Week 1.
Lecture 1. 27-10-20
New ways of work. Different views on work. Looking at the future of work. What does digitization
mean for work. Is very novel debate, don’t have sufficient time to build a theory because the world
changes so fast.
Optimistic assumptions flexible ways of working, empowerment and increased autonomy,
overcoming boundaries for collaboration & enhance decision-making
Pessimistic assumptions increased unemployment, inequality widening, loss of value of human
skills & discrimination.
What is wrong with these views?
Based on speculative scenarios of technology use
based on properties and qualities of technologies defined by the industry and not on actual use and
changes in work practices
Limited and idealized conceptions of what constitutes work in practice.
Ignoring the interplay between the power of people to shape technology and unexpected effects
technology has in unanticipated areas of work.
Alternative approach. Is sociological and more critical. Focusses on understanding “work” in practice.
Question the properties and qualities of technologies defined by the ‘industry’ and focus on real use.
Recognize hidden assumptions and explain the reasons of unintended consequences
Orlikowski. 3 approaches technological determinism, strategic choice & enacted view
Determinism. Technology is neutral, exogenous force, exerts unidirectional, causal influences over
humans and organisations, similar to those operating in nature. Technology is an object that can
exert influence on organisational outcomes.
Strategic choice. Managers make choices about which technologies they will adopt trough strategic
alignment of the technology with the organization. This choice will determine the outcome, not the
technology itself. Managers rather than users are the key actors in shaping technology to a particular
organizational or economic end.
Enacted view. Technology is a product and a medium of human actions . Technology is not
produced independently, but by people in particular design context with certain purposes and
frames in mind. Thus it is important to unpack these frames for analysis. Users shape the technology
to their own need.
Espoused technologies: the broad “discourse” associated with their functions and features.
Technologies-in-use: the situated ways in which we actually use specific technological features in
particular ways
,Orlikowski & Iacono. An enacted view of the digital economy
Tendency to objectify the digital economy and to treat it as if it were an external, independent,
objective and inevitable phenomenon. Suggest that the digital economy is nothing more or less
than a social production, emerges from out ongoing efforts, energies and enterprises both individual
and collective. Rather than focusing on market forces or technological infrastructure (the basic
components of a digital economy conceptualized as “out there”), we start with the assumption that
organizational practices play a key role in creating and sustaining digital economy.
Thinking about the digital economy
Each wave of technology brings with it a new set of technological artifacts whose design and use are
informed by the organizational problems of their era, the current expectations about their value and
function, and the processes through which they are appropriated into organizations. Each wave is
usually associated with rhetoric about the potential impacts, both positive and negative, of the new
technologies. Such broad predictions are useful in encouraging new ways of thinking about these
new phenomena, and they may mobilize some organizations, individuals, and even governments
into action. They become problematic, though, when they are taken literally, because they mislead
on two counts.
the digital economy reflect two particular and long-standing approaches to the relationship between
technology and organizations: (1) technological determinism and (2) strategic choice
technological determinism
This approach posits technology to be an external, largely independent phenomenon that
determines or forces change in the social system. focus on measuring and modelling the changes
caused by technology, so that future changes in social systems can be predicted. Empirical work on
new technologies and organizational change over the past three decades has not supported such a
simple, deterministic model. The implementation of a new technology does not necessarily mean
that it will be used or that use will occasion the benefits or intentions of the designers and different
social groups can conceptualize the same technology in different and often contradictory ways
Strategic choice.
The second common approach to technology posits it to be a malleable resource that can be put to a
variety of uses (with a range of effects) depending on managerial or organizational strategies,
ideologies, and political dynamics. focus on identifying the motivations, objectives, and interests of
relevant players as a way of predicting particular changes and outcomes. The assumption is that the
choice of the product (e.g., a new flexible or collaborative tool) determines the outcomes (e.g.,
more flexible or collaborative work practices). Managers key actors in shaping the technology.
Enacted approach
See the relationship between technology and organization as an ongoing sociotechnical
production. It is through our actions, both individual and collective, and either deliberate or not,
that outcomes associated with technological change emerge. The organizational changes associated
with the use of technologies are shaped by human actions and choices, while at the same time
having consequences that we cannot fully anticipate or plan. Things are not just out there, but
shaped by us. This view suggests that the digital economy is neither an exogenous nor a completely
controllable phenomenon, but an ongoing social product, shaped and produced by humans and
organizations, and having both intended and unintended consequences.
Implications of using technologies in organizations
1. technology is social, dynamic and multiple
,Technologies are human artifacts, produced through a social process of design, development, and
maintenance. Their form, function, and operation reflect the interests, assumptions, values,
objectives, resources, materials, and skills of their makers. Thus, technologies are not neutral,
objective, or independent; they are social because they are constructed by people
Dynamic stability is only provisional. Is provisional because new materials might be invented,
different features might be developed, existing functions may fail and be corrected, new standards
could be set, and users can adapt the artifact for new and different uses
All technologies are thus social and dynamic, produced by people over the lifetime of their use. This
applies, in particular, to contemporary internetworking technologies.
