Page 68 -

NEW ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS THAT SUPPORT KNOWLEDGE WORK 57

Robey and Boudreau (1999) point out, even the idea that ICT ‘enables’ change
is problematic (sometimes it might even disable change). Rather, we need to
recognize that there is a complex, dynamic and reciprocal causal relationship
between ICT (or indeed any kind of technology) and organization, with out-
comes that are emergent and difficult to predict in advance. For example, a
hospital may implement a patient record system with a view to improving the
sharing of information across different medical specializations. However, the
actual effect of this may be that people from different departments stop talking
to each other – because now records are available from a central repository and
a specialist does not therefore need to talk to his/her colleague to ask for the
record. This may actually reduce coordination and so ultimately decrease, rather
than increase, knowledge sharing.
Indeed, some authors have gone a step further by suggesting that the con-
cepts of technology and organization cannot be separated from each other
because they are actually ‘mutually constituted’, or as Orlikowski (2007) calls
it – constitutively entangled. She provides an example of the use of blackberry in
a small office environment. In this office, people came to expect to answer and
send e-mails 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But, Orlikowski, argues, it is not that
the Blackberry technology has particular social impacts. Rather, technology and
its use are each constituted by the other – each shape and are shaped in turn by
the other.
The assumption that technology drives organizational change in a determin-
istic manner (or indeed that organizational designs drive technology adoption)
is also problematic because it ignores the agency of human actors in influencing
choices about both the technology and the organization (Child, 1972). More-
over, it also ignores institutional pressures and the material properties of the
technology itself. We turn to consider these issues next.

>> HUMAN AGENCY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF TECHNOLOGY

In Chapter 1 we saw how process perspectives treat knowledge as an ongoing
social accomplishment, being constructed through and from social interaction.
Technologies are, in effect, bodies of knowledge (Weick, 1990) – indeed the
‘ology’ in technology refers to a branch of knowledge or learning. A significant
tradition has developed, then, in understanding technology also as a social con-
struction. These social constructionist accounts view technologies as fundamen-
tally social objects (Bijker et al., 1987; Weick, 1990). Individuals and groups
shape both the design and the adoption of technologies depending on their
interests and perspectives (Bijker et al., 1987). Thus, all technologies represent
the particular set of choices that designers have made – designers make assump-
tions about users and how they will use the technology, and this influences the
way they design the technology. Furthermore, users shape the way technologies
are actually used in everyday practice because most technologies can be used in
multiple ways – they are ‘open-ended’ in other words (Orlikowski, 2000). Weick

6/5/09 7:01:06 AM
9780230_522015_04_cha03.indd 57 6/5/09 7:01:06 AM
9780230_522015_04_cha03.indd 57