Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective

Citation: Orlikowski, W. J (1996) Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective. Information systems research (Volume 7) (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective
Tagged: Sociology (RSS) Organizational Change (RSS), Improvisation (RSS), Practice Lens (RSS), Groupware (RSS), Ethnography (RSS)

Summary

Orlikowski responds here to previous accounts for organizational change associated with information technologies. These accounts tended towards the deterministic (e.g. technological imperative) and/or a punctuated equilibrium perspective.

Using data from a 2-year interview and observation-based study of a groupware implementation in a tech services firm, Orlikowski argues for an emergent change perspective, one in which change arises as a natural and ongoing consequence of everyday work practices (coupled with new possibilities associated with the new technology). Orlikowski reminds us that March had proposed this possibility 15 years earlier.

She reveals five phases of groupware-associated change over this 2 year span, and divides adaptations and work practices into planned and unplanned domains. At any given point in time, much of the observed work practice novelty was not anticipated in previous time periods. Orlikowski says that the specifics of the adaptation in the firm under observation are likely highly contingent. She also claims that the process of ongoing, situated, emergent adaptation driven by the interplay between agency and structure (technological and social structure in this case) is likely generalizable.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

In her words: "a practice lens can avoid the strong assumptions of rationality, determinism, or discontinuity characterizing existing change perspectives. A situated change perspective may offer a particularly useful strategy for analyzing change in organizations turning increasingly away from patterns of stability, bureaucracy, and control to those of flexibility, selforganizing, and learning."