Triadic Technology Configuration: A Relational Perspective on Technologists’ Role in Shaping Cloud-Based Technologies

Abstract

Through an ethnographic study of a manufacturing monitoring technology, the author examines how the relations among workers, managers, and third-party technologists impact the ongoing configuration of cloud-based workplace technologies. Because these technologies are broadly networked, data-driven, and highly malleable, the author argues that technologists have an increasingly prominent role. By tracing issues raised by workers and managers in the focal customer firm, the study shows that the employment relation can explain only a limited set of outcomes. An analysis that accounts for technologists’ innovative and economic relations with their users fully explains which issues are resolved and how. In contrast to research that implies technologists amplify institutionalized patterns of labor–management relations through their design choices, this study shows that technologists are complex organizational actors with situated interests, values, and identities. Through the development of a triadic model of relations, the author demonstrates why technologists must be included in analyses of contemporary technologies.