Mullins L.J. Management and organisational behaviour, Seventh edition

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The inherent flexibility of much of today’s technology, and especially information

and communication technology, allows an organisation to pursue a variety of objec-

tives through this technology. There is, therefore, a wide range of choice available

with regard to how the technology is utilised in the organisation and the form(s) of

working practices and job design adopted around the technology. Having said that,

financial, economic and technical objectives often predominate.

Taking the latter as

an example, it was IT specialists who took the initiative and led the adoption process

in Redstart Computers.

Child,

talking more generally about company strategies and objectives, argued

some time ago that social and organisational objectives are usually secondary to finan-

cial and economic ones, or are not strictly objectives at all, but rather consequences of

the latter objectives and strategies. It is worth noting that in both of the case study

organisations, as well as in Butler Co., personnel specialists either had no, or little,

direct/formal involvement in the technological change process, and certainly not

until many of the key decisions had already been taken (see also Chapter 22).

Inter- and intra-organisational political and social processes and structures exert an

influence upon technical change and, while management strategies might not always

be formulated with labour implications in mind, they can nonetheless have conse-

quences for labour. What is more, having a strategy and objectives in place does not

mean that they will be implemented and achieved as planned: they may be unspe-

cific, poorly understood and subject to reinterpretation and opposition from

managers and other employees. There may be disagreements and, indeed, conflicts

among the actors involved about what these objectives and/or strategies are or should

be. Differences in occupational specialisms may contribute to this and different

‘vocabularies of motive’ may be articulated.

Given the range of different objectives, it is perhaps not surprising that they some-

times conflict, especially if they are held by different groups in the organisation.

Thus, it can be concluded that technical change objectives will not always provide an

unequivocal indication of whether to make an investment in IT, or whether such an

investment has been a ‘success’. The opportunities for the exercise of power, negoti-

ation and persuasion are apparent in a context of uncertainty, lack of information,

competing perspectives, resource scarcity and continual change.

Technology, then, is socially created and shaped by the ideas, interests, objectives

of, and interactions between, designers, technologists, engineers and other actors.

This happens from the earliest stages of the creation and design of the technology in

the design laboratory or software engineering department. There continue to be

opportunities for the technology to be shaped during the period when it is being

introduced into an adopting organisation and, indeed, during everyday utilisation. It

is likely that some actors and groups will have more opportunity than others to shape

the social-technical ensemble during implementation and utilisation, and this is one

reason why it is important to know who has those opportunities, and their orienta-

tions towards work, the organisation, people and technology. The later that particular

actors enter the technology initiation–design–implementation–configuration–utilisa-

tion process, the less opportunity they can be expected to have to influence the

technology/organisation configuration.

ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXTS, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROCESSES

AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

Manuel Castells, in a three-volume magnum opus, under the title The Information Age:

Economy, Society and Culture, originally published in 1996,

has offered a most extensive

and detailed analysis of societal, economic, cultural and organisational change in the

contemporary era. This work has exerted a good deal of influence over recent theorising

and research and continues to do so. Given also that technological change constitutes

the key foundation for his analysis, it is important that this chapter devotes some atten-

tion to it. It is, of course, impossible to do justice in a few pages to all or even a smallish

percentage of the arguments and data put forward, and so the focus here will be upon

Volume I, The Rise of the Network Society,

and in particular those parts of the volume

which deal with technology and technological change. It is perhaps also worth adding

at this juncture that there is no implication here that what Castells has to say is some-

how beyond criticism and that one endorses everything he says – it is highly unlikely

that this could ever be the case for any analysis, let alone one which is so extensive and

far-reaching in its scope! Some evaluation will be offered towards the end of the section,

and suggestions are provided for publications to consult which offer a commentary/

critique upon Castells’s work. For our present purposes, those aspects of Castells’s analy-

sis which are here addressed have been distinguished as: (i) ‘the new economy’; (ii)

‘newer new technology’; (iii) ‘the new enterprise or organisation’, and (iv) ‘the new soci-

ety’. As might be expected, there are a number of overlaps and interconnections

between them. Hopefully, this is not to do too much injustice to the original.

