Valuing Technology

Organisations, Culture and Change

Janice McLaughlin, Paul Rosen, David Skinner, Andrew Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134652150
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

How does new information technology become part of the fabric of organisational life? Drawing on insights from social studies of technology, gender studies and the sociology of consumption, Valuing Technology opens up new directions in the analysis of sociotechnical change within organisations. Based on a major research project focused upon the introduction of management of information systems in health, higher education and retailing, I explores the active role of end-users in innovation.
This book argues that it is through the , often difficult, engagement between users and technology that new computer systems come to gain value within organisations. Key themes developed through analysis of case studies include:
*the valuing of technology via the on-going construction of needs, uses and utilities
*occupational identities, organisational inequalities and technological change
*the gendering of technological and organisational change
*interpretive flexibility and the 'stabilisation' of technological systems and their incorporation into the lives of people in organisations.
A stimulating blend of the theoretical and substantive, this book demands a radical redefinition of 'technology acquisition'. It's highly original approach makes Valuing Technology essential reading for students, lecturers and researchers within the fields of organisation studies and the sociology of technology.

Part I
Theorising techno-organisational change

1 The technology—organisation relation
Settings and contexts

Many careers in academia and in consultancy have been built speculating about the revolutionary impact of IT on organisations. Among commentators on and practitioners in the sphere of technological change there is, however, a growing awareness of the limitations of hyperbole. Prophecy is not enough. Clearly IT is implicated in some highly significant trends but to understand these requires a sophisticated account of technological development, organisational change and, crucially, the relationship between the two. This book’s starting premise is that there is still much work to be done on technology when it enters an organisation: the acquisition of new IT is only the start of a process during which both the technology and the organisation change.

This chapter begins our exploration of the technology—organisation relation. It introduces issues that have figured in literature on innovation and organisations and lays the foundations of the approach we shall be taking throughout the rest of the book. A key argument is that detailed analysis of the introduction, or embedding, of IT into organisations is a necessary precursor to discussions of the role or importance of such technologies. A focus on acquisition and adoption reveals how the peculiarities of particular organisational settings influence the use, character and impact of ostensibly similar technologies. Thus, while there are wider patterns and constraints, acquisition and adoption are about the interplay between technological systems and organisational dynamics and between internal settings and external contexts. Seen in this light, acquisition is also recast as a long-running process in which the end-users of the system are active participants.

This chapter begins to address a set of questions that the remainder of the book explores more fully:

• How does technological innovation occur within and across organisations?
• How do organisational actors attempt to direct innovation?
• How does the internal organisational setting influence the course and consequences of technological change?
• What part do end-users play in this?
• How do external ‘imperatives’ influence organisational change?

The chapter is structured into four main sections. The first reviews some of the existing work on technological change and organisations, making the case for a more developed analysis of the innovation process and introducing the concept of ‘techno-organisational change’. The next section places technology in a broader discussion of how organisations stay organised. As part of this, it considers the varied strategies and tactics employed by people in organisations to construct some sense of order and direction to change. In different ways, the next two sections examine external contexts of techno-organisational change. The first of these considers the wider cultural repertoire from which people within organisations construct meaning. IT comes into organisations strongly associated with images of inevitable progress through technology, and abstract notions of instrumental rationality; these general values exert a powerful influence over specific processes of innovation. The final section of the chapter discusses the assertion that ‘imperatives’ beyond the boundaries of the organisation are driving innovation. This is explored through a discussion of the sectoral environments (technological, economic and policy) of our three case studies—the National Health Service (NHS), higher education and retailing. It should be noted that in discussing technological culture and imperatives we do not wish to move our focus away from the organisation. Rather, our interest is in the way that these wider factors are articulated in and mediated by the organisational setting.

Information technology and organisational change

Claims that new computer systems are shaping tomorrow’s organisations draw on an influential body of prophecy concerning IT. Discussions of the emergence of a ‘post-industrial society’ (Bell 1976), of the ‘information society’ (Lyon 1988, Webster 1995), of the compression of time and space (Harvey 1990), and of the ‘knowledge society’ (Stehr 1994) all, ultimately, centre on the claim that new technology in general and IT in particular are bringing about a qualitative shift in social conditions. Discussion of the ‘knowledge-based organisation’, ‘the network organisation’ (Goddard 1992), and the ‘virtual’ or ‘cyber organisation’ (Barnett 1995) feeds off these prophecies. They rest on a belief that new technology is not simply changing but transforming organisational possibilities. This can, in its most extreme forms, be manifested in hi-tech utopianism, such as the following:

The computing and telecommunications technologies of the future will be wondrous. Finally we will be granted infinite freedom to walk and fly in the cyberspace realm of pure information, to create the physically impossible, to reach out to other human beings as never before, and to augment our own mental capacities as one with machines.

