what do technologies do in organisations?

11 April 2023 What do technologies do? @DuncanChapple 1

WHAT DO TECHNOLOGIES DO IN ORGANISATIONS?

Duncan Chapple


Comparison of three views

Ciborra• Management approach

focusses on control• Infrastructures act in

themselves• 2000

Crabtree et al • BPR misses the real world• Use ethnography to map

reality

• 2001

Kallinicos• ERP aims to unify the

organisation• Human control is limited

• 2004

Common focus on large-scale corporate IT systems

Shared critical view of the managerial viewAdvocates of starting from ‘as is’, rather than ‘to be’


“THE CONTROL APPROACH DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK”

Claudio Ciborra reviews the managerial literature


‘Managerial’ viewpointUnoriginal approaches in cases studied, sharing:• Interweaving of the

physical infrastructure and the processes and software that support BPR

• Processes frozen into the infrastructure

• Clearly marked pyramids of technologies

• Varying reach and scope:• Utility: cost efficient• Dependence: core

processes• Enabling: new processes

• Strategic alignment of IT with the business


Two ‘managerial’ styles

Normative approachesIT “portfolio management”• Investing in infrastructure,

systems, technologies and applications

• Balancing risk to generate value

• Analyse, transform and envision

• Typically based on business maxims

• ‘relentless cost reduction’• ‘continuous innovation’

Management by dealsAccounts for 50% of cases

Deals to balance short-term needs and powerful groups• A free market for

infrastructure formation• Uneven development of

infrastructure• Supports systems that are:

• Ineffective • Utility• Dependent• … but not Enabling


Problems identified in cases

The socio-technical everyday

• Rigid alignment or flexibility?• Bricolage (1996)• What is infrastructure?• What are the boundaries?• Independent actors abound• Institutions, not just ‘services’

No development from scratch

• What pre-exists influences design of the new

• ‘Open’ and ‘closed’ systems both pre-exist

• IS research uses rhetoric

• Tinkering not strategic alignment

‘De-worlded’ managerialism

fails

• Strategy and technology drift apart

• Alignment is hard to implement• Leadership is

missing• Technology drifts

out of control

We regard the geometrical models as a superstructure world, as outcomes of an idealisation process


What is observed in the cases, but absent in managerialism?

Caring actors

Hospitality: coping with ambiguity

Cultivation: tensions +

resources innovation

Liquid portfolio?

Asset synergy!

‘Agendas’ versus the

infrastructure

Strategy emerges from

implementation

Make the double loop

real

Align the human and non-human

components


“THE CONTROL APPROACH WORKS ONLY WHEN DENIED”

Bottom line:-


“BPR IS INADEQUATE FOR THE PURPOSE”

Andy Crabtree et al


BPR & QuickmapsBusiness Process Reengineering • In 2001, a popular analytical

solution for the generation of process requirements for builders of systems focussed on customer value

• Maps obscure human work processes

• ‘as-is’ maps are transformed into ‘to-be’ maps


BPR fails in practice.

Case study field notes

• Managers want models to best reflect their own staff’s activity

• Quickmaps don’t describe it

• However, realised processes are contingent

• Complex and negotiated• Trading effort for favourability• Based not on optimal

procedures but on adequate relationships between actors

Explicating processes

• Ethnography makes sociality visible

• Explicating the social organisation of work shows ‘what is really going on’

• Thus can show how to resolve problems

• Seeing the social world from participants’ viewpoints

• Recognisable and corrigible• Available to design


“ETHNOGRAPHY MAY BE COMPLIMENTARY TO BPR”

Bottom line:-


“ERP IS A TECHNOLOGY OF REGULATION NOT INNOVATION”

Jannis Kallinicos


Procedural visions of ERP and human agency

Methods & tools for managerialism

Double binds that produce drifts

Implementation-focussed literature

overlooks a lot

• Reconstruction of the ecology of micro-tasks

• No isolated acts with ERP• Little space for behaviour

• Managerial literature bypasses the complexities

• Side-effects produce unimagined directions

• Integration also undermines

• Implications for human work• Interaction with outside

systems• Organisations are not made of

functions and procedures


Impact on organisational choices

Functional prerequisites

Huge level of procedural specification• Core and support

processes are performatively embedded in ERP systems

• Practise is disembodied• ERP look inwardly, to

produce manageability

External adaptation

Responsiveness to the environment• Procedures are

inadequate and need modification

• ERP hinders humans’ need to frame situations, inhibiting learning

• Organisations lose innovation and learning


“ERP PRIVILEGES PROCEDURE OVER LOCAL KNOWLEDGE”

Bottom line:-


Resources

Reading• Ciborra, C. (2000). From control to drift : the dynamics of corporate

information infastructures / Claudio U. Ciborra [and others], Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.

• Crabtree, A., M. Rouncefield and P. Tolmie (2001). "'There's something else missing here': BPR and the Requirements Process." Knowledge & Process Management 8(3): 164-174.

• Kallinikos, J. (2004). Deconstructing information packages, Emerald. 17: 8-30.

Bricolage• Ciborra, C. U. (1996). "The Platform Organization: Recombining Strategies,

Structures, and Surprises." Organization Science 7(2): 103-118.

Discussion

Follow-up points to @DuncanChapple