The new economy

According to Castells this emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century across

the world, defined by its three key and intertwined features: it is: (i) informational, (ii)

global, (iii) networked. It is ‘informational’ in the sense that there is a fundamental

dependence upon the generation, processing and application of knowledge-based

information; ‘global’ because ‘the core activities of production, consumption, and cir-

culation, as well as their components (capital, labor, raw materials, management,

information, technology, markets) are organized on a global scale…’;

and ‘networked’

because economic activity takes place through a global network of interaction between

a variety of business networks. The emergence and development of new forms of tech-

nology made all this possible: ‘This new economy emerged … because the information

technology revolution provided the indispensable material basis for its creation.’

Newer new technology

As we saw earlier, a variety of forms of new technology embodying microelectronics

and microprocessors, and often linked together through telecommunications, had

emerged during the last quarter of the twentieth century – not least, information and

communication technology. This is the sort of technology Castells is thinking of above

in his outline of the ‘new economy’. However, further fundamental technological and

related changes occurred during the very last years of the century, which led Castells to

identify the opportunity for (and to some extent at least, subsequent realisation of,

given his later discussion) more significant innovations in terms of the ways in which

business and other activities can be undertaken across the world:

In the late 1990s, the communication power of the Internet, together with new developments in

telecommunications and computing, induced another major technological shift, from decentral-

ized, stand-alone microcomputers and mainframes to pervasive computing by interconnected

information-processing devices, coming in multiple formats. In this new technological system

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ICTS, NETWORKS, ORGANISATIONS AND SOCIETY

computer power is distributed in a communicated network builtaround web servers using

common Internet protocols, and enabled with access capability to mega-computer servers, usu-

ally differentiated between database servers and application servers … users were accessing the

network from a variety of single-purpose, specialized devices distributed in all spheres of life and

activity, at home, at work, at shopping, at entertainmentplaces, in transportation vehicles, and

ultimately everywhere. These devices, many of them portable, can communicate among them-

selves, without needing their own operating system. Thus, computing power, applications, and

data are stored in the servers of the network, and computing intelligence is placed in the network

itself: web sites communicate with each other, and have at their disposal the necessary software

to connect any appliance to a universal computer network.

Given the above analysis, it should come as no surprise that Castells sees networks as

the core identifying feature not only of the ‘new economy’, but also increasingly of the

businesses and infrastructure which interlink and support them and their activities.

The new enterprise (or organisation)

‘Enterprise’ is Castells’s preferred term, probably because it does not so readily have the

connotation of economic or social activity being carried out within a fixed and known

geographic space or spaces, such as office buildings, which we often associate with the

term ‘organisation’. ‘Enterprise’ can perhaps more readily signal in this context eco-

nomic activity which occurs across the world, between a variety of actors, some of

whom might be located in an ‘organisation’ and work in/from a designated office,

others working from home, as subcontractors, as ‘outsourcers’, etc, etc., but all collabo-

rating in some way or other in forms of economic activity, facilitated by technology.

Castells, then, talks about the ‘Network Enterprise’, which he defines as: ‘That spe-

cific form of enterprise whose system of means is constituted by the intersection of

segments of autonomous systems of goals.’

That is, the components of the network

are simultaneously both autonomous and dependent vis-à-vis the network, and may be

part of other networks. The quality of the performance of a network depends upon (i)

its ‘connectedness’, that is, its ability to facilitate noise-free communication between

its component parts, and (ii) its ‘consistency’, that is, the overlap in the sharing of

interests between the network’s goals and the goals of its components.

This still leaves open the question: ‘What is a network?’ in Castells’s understanding.

He provides a technical definition towards the end of the volume:

A network is a set of interconnected nodes. A node is the point at which a curve intersects itself.

What a node is … depends on the kind of concrete networks of which we speak. They are stock

exchange markets, and their ancillary advanced services centres, in the network of global finan-

cial flows … The topology defined by networks determines that the distance (or intensity and

frequency of interaction) between two points (or social positions) is shorter (or more frequent, or

more intense) if both points are nodes in a network than if they do not belong to the same net-

work. On the other hand, within a given network, flows have no distance, or the same distance,

between nodes. Thus, distance (physical, social, economic, political, cultural) for a given point or

position varies between zero (for any node in the same network) and infinite (for any point exter-

nal to the network). The inclusion/exclusion in networks, enacted by light-speed-operating

information technologies, configure dominant processes and functions in our societies.

It is recognised that there are a variety of types of networks. Earlier in this chapter we

talked, for example, about ‘actor-networks’, and it is important to state here that the

ways in which these are understood is quite different from the sort of network theor-

isation under discussion here. Piore and Sabel talked about ‘industrial district’ networks

of collaborating (often small) firms, located in defined regions of the world.