(Barnett 1995: 29)

A common theme of much predictive writing is that IT alters relationships within organisations. Zuboff (1988), for example, suggests that the ‘informating’ qualities of IT can be the basis of a new type of organisation, decentred, flat and responsive to changing conditions. She is also aware, however, of the potential offered by IT for new forms of surveillance and control at a distance. This concern is developed further in a range of speculative (Poster 1990) and empirically based work (see for example Jackson 1997, Collinson and Collinson 1997). Zuboff and others undeniably raise important questions about the future of IT and organisations—ones we will return to later in the book—but there are dangers in a generalised account of the ‘impact’ of IT on organisations in which technological development has a life and momentum of its own.

During the 1990s many of the utopian and dystopian predictions about the information society have sounded increasingly hollow (Garnham 1994). Frank Webster suggests that the clearest clue to the inadequacy of many accounts of change is their neatness:

it follows such a neat linear logic—technological innovation results in social change—that it is almost a pity to announce that it is simply the wrong point of departure for those embarking on a journey to see where informational trends, technological and other, are leading.

(1995:215)

Webster identifies a series of limitations in much of the predictive work on IT. The first is an over-emphasis on transformation: chronic patterns of organisational and economic structuring get lost in the quest to highlight the new and the discontinuous. Related to this is a tendency to misrepresent or simplify the previous conditions replaced by the new world of IT. Another limitation concerns indicators: quantitative measures of the diffusion of technology or the amount of information are taken as simple, obvious markers of qualitative change. Most fundamentally, prophecies rely on implied or explicit ‘technological determinism’: technological development is treated as an independent variable driving organisational change. This determinism usually side-steps the social processes involved in the development and adoption of new technology.

For the prophets of a computerised revolution the reasons why organisations should adopt IT and the uses to which it can be put are largely self-evident. If these issues are considered at all it is usually with reference to the inherent qualities of the technology and a generalised account of organisational needs: IT provides obvious benefits for and requires obvious changes to the organisation. Critics of IT prophecy (of which Webster is only an example) suggest, however, that the issues of why and how organisations might acquire and use IT are more complex and interesting than this. If we are to move beyond ‘gee-whiz’ accounts of an organisational future revolutionised by technology then a more developed and measured understanding of how organisations adopt and utilise IT is required.

Rethinking technology acquisition

In the past decade, writing on the acquisition and diffusion of IT and other new technologies has sought ways of transcending many of the assumptions that informed earlier work in the field. There is an often-expressed concern to move beyond viewing ‘acquisition’ as a one-off moment of capture when pre-existing organisational needs are (or should be) reconciled with pre-existing technological solutions. The demand is for a clearer and richer understanding of the processes whereby organisations come to acquire new technology (Clark 1987, Leonard-Barton 1991).

A new focus on the social dynamics of technology acquisition has highlighted the varied ways in which innovations are assimilated into organisations’ existing technological ‘portfolios’ (Seaton and Hayes 1993). There is also consideration of factors that enhance or inhibit organisations’ capacities to be effective acquirers and users of technology (Mansfield 1992, Radnor 1992, Bessant 1993). In the light of these issues, some have recast the acquisition and introduction of new technologies as an interaction or negotiation requiring organisational change as well as the development of new technical skills (Senker 1988, Senker 1992).

A central issue in the new acquisition literature is whether the adoption of technology can be understood as a response to a clear set of pre-existing needs. Policy and commercial interests express a strong concern to identify ‘user needs’ in the technological market, but this often rests on an inadequate conception of ‘need’ (Webster 1994) and an undifferentiated account which portrays whole organisations as ‘users’. Some analysts (e.g. Walsh 1993) have questioned the sense in which such needs can be identified, especially in new technological fields.

A similar concern with the complexities of technology acquisition is now voiced in management studies. This is, in part, a reflection of the growing analytical sophistication of the field as it has been enriched by insights from a range of approaches as diverse as gender studies and post-structuralism. New perspectives on organisations and technology are part of a fundamental reappraisal of the assumptions and categories that informed earlier analyses of management. Previous perspectives that represented technological change as a driver of organisational change are now heavily critiqued, as are the technology-led management practices that gave birth to them (Jackson 1997). Innovation is recast as contingent, local, unpredictable and as taking place over an extended period of time. This demands a greater emphasis on the part played by managers in enacting technological change. Analyses strive, for example, to identify the key ‘change agents’ (Buchanan and Storey 1997) who sponsor new technology within organisations. Writers such as Clark (1995) highlight the role of managers in developing strategies to create and control direction. While Clark’s and others’ accounts assume an environmental reality that managers react to and master, some such as Walsham (1993b) go further, pointing to the ways in which managers rhetorically construct environments in order to appear to be ‘strategic’ and visibly in control.

Recent work sheds new light on the factors that influence the direction of technological and organisational change. Liff and Scarborough, for example, discuss the part played by what they term ‘discourses of innovation’:

To put it simply, different discourses promote different trajectories of development, such that organisations beginning from an apparently similar constellation of goals and interests can end up with radically divergent solutions.

