Wanda Orlikowski
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Wanda J. Orlikowski is Eaton-Peabody Professor of Communication Sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and visiting Centennial Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science, She is a scholar within the Social Study of Information Systems field.
Orlikowski has written on a great range of topics within this field but is probably best known for her work in studying the implementation and use of technologies within organisations by drawing on Giddens' Theory of Structuration. She has also written extensively on the use of electronic communication technologies, most notably collaborating with JoAnne Yates, a professor of communications at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Orlikowski has also written papers on research methododology within the field and her paper with Baroudi (1991) is particualry widely cited.
She holds a BComm from the University of the Witwatersrand and a PhD from the Stern School of Business, NYU.
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[edit] Structuration and the Practice Lens
Extends the structuration argument, drawing on social constructivism, but breaking away from it on two points.
1) Technologies cannot be stabilised. They may become routinized through repeated use, but are continually modified after development is complete.
2) Technologies do not have structures 'embedded' within them, as these structures are not contained with the technological artifacts themselves, but in human action. Structures only emerge from repeated and situated action.
[edit] Key Points
Structures are enacted in recurrent use of technologies. The rules and norms of using a piece of software do not emanate from the software itself, but come from our interaction with the technology.
Technology-in-practice describes this interaction with technology, while the term 'technological artifact' is used to refer to the technology when not in use.
There are three types of enactment:
1) Inertia: where technology is used as a means of maintaining the status quo.
2) Application: where technology is used to modify and improve the existing way of doing things.
3) Change: where technology is used to significantly change the status quo.
Different conditions (technological, institutional, interpretive) bring about different consequences (technological, processual, structural). She shows this in her case study of the way different groups use a single piece of software. Although the software is the same throughout, the way it is used and what it is used for varies significantly depending on the group, or even the individual. One explanation for this is that actors draw upon their own experience in their interactions with technology.
[edit] Situated Change
Organisations in the new economy have to be flexible and are constantly changing. Past perspectives on how this change occurs now seem out of date because at their core they suggest that organisations are mostly stable. The three past perspectives that Orlikowski (1996) references are:
1) Planned change - managers are the source of any changes, but is change something that can be seen as managed separately from the overall organisation?
2) Technological Imperative - technology is the driving force. This implies that there is no agency and that the changes made by a technology will be predictable and the same for every implementation.
3) Punctuated equilibrium - change is fast and significant, but periodic.
Orlikowski (1996) suggests that change is an ongoing improvisation by actors - a process which is not bounded up in a specific time or place. "Change may not always be as planned, inevitable or discontinuous as we imagine" (p88), and can happen unconsciously. Her case study looks at the implementation of a piece of software - over time, this planned change had considerable unplanned consequences. Gradual adjustments and refinements occurred, and the unplanned results included an altered work practice and organisational culture. As she points out, the "...everyday action[s] of organisational members produce[s], reproduce[s] and change[s] their organising structures" (p89). Each change creates the potential for further changes.
She called this theory the situated change perspective, and it is intended to complement the other three, rather than replace them. Technology is seen as a set of enablements and constraints, which shapes human action and is shaped by it.
[edit] References
Orlikowski, W (2000), 'Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organisations', Organisation Science, Vol 11, No 4
Orlikowski, W (1996), 'Improvising Organisational Transformation Over Time: A Situated Change Perspective), Information Systems Research, Vol 7, No 1
Orlikowski, W, J Yates (1994), 'Genre Repertoire: The Structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations', Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol 39, No 4
Orlikowski, W (1992), 'The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations', Organisation Science, Vol 3, No 3
Orlikowski W, JJ Baroudi (1991) 'Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions', Information Systems Research, 1991