Castells’s

‘Network Enterprise’ was outlined above, and we will shortly refer to his ‘Network

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

687

Society’, but before doing so let us look at some other possibilities. Ernst

identified

the following types of networks:

■ Supplier – subcontracting and original equipment manufacturing arrangements

between a client and its suppliers of intermediate inputs.

■ Producer – co-production arrangements which enable competing producers to pool

their manufacturing facilities, financial and human resources with a view to extend-

ing their product offerings and geographic coverage.

■ Customer – the forward linkages of manufacturing companies with distributors,

marketing channels, resellers and end-users.

■ Standard coalitions – initiated by would-be global standard setters with the objec-

tive of locking in as many companies as possible into their proprietary

product/service or interface standards.

■ Technology co-operation – facilitate the acquisition of product design and produc-

tion technology, enable joint production and process development, and allow

generic scientific knowledge and R & D to be shared.

In summary terms, then, the new enterprise paradigm consists of the following:

1 Business networks;

2Technological tools;

3Global competition;

4 The state. For example, supporting the development of the new economy; helping

nurture regionally based networks via local and/or regional government.

When all the above elements of the new economy, the new enterprise, and the latest

Internet/www and other new technology are conflated across those parts of the world

where they have taken hold, then, according to Castells, we can justifiably talk about

the emergence of the new ‘Network Society’.

The ‘network society’

The ‘material foundation’ of the network society consists of:

1 Information is the raw material. Technologies act on information, rather than

information acting on technology, as in previous technological revolutions.

2 Pervasiveness of effects of new technologies. ‘Because information is an integral

part of all human activity, all processes of our individual and collective existence are

directly shaped (although certainly not determined) by the new technological

medium’.

3 Networking logic. Using the new ICTs, the network can now be implemented in all

kinds of processes and organisations:

Without them, the networking logic would be too cumbersome to implement. Yet this network-

ing logic is needed to structure the unstructured while preserving flexibility, since the

unstructured is the driving force of innovation in human activity. Moreover, when networks

diffuse, their growth becomes exponential, as the benefits of being in the network grow expo-

nentially, because of the greater number of connections … [whilst] the penalty for being

outside the network increases with the network’s growth because of the declining number of

opportunities in reaching other elements outside the network.

4 The flexibility of IT. This is about, in essence, configuration and reconfiguration of

organisations and institutions through IT (see earlier sections of the chapter). Note

that this ‘reprogramming’ of the material basis of the organisation through ICT can

be liberating, but also repressive, and that only empirical analysis will be able to tell

us what is occurring at the level of enterprises and economies.

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5 The convergence of specific technologies into an integrated system. ‘Old, sepa-

rate technological trajectories become literally indistinguishable. Thus,

micro-electronics, telecommunications, opto-electronics, and computers are all now

integrated into information systems.’

In sum, the information technology paradigm does not evolve towards its closure as a system,

buttoward its openness as a multi-edged network. It is powerful and imposing in its materiality,

but adaptive and open-ended in its historical development. Comprehensiveness, complexity, and

networking are its decisive qualities.

And

… global networks of instrumental exchanges selectively switch on and off individuals, groups,

regions, and even countries, according to their relevance in fulfilling the goals processed in the

network, in a relentless flow of strategic decisions.

[Thus] For the first time in history, the basic

unit of economic organization is not a subject, be it individual (such as the entrepreneur, or the

entrepreneurial family) or collective (such as the capitalist class, the corporation, the state) … the

unit is the network, made up of a variety of subjects and organizations [emphasis in original]

…

the power of flows takes precedence over the flows of power. Presence or absence in the network

and the dynamics of each network vis-à-vis others are critical sources of domination and change

in our society: a society that, therefore, we may properly call the network society …

There is a strong cultural (in the broad, societal sense) undertone and dimension to

much of Castells’s analysis of the network society, nicely brought out in the following:

the new communication system radically transforms space and time, the fundamental dimen-

sions of human life. Localities become disembodied from their cultural, historical, geographical

meaning, and reintegrated into functional networks, or into image collages, inducing a space of

flows that substitutes for the space of places. Time is erased in the new communication system

when past, present, and future can be programmed to interact with each other in the same mes-

sage. The space of flows and timeless time are the material foundations of a new culture that

transcends and includes the diversity of historically transmitted systems of representation: the

culture of real virtuality where make-believe is belief in the making.