(1994:208)

This kind of argument should be located in a broader rethink of the nature of management and policy decision-making. Reviewing recent work, Rappert (in preparation) notes that ‘decision-making processes are recognised as complex, iterative, and rarely structured into easily specifiable beginnings or ends’. As part of a wider analysis of organisational innovation, Whitley (1992) suggests that managers follow ‘business recipes’. Business recipes do not, however, pre-determine the course of change; instead they develop as it continues, with the construction of the nature, outcome and benefits of innovation an on-going process. As Mansell similarly explains: ‘the sources and determinants of change are understood to involve processes whereby rules and resources are recursively negotiated through time’ (1994a: 338).

New analyses of the acquisition and management of new technology have, therefore, moved quite some distance from any simplistic notion of the ‘impact’ of IT on organisations. It is worth reiterating again that this emphasis on the messy and localised nature of change is not just about technology but part of a broader reappraisal of management and organisational dynamics. In this respect Walsham, in his study of information systems in organisations, acknowledges his debt to Pettigrew’s work on change in ICI:

It is important to see organizational change as linked to both intraorganizational and broader contexts, and not to try to understand projects as episodes divorced from the historical, organizational or economic circumstances from which they emerge. The management of organizational change is not seen as a straightforward, rational process but as a jointly analytical, educational and political process. Power, chance and opportunism are influential in shaping outcomes as are design, negotiated agreements and master plans.

(Walsham 1993b: 53)

Bringing in the users

The implications of this new turn in the analysis of management, organisation and technology acquisition are far-reaching but arguably yet to be explored fully. While current analyses raise awkward questions about how ‘rational’ or clearly ‘needs-driven’ management decision-making is, there has been little attempt to develop a critical examination of how notions of ‘need’ or ‘rationality’ are developed and used by managers. As Orlikowski has indicated:

The presumption is still made that once technology is designed to embody the ‘appropriate’ (optimizing or informating) objectives and once managers are committed to this ‘appropriate’ strategy, more rewarding workplaces, more fluid organizations, a new division of labor, and better performances will result.

(1992: 401)

Orlikowski proposes an alternative analysis based on a ‘recursive notion of technology’ that understands that ‘technology is created and changed by human action, yet is also used by humans to accomplish some action’ (ibid.: 405). For this to be achieved, we would argue, a broader conception of ‘the social dimension’ is required than much of the management and policy literature currently accepts. Despite many insights, much work remains unwilling to expand the focus of analysis beyond strategic management to explore the role of others within the organisation in shaping technological change. This theme has been opened up in Fleck’s work discussing ‘innofusion’:

Implementation essentially involves the mutual adaptation of technology and organisation in order that available resources may be effectively combined together to provide an overall working system (or configuration).

(1994: 178)

If this ‘adaptation’ continues after the technology has arrived in the workplace, it follows that ordinary users of new technology, not just strategic managers, are active participants in innovation. They are involved in the adaptation of the technology to the organisational setting, integrating it into the everyday life of the organisation and, in doing so, making it usable. This focus on end-users also leads us away from the tendency in management literature to equate ‘the user’ with a whole, undifferentiated organisation and, instead, to be sensitive to the variety of user groups implicated in change.

The part played by users in technological change is a central concern of our book—one of the ways in which we seek to advance the discussions outlined in this section. In concentrating on users we also return to the issue of needs flagged up earlier. Organisational needs should not be viewed as fixed, stable precursors and drivers of acquisition. Instead we would argue that:

• talk of ‘organisational needs’ hides the variety of different needs voiced by individuals and groups within the organisation;
• needs are formed and reformed over time as an integral part of the process of innovation.

Thus, in our terms, the expression, negotiation and clash of needs voiced by different groups within the organisation, and related attempts then to construct and articulate coherent ‘organisational needs’, are at the heart of technology acquisition. Far from being the starting point of acquisition, the value of a new technology in an organisational setting is often uncertain, unstable and contested. End-users are implicated in the process of debating and developing needs as well as uses, usability and usefulness—the ‘valuing technology’ of our book title.

Of course the argument that a variety of different group and individual needs is articulated during technology acquisition and contributes to it does not imply that all needs have an equal chance of being met. Similarly, our recognition of end-users’ part in the development and application of new technology is not to suggest that all participants in the process begin or end in equal or equivalent positions. Rather, it is to suggest that the inequalities of this process should be the object of study rather than starting assumptions. If we treat organisational needs as fixed and unproblematic and assume that the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of a new technology lies solely in the hands of strategic management, we collude with those in authority who, after the event, delete the contribution of subordinates (Star 1992, Law 1994).

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Theorising techno-organisational change
• Part II: Case studies in techno-organisational change
• Part III: Comparative analyses of techno-organisational change
• Appendix: Methodology
• Bibliography