The Question of Technology, or How Organizations Inscribe the World

Abstract

This article relates technology studies to organization research and examines the technology-as-text metaphor. The study of organization is incomplete as long as tangible technology remains in its blind spot. Linguistic metaphors and analogies, while capturing and indeed amplifying much of received understandings of technology, succeed only partially in repairing the situation. The image of the palimpsest is used to highlight this critique and to visualize ways out. Thus, while the main concern of the paper is to re-situate technology to the study of organization, an argument is also put forward for a specific approach to the study of technology.

“Devils May Sit Here:” The Role of Enchantment in Institutional Maintenance

“…In other words, embodied knowledge based on spatial orientations shapes individual, group and organizational identities, which the literature on institutional maintenance fails to consider The above insights offered by the literature on organizational spaces have great potential to enrich institutional theorizing. Institutional literature has long recognized the role of buildings as carriers of institutions (Jones and Massa, 2013;Scott, 2014;Zucker, 1988), and is beginning to take cognizance of other representations of physical form such as objects (Monteiro & Nicolini, 2014;Orlikowski & Scott, 2008;Pinch, 2008;Raviola and Norbӓck (2013), tools and techniques used in organizations (Lawrence, Leca & Zilber, 2013), and computer technologies (Gawer and Phillips, 2013;Jorges and Czarniawska, 1998;Czarniawska, 2008). However, the literature on institutional maintenance largely confines itself to the study of social relations and fails to take account of the interplay between organizational spaces and emotions that these spaces evoke.…”

Technology choice and its performance: Towards a sociology of software package procurement

“…(Pettigrew, 1973;Swan & Clark, 1992;Knights & Murray, 1994;Koch, 2000Koch, , 2001. Many from a discourse theoretic position end up following a position close to Steve Woolgar (Grint & Woolgar, 1997) in his insistence that the material properties of artifacts are essentially unknowable and thus that the role of analysis is to reveal the discursive practices through which one interpretation wins out over another (Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995;Joerges & Czarniawska, 1998;Rappert, 2003).…”

Emerging Institutions: Pyramids or Anthills?

“…In narrative terms, one story does not a genre make. In terms of actor-network theory, which is itself of narrative origins (Czarniawska and Hernes, 2005), an institution can be seen as a macroactor of long standing that is strengthened not only by the norm or norms, but also by artifacts (Joerges and Czarniawska, 1998). Furthermore, an institution depends for its survival on its ability to fit into the dominant institutional order (Warren et al, 1974;Meyer et al, 1974;Meyer et al et al, 1987Meyer et al et al, ).…”