To conclude, a few observations can be offered in drawing this consideration of the

network society/economy/enterprise to a close. Castells recognises that networks do

not lack a structuring logic, but rather flow according to logics of power (he talks about

the ‘power of flows’); putting it another way, ‘… some nodes are more powerful than

others, exerting a greater gravitational force on the relations that stream around

them’.

He talks of the ‘switches’ which connect up networks as being privileged

instruments of power, i.e. ‘global flows of financial capital, ensuring that the network

society is a capitalist society of “decentralized concentration” ’.

However, he appears

to see the ‘power of flows’ as having precedence over the ‘flows of power’, where the

logic of the network supersedes all other logics – as can be seen in the extract above. As

Fitzpatrick has observed:

… as well as underestimating the power of capitalists, Castells enjoins us to abandon the ideo-

logical reference points and strategies that provide such struggles with long-term direction …

that ideology may actually motivate micro-political struggles, is a fact that he, like most post-

modernists … seems unable to accommodate.

Capitalist hierarchies of power and control have not been replaced by a new mode of

social organisation, indeed ‘the advent of informatics [ICTs, etc.] strengthens corporate

capitalism’.

What is more ‘electronically generated information tends to act as infor-

mation always acts in a market, i.e. it is information about the relatively powerless that

flows to the relatively powerful’.

Thus, ‘In short, the information revolution is a revo-

lution within capitalism and not a revolution of capitalism’.

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689

■ In its various forms technology is found in all organisations. Technology has been

theorised via a variety of perspectives. There are a variety of definitions, none of them

universally accepted. What one perceives as the nature of technology, what it can and

cannot do, the degree of control which can be exercised over it, as against being con-

trolled by it, its ‘liberating’ potential (and so on) are all in many respects a result of this

theorisation process.

■ Much new technology, it has been argued, possesses characteristics which allow a

wide degree of choice within organisations over how that technology is used, by whom,

and for what purposes. The ‘impacts’ of the technological change process depend there-

fore, to a considerable extent, upon the nature and quality of the associated

decision-making process, including decisions relating to the nature of work organisation

around the technology and the degree of skill required to perform that work.

■ In order to understand what technology can do, what it is and how it might be

effectively managed, it is necessary to appreciate the social, economic and political

contexts within which technology is created, developed, produced and introduced. All

these external and internal organisational contexts help to shape the evolving socio-

technical ensemble and its use, potential and impact. In other words, technology is

‘socially created and shaped’, but is not infinitely malleable, in that it does have a ‘fac-

ticity’. Indeed, one ‘constraint’ upon evolving technology is existing technology.

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PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

CRITICAL REFLECTIONS

‘All this constant talk about technology is so boring. It is only another tool and besides it is the

management and performance of people that really matters.’

‘Yes, but remember that technology is the tool which enables people to perform, and man-

agers must have the skills and understanding to know how to make the best use of technology

within the organisation.’

What are your own views?

From research into strategic organisational and technological change in Bass Taverns, Preece et

al. raise the following questions.

Wastechnology a major influence upon the organizational regimes which emerged in Bass

Taverns? Did it have an important influence upon any changes which took place in public house

managers’ attitudes and behaviour? Did their new-found or enhanced IT competences and skills

give them an edge in their relationships with functional specialists and operational managers?

Wastechnology freedom? Was it a prerequisite for effective teamworking?

Preece, D., Steven, G. and Steven, V. Work, Change and Competition: Managing for Bass, Routledge (1999), p. 168.

How would you answer these questions about the role of technology for your own, or

some other chosen, organisation?

‘To make the best use of technology we must use it to support and develop our business, not

adapt business to the technology. Technology should be our servant – not our master.’

Debate.

SYNOPSIS

■

Once a particular technology has been developed and produced, it is then available in

the marketplace to organisations which can afford to buy it. From a managerial perspec-

tive, then, it is possible to trace the ways in which that technology comes to have a

presence within the organisation through a ‘technology adoption and introduction’

framework which attempts to capture the importance and influence of the social, political

and economic contexts upon the emerging effectiveness and efficiency of the utilisation

of that technology. Here, the role of politics, choice and decision-making is central.

■ Subsequent to introduction, the ways in which the technology is used, by whom

and with which objectives, concerns, interests, skills and knowledge, will continually

influence the benefits which are derived from that technology by both the organisa-

tion and the users.

