ABSTRACT

In recent decades an extensive array of changes and innovations have taken place in and across work organizations and networks of organizations and workers, facilitated by new technologies and technological forms. This has initiated an interest in technological change as one of the conditions for organizational action and researchers have begun to draw inspiration from a wider spectrum of conceptual issues, perspectives and theoretical traditions.
This book is interested in the level of praxis and how this might be understood and theorized. It brings together a comprehensive collection of empirically-grounded and theoretically-informed research projects from studies of organizational practice which explore a number of technological changes in a variety of contexts. These are informed by contemporary debates within and across theoretical approaches including the sociology of technology, work and organizations, actor network theory, technology as text and metaphor, processual and political perspectives, social and business network-based approaches to the analysis of technology and innovation, and the social construction and shaping of technology.
This book will be essential reading for researchers and advanced students within the field of technology, work and organizations and also organization studies and management studies.

chapter 1|19 pages

Looking backwards and sideways to see forward

Some notes on technological change and organizational action

chapter 2|17 pages

The mutual shaping of technology and organisation

‘Between Cinema and a Hard Place’

chapter 4|21 pages

ERP software packages

Between mass-production communities and intra-organizational political processes

chapter 5|26 pages

‘Push people’s balls and push people’s balls and push people’s balls until something comes out’

Understanding implementation as a ‘configurational practice’

chapter 6|18 pages

Normalization of risks: a stream of bow visor incidents and the Estonia ferry accident

A stream of bow visor incidents and the ferry accident

chapter 7|26 pages

Kicking against the pricks

Corporate entrepreneurship in mature organizations

chapter 10|17 pages

‘We have crossed the rubicon’

A ‘one-team’ approach to information technology