Technology AND Organizations: Value from Intertwining Organizational Practices, Technology Features, and Implementation Actions
My colleagues and I recently published an article making the following point (paraphrasing): Dealing with social and technological systems of organizations in concert, which was a critical part of sociotechnical systems theory in the 1950’s, is an approach that we need to rediscover because information technology has become inextricably intertwined with social relationships in weaving the fabric of organization.
That point describes my perspective and that which underlies each of the posts in this blog (like these examples). However, in talking with some readers, I realized I had never explicitly described the background for this lens. The basic idea is that implementing a new technology or organizational practice is effective only to the extent that practices and technologies are jointly considered as part of the overall design and implementation. Many change failures are the result of a “magic” or “silver bullet” approach where there is an assumption that simply adopting a new technology or practice will have a determined benefit (Markus and Benjamin provide an excellent overview) — For example, thinking that building a team portal for sharing documents and ideas will result in greater team collaboration. However, no silver bullet for integrating technology with organizational practice has yet to be discovered and without this integration is it unlikely that benefits will be realized. A team portal may have no benefit if the team isn’t involved in an overall evolution of practice at the same time as a new tool is designed and implemented. Sometimes it’s a team’s practice that needs to adjust with the opportunity to use a new technology tool. Sometimes it’s a new technology that needs to support a team’s new practice. Ideally, both are being considered at once.
The following are links to some of my key sources (my own work in this area is best represented in “Technology Features as Triggers for Sensemaking” and “Why New Technologies Fail: Overcoming the Invisibility of Implementation”).
Stephen Barley
Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observations of CT Scanners and the social order of radiology departments
Bijker, Pinch, & Hughes
The Social Construction of Technological Systems
DeSanctis and Poole
Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory
Jasperson, Carter, & Zmud
A Comprehensive Conceptualization of the Post-Adoptive Behaviors Associated with IT-Enabled Work Systems
Wanda Orlikowski
The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations
Karl Weick
Technology as Equivoque: Sensemaking in New Technologies
Organization Science Special Issue: Information Technology and Organizational Form and Function
8 Responses
October 27th, 2008 at 8:41 am
[...] support, are more likely to result in a technology system that provides value. This intertwining of organizational and technological aspects is needed for Twitter or any other change introduction. Ideally the implementation [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:58 pm
[...] prior posts I’ve talked about this in general, and as specifically related to team work. Today the issue came up again as I read C.G. [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
[...] communication, as well as the ability to archive the communication for future use. Once again, you can’t change just one thing so it will be interesting to see how we learn to work with our new capabilities. In my example, [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 4:08 am
[...] trials are providing vivid examples of how difficult — and important — it is to manage technologies, organizational practice, and people all at the same time. This example comes from Jason Schwartz’ article, Mistrial by iPhone: Jurors’ Web Forays [...]
April 10th, 2009 at 9:47 am
[...] do the practice and technology decisions I make intertwine to predict my [...]
May 4th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] organizational practice. People with systems savvy understand that technologies and practices are intertwined — and they know how to make adjustments to both the technology and the practice to [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
[...] is because technology is not a silver bullet. Without a solid and complete National Communications System (p. 3), joint training (p.4), and [...]
December 29th, 2009 at 10:03 am
[...] Seth Godin (author of Tribes) notes that innovation requires failure. Important idea. See also Bob Sutton’s book, Weird Ideas That Work. The implementation of TOP Management will require failure. Who hasn’t tried to build something and found the need to start over, make adjustments, or reweave a section? (For more on weaving, see this post.) [...]