■ Information and communication technology, telecommunications, the Internet

and world-wide web form the core material foundation of organisational networks,

which operate on a global basis, and which have become more pervasive during the

early years of the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 17 TECHNOLOGY AND ORGANISATIONS

691

1 Outline and comment upon ways in which users can participate in the adoption and intro-

duction of new technology.

2 Drawing upon the research evidence discuss the suggestion that: ‘nothing is to be gained

by involving users in the adoption and introduction of technical change. It is far simpler

and quicker to tell them what will happen and what they will have to do.’

3 It is not unusual for the outcomes of technical change not to match up to expectations.

What can cause this gap, and how might it have been prevented?

4 What sorts of objectives have and might managers set for the introduction of technological

change? Draw upon case study research in answering this question.

5 Discuss critically the contention that: ‘decision-making with respect to technical change is

an inherently political process’.

6 ‘New technology has resolved the control question, therefore managers can and will draw

back from a Tayloristic approach to the supervision of employees.’ Discuss.

7 ‘A theoretical or practical perspective which sees technology as having independent

effects upon people and organisations is misguided.’ Discuss.

8 Compare and contrast two approaches to theorising the nature of technology. Which one

do you prefer, and why?

REVIEW AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

PART 6 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES

OBJECTIVES

Completing this exercise should help you to enhance the following skills:

 Understand better the impact of technical change on an organisation and its members and

vice versa.

 Apply your theoretical knowledge to the analysis of organisational processes.

 Evaluate the benefits and drawbacks resulting from technical change.

EXERCISE

In an organisation with which you are familiar, you are required to:

1 Detail fully an example of technical change that has taken place or is taking place .

2 Analyse the origins and development of that change, drawing upon the technological and

organisational change literature.

3 Assess the main implications of that change for both the organisation and its employees.

DISCUSSION

■ How might managers and other members of staff prepare for technical change?

■ To what extent does theorising the nature of technology help in analysing the nature of

technical change?

■ In general terms, do you believe technical change results in more positive or more negative

implications for individuals in an organisation?

Visit our website www.booksites.net/mullins for further questions, annotated weblinks,

case material and Internet research material.

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NOTES AND REFERENCES

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the Concept of Technology in Organisations’,

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MacKenzie, D. and Wajcman, J. (eds) The Social Shaping of

Technology, Second edition, Open University Press (1999).

3. Ibid., p. 4.

4. Woodward, J. (ed.) Industrial Organisation: Behaviour and

Control, Oxford University Press (1970); Woodward, J.

Industrial Organization: Theory and Practice, Second edi-

tion, Oxford University Press (1980).

5. Woodward (1980), ibid., cited in McLoughlin, I. and

Dawson, P. ‘The Mutual Shaping of Technology and

Organisation: “Between Cinema and a Hard Place” ’, in

Preece, D. and Laurila, J. (eds) Technological Change and

Organizational Action, Routledge (2003), p. 22.

6. McLoughlin, I. and Dawson, P., op. cit., pp. 22–3.

7. Blauner, R. Alienation and Freedom, University of

Chicago Press (1964).

8. Thomas, R. What Machines Can’t Do; Politics and

Technology in the Industrial Enterprise, University of

California Press (1994).

9. Ibid., p. 4.

10. Ibid., p. 5.

11. Ibid., p. 19.

12. Trist, E. L., Higgin, G. W., Murray, H. and Pollack, A. B.

Organizational Choice, Tavistock (1963).

13. Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. Organizational

Behaviour: An Introductory Text, Third edition, Prentice

Hall (1997), p. 568.

14. Ibid.

15. Braverman, H. Labour and Monopoly Capital: The

Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Monthly

Review Press (1974).

16. McLoughlin, I. and Clark, J. Technological Change at

Work, Second edition, Open University Press (1994),

pp. 44–5.

17. See, for example, Sewell, G. and Wilkinson, B. ‘Someone

To Watch Over Me: Surveillance, Discipline and the Just-

in-Time Labour Process’, Sociology, 26, 2, 1992, pp.

271–91; Lyon, D. The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the

Surveillance Society, Polity Press (1994); Taylor, P. and

Bain, P. ‘“An assembly line in the head”: Work and

Employee Relations in the Call Centre’, Industrial

Relations Journal, 30, 2, 1999, pp. 101–16; Blosch, M. and

Preece, D. ‘Framing Work Through a Socio-technical

Ensemble: The Case of Butler Co.’ Technology Analysis &

Strategic Management, vol. 12, no. 1, 2000, pp. 91–102.

