Wanda J. Orlikowski

The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations

This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model—the structurational model of technology—is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the limits and opportunities of human choice, technology development and use, and organizational design. Implications for future research of the new concept of technology and the structurational model of technology are discussed.

Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions

We examined 155 information systems research articles published from 1983 to 1988 and found that although this research is not rooted in a single over-arching theoretical perspective, it does exhibit a single set of philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of the phenomena studied by information systems researchers, and what constitutes valid knowledge about those phenomena. We believe that a single research perspective for studying information systems phenomena is unnecessarily restrictive, and argue that there exist other philosophical assumptions that can inform studies of the relationships between information technology, people, and organizations. In this paper, we present two additional research philosophies for consideration-the interpretive and the critical-and for each we provide empirical examples to illustrate how they are used. We conclude by suggesting that much can be gained if a plurality of research perspectives is effectively employed to investigate information systems phenomena.

Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the IT in IT Research--A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact

The field of information systems is premised on the centrality of information technology in everyday socio-economic life. Yet, drawing on a review of the full set of articles published inInformation Systems Research ( ISR) over the past ten years, we argue that the field has not deeply engaged its core subject matter--the information technology (IT) artifact. Instead, we find that IS researchers tend to give central theoretical significance to the context (within which some usually unspecified technology is seen to operate), the discrete processing capabilities of the artifact (as separable from its context or use), or the dependent variable (that which is posited to be affected or changed as technology is developed, implemented, and used). The IT artifact itself tends to disappear from view, be taken for granted, or is presumed to be unproblematic once it is built and installed. After discussing the implications of our findings, we propose a research direction for the IS field that begins to take technology as seriously as its effects, context, and capabilities. In particular, we propose that IS researchers begin to theorize specifically about IT artifacts, and then incorporate these theories explicitly into their studies. We believe that such a research direction is critical if IS research is to make a significant contribution to the understanding of a world increasingly suffused with ubiquitous, interdependent, and emergent information technologies.

Improvising Organizational Transformation Over Time: A Situated Change Perspective

In this paper, I outline a perspective on organizational transformation which proposes change as endemic to the practice of organizing and hence as enacted through the situated practices of organizational actors as they improvise, innovate, and adjust their work routines over time. I ground this perspective in an empirical study which examined the use of a new information technology within one organization over a two-year period. In this organization, a series of subtle but nonetheless significant changes were enacted over time as organizational actors appropriated the new technology into their work practices, and then experimented with local innovations, responded to unanticipated breakdowns and contingencies, initiated opportunistic shifts in structure and coordination mechanisms, and improvised various procedural, cognitive, and normative variations to accommodate their evolving use of the technology. These findings provide the empirical basis for a practice-based perspective on organizational transfor...

Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work

In this essay, I begin with the premise that everyday organizing is inextricably bound up with materiality and contend that this relationship is inadequately reflected in organizational studies that tend to ignore it, take it for granted, or treat it as a special case. The result is an understanding of organizing and its conditions and consequences that is necessarily limited. I then argue for an alternative approach, one that posits the constitutive entanglement of the social and the material in everyday life. I draw on some empirical examples to help ground and illustrate this approach in practice and conclude by suggesting that a reconfiguration of our conventional assumptions and considerations of materiality will help us more effectively recognize and understand the multiple, emergent, and shifting sociomaterial assemblages entailed in contemporary organizing.

Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing

Knoving in practice: Enacting a collettive capability in distributed organizing - In this paper, I outline a perspective on knowing in practice which highlights the essential role of human action In knowing how to get things done in complex organizational work. The perspective suggests that knowing is not a static embedded capability or stable disposition o\ actors, but rather an ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted as actors engage the world in practice. In interpreting the findings of an empirical study conducted in a geographically dispersed hightech organization. I suggest that the competence to do global product development is both collective and distributed, grounded in the everyday practices of organizational members. I conclude by discussing some of the research implications of a perspective on organizational knowing in practice.

Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations

In this article, we build on and extend research into the cognitions and values of users and designers by proposing a systematic approach for examining the underlying assumptions, expectations, and knowledge that people have about technology. Such interpretations of technology (which we call technological frames) are central to understanding technological development, use, and change in organizations. We suggest that where the technological frames of key groups in organizations—such as managers, technologists, and users— are significantly different, difficulties and conflict around the development, use, and change of technology may result. We use the findings of an empirical study to illustrate how the nature, value, and use of a groupware technology were interpreted by various organizational stakeholders, resulting in outcomes that deviated from those expected. We argue that technological frames offer an interesting and useful analytic perspective for explaining an anticipating actions and meanings that are not easily obtained with other theoretical lenses.

10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization

Abstract We begin by juxtaposing the pervasive presence of technology in organizational work with its absence from the organization studies literature. Our analysis of four leading journals in the field confirms that over 95% of the articles published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role of technology in organizational life. We then examine the research that has been done on technology, and categorize this literature into two research streams according to their view of technology: discrete entities or mutually dependent ensembles. For each stream, we discuss three existing reviews spanning the last three decades of scholarship to highlight that while there have been many studies and approaches to studying organizational interactions and implications of technology, empirical research has produced mixed and often‐conflicting results. Going forward, we suggest that further work is needed to theorize the fusion of technology and work in organizations, and that additional perspe...

Technology and institutions: what can research on information technology and research on organizations learn from each other?

We argue that because of important epistemological differences between the fields of information technology and organization studies, much can be gained from greater interaction between them. In particular, we argue that information technology research can benefit from incorporating institutional analysis from organization studies, while organization studies can benefit even more by following the lead of information technology research in taking the material properties of technologies into account. We further suggest that the transformations currently occurring in the nature of work and organizing cannot be understood without considering both the technological changes and the institutional contexts that are reshaping economic and organizational activity. Thus, greater interaction between the fields of information technology and organization studies should be viewed as more than a matter of enrichment. In the intellectual engagement of these two fields lies the potential for an important fusion of perspectives, a fusion more carefully attuned to explaining the nature and consequences of the techno-social phenomena that increasingly pervade our lives.

Windows of Opportunity: Temporal Patterns of Technological Adaptation in Organizations

This paper examines the introduction and adaptation of technologies that support productive operations. The authors argue that the process of technological adaptation is not gradual and continuous, as often argued in the innovation literature, but is instead highly discontinuous. Evidence from three manufacturing and service organizations indicates that there exists a relatively brief window of opportunity to explore and modify new process technology following initial implementation. Afterwards, modification of new process technologies by users is limited by the increasing routinization that occurs with experience. Thus, the technology and its context of use tend to congeal, often embedding unresolved problems into organizational practice. Subsequent changes appear to occur in an episodic manner, triggered either by discrepant events or by new discoveries on the part of users. These findings have important implications for theories of technological change.