Information Technology and Organisational Transformation: History, Rhetoric and Practice

Citation

Elbanna, A.R. (2002), "Information Technology and Organisational Transformation: History, Rhetoric and Practice", Information Technology & People, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 175-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2002.15.2.175.1

The book presents a collection of 11 articles, seven of which were previously published in March 1996 in the first special issue of Information Systems Research (ISR) (Vol. 7 No. 1) that marked the launch of the journal’s new design and format. Although it spans a wide range of topics, the main theme that runs across the book is to “provide evidence” through exploring how organisational transformation unfolds over time in order to critique and refute the deterministic view of technology. The topics covered are grouped under three loosely defined perspectives. As the book’s title suggests they are: history, rhetoric and practice.

The first part, entitled “The history of information technology and organisational transformation”, deals with the historic perspective. Its three constituent articles review some historical experiences in order to argue against the simplistic causal and linear relationship between technology and organisational transformation suggested by the technology deterministic view. The first article “The role of information technology in the transformation of work: a comparison of post‐industrial, industrial, and proto‐industrial organisation”, by Susan J. Winter and S. Lynne Taylor, reviews the past 500 years to demonstrate that technology alone should not be held accountable for the organisational change. They argue that social, institutional, political, cultural and economic factors play a significant role in organisational transformation in the past and may be continuing to shape it today. The second article entitled “Information technology and organizational change in the British census, 1801‐1911” by Martin Campbell‐Kelly follows the same line. As the title suggests, the article draws from Victorian England to reveal that the response to technological opportunities was determined by the organisation’s cultural heritage, the organisational goals and the need to react to external pressure groups. The last article in this historical part entitled “Texas Politics and the Fax Revolution” by historian Jonathan Coopersmith, focuses on Texan politics and the adoption of fax machines by different parties. It demonstrates and explains the uneven institutional use of the same technology (fax machines) by different parties and its effect on the dynamics of politics in Texas.

The second part of the book deals with the rhetorical aspects and is entitled “The rhetoric of information technology and organizational transformation”. It begins with an intensive article by Suzanne Iacono and Rob Kling entitled “Computerization movements: the rise of the Internet and distant forms of work”. The authors present an interesting framework to conceptualise the individuals’ interpretations of technology. They argue that this cannot be understood away from the public discourse. They construct an analytic framework that consists of three‐recursive relationships between what they call technological action frames, public discourse, and organisational practices. They then apply it to the rise and framing of the Internet.

In the following article “Politically wired: the changing places of political participation in the age of the Internet”, Charles Bazman examines how the Internet may influence political participation at a national level. Despite declaring that the eventual influence of the Internet on political participation is just starting to unfold and hence it is difficult to predict it by any means, he goes on to briefly explore the ways in which politics take place in this new medium, focusing on the Web sites of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) at two points in time, in 1997 and 1998.

The last article in this part by John R. Weeks is entitled “Information technology in a culture of complaint: derogation, deprecation, and the appropriation of organizational transformation”, and provides an interesting account of users’ complaints about IT in a British bank. He suggests that the ritual functions of complaint are institutionalised in this bank in such a way that even if current problems with IT were solved, other problems would be likely to be found to complain about instead. He argues that complaints by and large can serve as either derogation (signalled acceptance of the status quo) or deprecation (claim, remedy and change) and that in this particular bank’s culture complaint serves as derogation: even when it started as deprecation, it soon shifts towards derogation to avoid any embarrassment for any party.

The third part of the book, entitled “The practice of information technology and organizational transformation”, includes five articles. It begins with Brian T. Pentland’s article entitled “Big brother goes portable: end‐user computing in the internal revenue service”. He investigates the assimilation and adoption of laptop portable computers in the Internal Revenue Service. Although the data gathering and fieldwork took place in 1987 and 1988, i.e. it is more than ten years old, the author claims that “the story is still quite current”. The article reveals that, apart from very limited changes in work practices, the adoption of portable computers did not transform anything in the organisation. He finds that the work practices varied between regional offices as some of them embrace laptops, find them useful and “couldn’t work without” them while others find them useless and do not use them on a regular basis. This disparity was explained in terms of the shared meaning that the laptops generate for potential users. This shared meaning is in turn situated and embedded in the shared routine, relations with taxpayers as well as supervisors in the office and work colleagues.

In the second paper entitled “Information technology in the police context: the ‘sailor’ phone”, sociologist Peter K. Manning examines the use of mobile phones in American police agencies. Again the data gathering and fieldwork took place in the early 1990s. The article emphasises the local meaning of technology and interestingly applies dramaturgical sociology as a theoretical and analytical perspective. This perspective views social life as if it were a theatre and studies how the communication of messages to an audience conveys information and creates impressions that shape social interactions. It concludes that mobile phones have the potential to elaborate characteristic dilemmas of inspectorial bureaucracies. Manning doubted that mobile phones alone will reshape patterns of authority, taking into account the rigid role‐ following nature of officers. He finds that “technology has a life within organisations” and hence time should be established as “the most important variable in the study of the meaning of technology”.

The third article also occupies itself with the local understanding and evolvement of the technology’s use over time. In this article “Improvising organizational transformation over time: a situated change perspective”, Wanda J. Orlikowski follows the activities of a technical support team over a period of two years and their use of a new technology, namely Lotus Notes. It provides a situated account of the changes that shape the use of the system among this users’ group over time. It provides a different view of organisational transformation away from the classic, planned, cutting‐edge change that is usually expected with IT. She presents the transformation of the system’s use as being unplanned activity that occurs over time through small, subtle, and barely visible changes in individual and group practices.

The fourth article in this section “Transforming work through information technology: a comparative case study of geographic information systems (GIS) in county government”, by Daniel Robey and Sundeep Sahay, continues the previous theme and provides another situated account of how information technology’s consequences are socially constructed. It provides a comparative study of the implementation of the same GIS in two county government organisations. It reveals that the historical technological progress and users’ experiences in each county affect users’ perceptions and expectations from the technology. It concludes by suggesting organisational learning as a theoretical perspective for studying information technology and organisational transformation.

The last article, entitled “Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: design and access for large information spaces”, by Susan Leigh Star and Karen Ruhleder, presents a detailed ethnographic view of the outcomes of building and bringing into daily use a specialised system that is supposed to link and support the collaborative work of a large and geographically dispersed research community of biological scientists. It concludes by suggesting that highly structured applications for collaboration will fail to become integrated into local work practices. It suggests that infrastructures evolve over time and that formal planned structure “melds with or gives way” to an informally and locally constructed emergent structure.

The book in general challenges the simple causal relationship between technology and organisational transformation that is suggested by the technological determinism view. It affirms the social constructionist view that technology’s social consequences depend upon its social meaning more than on its material properties and some articles tend to balance both views by asserting that technology both shapes and is shaped by organisational routines and structure. For that, the book certainly provides a valuable contribution to the social construction view of IS. It also provides a wide range of research methods and analytical perspectives, which is quite useful.

However, in a vigorous field like IS, articles from early 1996 are becoming almost classics already, especially this particular volume of ISR that is considered a recognition and emphasis of the value and importance of the social perspective in studying IS. Thus most, if not all, of its articles are well known in the IS research community, particularly those who are interested in the social and organisational perspectives of IS, and hence they are widely quoted and cited. This in addition to the fact that most of the fieldwork data in the book dated from the early 1990s at best makes one wonder why the book was published in 2001 and not in 1996 where it fits best!