18. Zuboff, S. In the Age of the Smart Machine, Harvard

Business School Press (1988).

19.

McLoughlin, I. and Clark, J. Technological Change at Work,

Second edition, Open University Press (1994), p. 56.

20. Pettigrew, A. M. The Politics of Organisational Decision-

making, Tavistock (1973).

21. Wilkinson, B. The Shopfloor Politics of New Technology,

Heinemann (1983).

22.

McLoughlin, I. and Clark, J. Technological Change at Work,

Second edition, Open University Press (1994), p. 57.

23. Buchanan, D. and Boddy, D. Organisations in the

Computer Age: Technological Imperatives and Strategic

Choice, Gower (1983), p. 255.

24. Hayes, N. and Walsham, G. ‘Safe Enclaves, Political

Enclaves and Knowledge Working’, in Prichard, C.,

Hull, R., Chumer, M. and Willmott, H. (eds) Managing

Knowledge: Critical Investigations of Work and Learning,

Macmillan (2000).

25. Preece, D. Organizations and Technical Change: Strategy,

Objectives and Involvement, Routledge (1995).

26.

For a detailed exposition of this perspective, see:

Mackenzie, D. and Wajcman, J. (eds) The Social Shaping of

Technology, Second edition, Open University Press (1999).

27. Knights, D. and Murray, F. Managers Divided: Organisation

Politics and Information Technology Management, Wiley

(1994).

28. McLoughlin, I. and Harris, M. Introduction:

‘Understanding Innovation, Organisational Change and

Technology’, in McLoughlin, I. and Harris, M. (eds)

Innovation, Organizational Change and Technology,

International Thomson Business Press (1997), p. 12. See

also: Edge, D. ‘The Social Shaping of Technology’, in

Heap, N., Thomas, R., Einon, G., Mason, R. and Mackay,

H. (eds) Information Technology and Society, Sage (1995).

29. See, for example: Bijker, W. E. and Law, J. (eds) Shaping

Technology/Building Society: Studies in Socio-Technical

Change, MIT Press (1992); Pinch, T. and Bijker, W. ‘The

Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the

Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology

might Benefit Each Other’, in Bijker, W., Hughes, T.

and Pinch, T. (eds), The Social Construction of

Technological Systems, MIT Press (1987).

30. Grint, K. and Woolgar, S. The Machine at Work:

Technology, Work and Organization, Polity Press (1997),

pp. 23–4.

31. Bijker, W. Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs, Towards a

Theory of Socio-Technical Change, MIT Press (1995); Pinch,

T. and Bijker, W. ‘The Social Construction of Facts and

Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the

Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other’, in

Bijker, W., Hughes, T., and Pinch, T. (eds) The Social

Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the

Sociology of History and Technology, MIT Press (1987).

32. Bijker, W. (1995), op. cit., p. 280.

33. Callon, M. ‘Some Elements of a Sociology of

Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the

Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, in Law, J. (ed.) Power,

Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge,

Routledge (1986); Callon, M., Law, J. and Rip, A. (eds)

Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology in the

Real World, Macmillan (1986); Latour, B. Science in

Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through

Society, Harvard University Press (1987); Law, J.

‘Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case

of Portuguese Expansion’, in Bijker, W., Hughes, T., and

Pinch, T. (eds) The Social Construction of Technological

Systems, MIT Press (1987).

693

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34. McLoughlin, I. Creative Technological Change: The

Shaping of Technology and Organisations, Routledge,

(1999) p. 94.

35. Walsham, G. Making a World of Difference: IT in a Global

Context, Wiley (2001), p. 46.

36. Coombs, R., Saviotti, P. and Walsh, V. ‘Technology and

the Firm: the Convergence of Economic and

Sociological Approaches?’, in Coombs, R., Saviotti, P.

and Walsh, V. (eds) Technological Change and Company

Strategies, Academic Press (1992), p. 17.

37. Williams, R. and Edge, D. ‘The Social Shaping of

Technology’, in Dutton, W. (ed.) Information and

Communication Technologies: Visions and Realities,

Oxford University Press (1996), p. 65. See also: Doolin,

B. and Lowe, A. ‘To Reveal is to Critique: Actor-network

theory and critical information systems research’,

Journal of Information Technology, vol. 17, no. 1, 2002,

pp. 69–78.

38. See, for example: Grint, K. and Woolgar, S. The Machine

at Work, Polity Press (1997).

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