Technology and Context Within Research on International Development Programs: Positioning an Integrationist Perspective

Houston, Renee; Jackson, Michèle H.

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2003.tb00282.x

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…‘Technological artifacts are physical/material as well as social constructions, thus making it plausible to be called social artifacts too. Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is one such technological artifact functioning as a social construction in the life of an ordinary accountant to a highflying investment banker.’ In a separate discussion of whether the constitution of technology is separable from context and whether context is separable from technology, Houston & Jackson (, p. 71) describe an ‘integration’ view in which the meanings and uses identified with technology were constructed as a social artifact reflecting the values of society.…”

Section: Various Artifact‐cousins Of the It Artifact Don't Helpmentioning

confidence: 99%

The concept of ‘IT artifact’ has outlived its usefulness and should be retired now

Alter

2014

Information Systems Journal

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Vastly inconsistent definitions of the term "the IT artifact" in leading journals and conferences demonstrate why it no longer means anything in particular and should be retired from the active IS lexicon. Examples from the literature show why artifact-cousins, such as the IS artifact, sociotechnical artifact, social artifact, and ensemble artifact should be used with great care, if not retired as well. Any void created by these retirements could be filled through the following approaches: (i) relabeling with simple terms that are immediately understandable; (ii) adopting guidelines for making sense of the whole X-artifact family; and (iii) sidestepping the IT artifact and focusing directly on IT-enabled work systems in organizations.While Humpty Dumpty can get away with saying that things mean whatever he chooses them to mean in Lewis Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, that approach is not appropriate for IS researchers, especially because the IS field espouses such great concern about combining rigour, relevance and influence in the real world. The above excerpt from the Call for Papers of the IT Artifact track of ICIS 2013 says that the IT artifact is understood as any of three completely different kinds of things, technologies consisting of hardware and software, sociotechnical systems with human participants, and processes and methods. Although common words such as cell and edge can have different but easily understandable meanings in different

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Section: Various Artifact‐cousins Of the It Artifact Don't Helpmentioning

confidence: 99%

The concept of ‘IT artifact’ has outlived its usefulness and should be retired now

Alter

2014

Information Systems Journal

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“…Following Houston and Jackson (2003), we acknowledge that all accounts of technology are constructed, but that each account is adopted to meet certain needs or in accordance with certain assumptions. Determinism is an account that presumes certain relationships between technology and the world and, therefore, can justify certain choices, actions, and policies.…”

Section: Storytelling and Organizational Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Technological determinism and discursive closure in organizational mergers

Leonardi

Jackson

2004

Journal of Organizational Change Management

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In times of organizational change leaders often tell stories that justify publicly the directions in which organizations move. Such stories are always political in nature and often reflect the motives of the storyteller. We observe how leaders in high-tech organizations use the story of technological determinism in organizational settings as a discursive practice through which they invoke the "inevitability" of technology to justify managerial decisions to the public. Rather than taking ownership of certain actions, managers are able to use this story to claim that certain organizational changes are inevitable, and to eliminate alternative stories. We examine this strategy as it appears in the public discourse produced during two mergers in the high-tech and telecommunications industries occurring from 1998 to 2002: US West and Qwest, and AOL and TimeWarner. Finally, we demonstrate that the story of technological determinism performs discursive closure around each merger.Organizational change, often contested, is likely to be even more so in the case of a corporate merger. As Howard and Geist (1995) remark, "The decision to merge provides a dramatic enactment of organizational change" (p. 110). Although merging may affect organizational processes and discourse on all levels, we are concerned with the discourse that, seeking to make sense of the merger, answers the questions "Why should we change?" and "What should we change to?". Following Alvesson (1990), andCheney andChristensen (2001), our concern is with issue management, or the ways in which this discourse positions the new organization within its environment and eliminates controversy and oppositional discourses. We suggest that this discursive positioning can occur through storytelling. While stories certainly make sense of changes (Weick, 1993), in doing so they suppress certain conflicts and mask multiple interpretations of the situation (Martin, 1990), and perform what Deetz (1992) has called "discursive closure". Through elimination of alternative conceptualizations, storytelling discourses deliver political, social, and economic advantages to certain organizational ideologies over others (Deetz, 1992).One of the challenges faced by merging organizations is that of crafting and then communicating a new corporate identity (

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