Human agency in a wireless world: Patterns of technology use in nomadic computing environments

Cousins, Karlene; Robey, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2005.02.008

Cited by 105 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…By managing the technological artifact rather than its use in practice, this firm (like many others) failed to achieve the benefits of the technology they had deployed. The insights afforded by a practice lens on technology adoption and use have been further elaborated and extended by examinations of other technologies in practice, including enterprise resource planning systems (Boudreau and Robey 2005), intranets (Vaast and Walsham 2005), Web-based self-service applications (Schultze and Orlikowski 2004), nomadic computing (Cousins and Robey 2005), and mobile e-mail devices (Mazmanian et al 2006).…”

Section: Practice Theory In Practice: Our Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory

Feldman

Orlikowski²

2011

Organization Science

1,242

1,077

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T his paper describes the emerging field of practice theory as it is practiced in relation to organizational phenomena. We identify three approaches-empirical, theoretical, and philosophical-that relate to the what, the how, and the why of using a practice lens. We discuss three principles of the theoretical approach to practice and offer examples of how practice theory has been used in the organizational literature and in our own research. We end with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities that practice theory affords organizational scholarship.Key words: practice; practice theory; genres; resourcing; routines; technology in practice; sociomateriality History: Published online in Articles in Advance February 23, 2011. IntroductionIn this paper we discuss the value of practice theory for issues of concern to organization theorists. We are motivated to write this by our own experiences, primarily our experiences as researchers and teachers but also our experiences as editors and reviewers of papers that investigate practices empirically and use practice ideas theoretically. Central to a practice lens is the notion that social life is an ongoing production and thus emerges through people's recurrent actions. We have become intrigued by the capacity that such a lens affords for analyzing social, technological, and organizational phenomena, and we write this piece with the intent of sharing our understanding and interest in that capacity.We believe that a practice lens has much to offer scholars of organization. And we believe this is especially the case today. Contemporary organizing is increasingly understood to be complex, dynamic, distributed, mobile, transient, and unprecedented, and as such, we need approaches that will help us theorize these kinds of novel, indeterminate, and emergent phenomena (Barley and Kunda 2001, Child and McGrath 2001, Ciborra 1996, Law and Urry 2004, Stark 2009). We believe practice theory, with its focus on dynamics, relations, and enactment, is particularly well positioned to offer powerful analytical tools to help us here.We begin by positioning the practice lens as a specific approach to understanding the world. We discuss a number of core principles of practice theory and offer a few illustrations of current organizational scholarship that is informed by these principles. We then describe some experiences of using practice theory in our own research practice so as to ground its use in the details of specific projects and intellectual histories. We end with a brief discussion of some of the challenges faced by practice scholars, as well as the value that can be derived from engaging in practice scholarship. Positioning a Practice LensIn our consideration of practice theory, we situate it in relation to three ways of studying practice (Orlikowski 2010): an empirical focus on how people act in organizational contexts, a theoretical focus on understanding relations between the actions people take and the structures of organizational life, and a philosophical focus on the con...

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Section: Practice Theory In Practice: Our Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory

Feldman

Orlikowski²

2011

Organization Science

1,242

1,077

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Minimally disruptive behaviours were also considered anti-social, the immediacy of mobile email could be distracting, and by liberating users from the confines of work, mobile email delivered work to the home and to other nonwork environments, challenging work-life boundaries. Cousins and Robey (2005) addressed the issue of boundary control in their study of nomadic work patterns, concluding that the workers they studied used mobile technologies in ways that sharpened and reinforced work-life boundaries. But while these respondents may have believed that they were keeping work time and personal time separate by defining clear boundaries, it seems that work time was dominant for at least some of the respondents.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illusions of Balance and Control in an Always-on Environment: a Case Study of BlackBerry Users

Middleton

2007

Continuum

103

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“…Though single-person coding may be considered a reliability issue, it is a common practice in qualitative studies (Cousins & Robey, 2005;Schultze, 2000). Since this was a singlecase study, the findings are not generalizable to all ERP project deescalations; yet, there are practical suggestions that can be inferred which may be useful for senior management, project management, IT and business team members, and ERP consultants.…”

Section: Viiii Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 94%