership; as legislator; as enforcer and as funding provider. This multiplicity is shown to lead to confusion within public-private partnerships as members of the partnership are not always clear about which performance of the public sector they are enacting, or interacting with. ANT provided a sound basis to explore such a complex networked system, its inclusion of technology within the construction of the social offers a way of understanding complexity within internet of things based applications.