The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations

By Wanda J. Orlikowski. 2014

2,667 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model—the structurational model of technology—is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the limits and opportunities of human choice, technology development and use, and organizational design. Implications for future research of the new concept of technology and the structurational model of technology are discussed.

Subfields: Management Science and Operations Research, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90c717540e08c9ce59840fbae607509a89eaf2db

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Citations in the corpus

Balancing platform control and external contribution in third‐party development: the boundary resources model (2013, background): “Concurring with well-known theories in information systems (IS) such as the structurational model of technology (Orlikowski, 1992), the causality type of the boundary resources model is bidirectional, i.”
The Use of Enterprise Social Network Sites for Knowledge Sharing in Distributed Organizations (2015, positive): “This aspect of interpretive flexibility inherent in technology use (Orlikowski, 1992) helps explain why people use the same technologies in different ways or use different technologies in similar ways (Fulk, 1993; Leonardi, 2011).”
The Next Generation of Research on IS Use: A Theoretical Framework of Delegation to and from Agentic IS Artifacts (2021, background): “Foundational IS research in the structuration tradition (e.g., DeSanctis and Poole 1994; Orlikowski 1992) shifted the discipline’s discourse about IS artifacts from that of passive objects being acted upon to that of something that itself has agency, realized through structure that is continually…”
Value co-creation practices in business-to-business platform ecosystems (2019, background): “A service ecosystem is a community of interacting actors organized in an A2A network (Orlikowski 1992).”
Memes as genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape (2015, methodology): “Barley and Tolbert (1988) propose “three modes of enacting already-established social institutions—maintenance, elaboration, and modification—which can be used to understand the production and reproduction of genres” (p. 9) (in Yates and Orlikowski, 1992: 306).”
Theoretical foundations for the study of sociomateriality (2013, background): “Students of information technology in organizations are an ironic bunch.”
Beyond Adoption: A New Framework for Theorizing and Evaluating Nonadoption, Abandonment, and Challenges to the Scale-Up, Spread, and Sustainability of Health and Care Technologies (2017, background): “Also highly relevant to the health and care environment is what Weick called “technology as equivoque” [103] and Orlikowski (drawing on earlier work on the social construction of technology) called “interpretive flexibility” [104]: a technology introduced into an organization is open to multiple int”
Beyond Constraining and Enabling: Toward New Microfoundations for Institutional Theory (2017, positive): “Forexample,thereiswideconsensusthattech- nologyconstrainsinprecludingsomeusesanden-ablesinmakingotherusespossible(e.g.,DeSanctis &Poole,1994;Leonardi,2011;Orlikowski,1992,2000).”
Innovation through institutionalization: A service ecosystems perspective (2015, background): “…of the value proposition (e.g., not engaging in online discussions) or inventing new ones that may go beyond or even contradict designers' exceptions and inscriptions (e.g., using the online class forum to promote unrelated ideas, encouraging or sanctioning others) (cf. Orlikowski, 1992).”
Human factors systems approach to healthcare quality and patient safety (2013, methodology): “This example of the active role of workers in using technology is in line with the structurational model of technology by Orlikowski (1992).”
Temporal Work in Strategy Making (2013, methodology): “Taking a practice lens on strategy guided us to focus on the everyday activities of managers making strategy in situ, much as Orlikowski (1992, 2000), Barley (1986), Bechky (2003) and others have done in the context of understanding technology in organizations.”
The uselessness of AI ethics (2022, background): “This means that technology is influenced by existing practices and structures, whether that is company cultures or organizational norms [61].”
What is an Information System? (2015, background): “[70] Orlikowski, W.”