Multiple does not consist of a single thing but is typically a multiplicity of tools and a variety of
different configurations of often fragile and fragmentary components. the interconnections among
these components are only partial and provisional, and they need bridging, integration, and
articulation in order to work together. These components are far from unitary, unified, or uniform.
They are often characterized by brittle interconnections and complex interdependencies. And we
should have no illusions that such multiplicity and connectivity will disappear.
2. technology must be used to have effect, and such use is varied, embedded, and emergent
To be useful, technology must be used, and when we fail to pay attention to what people actually do
with a technology, we often end up focusing on the wrong thing, such as the artifact itself, its
features, or the discourse around it.
Neglecting the centrality of use leads to simplistic assumptions. Because of simplistic assumptions
about technology and its use, many organizations have concentrated resources, attention, and effort
on getting the right technologies to the right place at the right time, effectively ignoring “right use.”
people typically do not differentiate between what we may call “espoused technologies” and
“technologies-in-use.
Espoused technologies refer to our expectations about the generalized use of hardware and
software components and the broad discourses associated with their functions and features.
Technologies-in-use refer to the situated ways in which we actually use specific technological
features in particular ways depending on our skills, tasks, attention, and purposes, and varying by
time of day, situation at hand, and pressures of the moment. Because technologies-in-use are, by
definition, distinct from espoused technologies, we cannot use the features and functions of the
latter to predict the former
productivity paradox—the idea that the increased investment in information technology is not yet
producing increased productivity. —for organizations—it would be more appropriate and more
meaningful to look for returns on the use of information technology rather than only for returns
on investments in information technology. Information technology per se cannot increase or
decrease the productivity of workers’ performance, only their use of the technology can.
Use of technology is also emergent. It typically departs from the expectations of its original
inventors, designers, and promoters. Rather, we constantly make choices about whether, how,
when, where, and for what purposes to use technology. We are purposive, knowledgeable, adaptive,
and inventive agents who engage with technology to accomplish various and changing ends. People
engage artfully with the technologies they encounter in their lives, using them in a multiplicity of
ways not imagined at their design and construction
3. use of technology has unintended consequences.
That technology in use always has outcomes not intended or envisioned by its designers and
implementers is a central finding of the research conducted over the past few decades on social
issues of computing.
Organizations and the digital economy
Extent of Organizational Engagement in the Digital Economy
, “net presence” strategy adopted by many organizations constitutes one common aspect of the
digital economy. Given all attention to contouring the size, shape, and scope of the Internet in terms
of individuals and computers, it is surprising that little attention has been paid to organizations and
their connections to the Internet. This lack of attention to mapping the presence, power, and
performance of internetworked organizations is particularly surprising given that the predominant
domain on the Internet is that of commercial organizations and the expectation is that business-to-
business transactions will account for the majority of activity in the digital economy.
Rationale for organizational engagement in the digital economy
There are two common answers to the question of why organizations are engaging with the digital
economy. The most frequent one is that the Internet has opened up a new marketplace for buying
and selling. From this perspective, the rationale underlying organizational engagement in the digital
economy is based on the resource needs of organizations, expectations of reduced costs and access
to new markets, and the availability of cost effective internetworking technologies.
A variant of this answer focuses less on immediate economic gains and more on issues of long-term
organizational survival. Here, engagement in the digital economy is seen to be an essential aspect of
a flexible and learning organization. A second type of rationale focuses on epochal social
transformations and argues that the United States is shifting from a society where industrial activity
and modernist systems dominate to one in which information and postmodern systems will
prevail.
These two rationales evince the two approaches to technology-based organizational change we
discussed above. The first answer, characterized by “strategic choice” assumptions, is grounded in
both conventional economic analysis of information flows along value and the resource-dependence
view of organizations. Engaging in internetworking is a strategic choice to enhance organizational
performance. The second answer reflects the approach of technological determinism and is based
on an assumed causal relationship between the technological infrastructure of an era and the
organizations, societies, and economies that result.
, they ignore the difficulties of implementing technological change in organizations and the
challenges of dealing with unintended consequences
Nature of organizational engagement in the digital economy
The artifacts of internetworking and the ways in which they have been used by organizations have
changed over the years. Today, what it means for an organization “to be on the net” continues to
evolve. At this stage of development and use of the Internet, we can identify at least four modes in
which organizations internetwork: (1) communicating via email; (2) generating a web presence; (3)
establishing buyer-supplier transaction networks; and (4) creating real-time virtual integration.
Despite the predominance of commercial, for-profit organizations on the Internet and their
predicted role as major players in the digital economy, we do not have good understandings of who
these organizations are, the change processes they are undergoing, the kinds of uses they make of
the Internet, and what the consequences of these changes are for their members. We also do not
know which organizations are not connecting and why, and what types of challenges organizations
face when attempting to participate in the Internet. What it means for organizations to “be on the
Internet” will also evolve as new technologies, business models, regulations, laws, and
organizational processes emerge. Further research on various modes of internetworking is necessary
if we want to be able to guide the evolution and emergence of the digital economy.
