Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations

2000/08/01 by Wanda J. Orlikowski · 6 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · Business, Management and Accounting · #Information Systems Theories and Implementation #Team Dynamics and Performance #Management and Organizational Studies

paper · doi:10.1287/orsc.11.4.404.14600

openalex publication_date 2000/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

As both technologies and organizations undergo dramatic changes in form and function, organizational researchers are increasingly turning to concepts of innovation, emergence, and improvisation to help explain the new ways of organizing and using technology evident in practice. With a similar intent, I propose an extension to the structurational perspective on technology that develops a practice lens to examine how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Viewing the use of technology as a process of enactment enables a deeper understanding of the constitutive role of social practices in the ongoing use and change of technologies in the workplace. After developing this lens, I offer an example of its use in research, and then suggest some implications for the study of technology in organizations.

Citations

• The productivity paradox of information technology
• The integration of computing and routine work
• The Art of Continuous Change: Linking Complexity Theory and Time-Paced Evolution in Relentlessly Shifting Organizations
• The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations
• The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other
• Organizational Structure, Environment and Performance: The Role of Strategic Choice
• Cognition in practice mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life
• Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observations of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments
• Modernity and Self-Identity

Cited by

• 10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization
• The Role of Brothels in Reducing HIV Risk in Sonagachi, India
• The Social Practice of Coevolving Strategy and Structure to Realize Mandated Radical Change
• It’s Practice. But is it Strategy? Reinvigorating strategy-as-practice by rethinking consequentiality
• Multiple Conversations During Organizational Meetings
• Wanda Orlikowski [wikipedia]