The Social Construction of Technology in Studies of the Workplace (original) (raw)

Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs

The environment of the modern organization has always been technological, but this has been understood in a number of distinct ways. For example, seen as collections of rationalized and instrumental practices, organizations themselves have been regarded as technologies in which effective information and communication processes are critical (Taylor, 1911; Thompson 1967). Of more interest to this volume are the perspectives that have looked at information and communication technologies within organizations. Technologies have had profound effects on the way certain information work is done, such as actuarial work (Yates, 1993). With the expanding capabilities of digital computing, fields of study such as office automation (Johnson & Rice, 1984), operations research (Arnoff, 1957) and management information systems (Dickson, 1982) emerged to focus on the question of how computer-based information and communication technologies might be integrated into organizational processes to make organizations and organizational processes more efficient and effective or otherwise to fulfill unmet organizational needs. Even as organizational scholars turn increasingly to considering issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs), a complementary turn is made by technology scholars who look to social and organizational issues implicated in technology design and development. Located in fields such as the sociology of technology, computer science, and the anthropology of work, and typically organized under the general category of social construction, this research holds that technologies are and have always been social. Our interest in this chapter is to explore the intersection between social constructionism and the study of ICTs in the workplace. We begin by identifying a set of assumptions that underlie a constructionist perspective and indicate some ways in which these assumptions appear in studies of the workplace. Fundamental to constructionism is the active effort to privilege 1 neither social nor technical factors in constructing accounts of technology design, development, implementation, or use. In the next section we reflect on the impact constructionism has had on studies of the workplace. We observe that within these studies, scholars employ constructionism for different purposes. The first is to provide a framework for understanding ICTs in the workplace and the second is to provide guidance for designing and implementing ICTs in organizations. Our interest here is an assessment of the extent to which constructionist views are successful in each of these. Our argument will be that social constructionist views have in principle developed an understanding that privileges neither technology nor the workplace, but that their use in design and implementation have tended to tilt so as to privilege either the technology or the workplace. Using the terminology of Argyris and Schon (1978), this tilt may be seen in a contrast between the espoused theory of social constructionism (its theoretical understanding) and its theory-in-practice (its actual employment in research and in organizations). We conclude the chapter with some reflections on how scholars might address the this tendency to tilt, and maintain a constructionist perspective in practical contexts. ASSUMPTIONS OF CONSTRUCTIONIST VIEWS Constructionist sensibilities tend to arise as a consequence of a move away from technological determinism. Because this move has occurred across a number of disciplines, constructionist principles come from a variety of traditions, including history, engineering and design, information studies, communication, and organization studies. The perspectives historically identified with the social construction of technology typically examine periods of technology development (Jackson, 1996; Leivrouw, in this volume). Yet we find constructionism increasingly influential in studies of the use and implementation of technologies within organizations. The variety of constructionist positions makes it difficult to catalog perspectives, but they tend to hold a number of assumptions in common. Constructionism Denies Technological Determinism 2 Determinism has had a steady presence in technology studies (Marx and Smith, 1994). Generally, determinism is the position that, given a set of initial conditions, outcomes can be predicted with a some amount of certainty. Underlying determinism is a logic of rationality, often referred to as technical rationality, or an assumption that the technical and social world operate according to rules that are prior to any particular situation and that predetermine the set of possible outcomes. Stronger variants of determinism hold that there exists a technological imperative, that artifacts move inexorably and in a linear fashion toward a certain end state (Edge, 1995). Within studies of technology across disciplines, determinism may be applied either to explaining the development of technologies, or to predicting the consequences of their use. All constructionist perspectives reject determinism, though at different levels. And, as a consequence, they embrace some level of indeterminacy. For example, sociologists of technology Williams and Edge (1996) point out that social shaping of technology (SST) perspectives reject the notion that technology emerges from 'a single social determinant, or through the unfolding of a predetermined technical logic' (p. 54). In their study of technology use in organizations, Sproull and Keisler (1991) hold that the more consequential impacts of technology use cannot be anticipated. Constructionism Recognizes The Interplay And Interdependence Of Social And Technical Elements Constructionist perspectives recognize that reference to technological elements alone can adequately explain neither technology development nor use (Pinch & Bijker, 1984). Instead, technical and social factors are intimately interconnected (Woolgar, 1996). It is through the interplay of these elements that technologies develop. Hughes (1986) describes this as an interactive perspective, one that provides all elements present in technological development with equal status. From an interactive perspective, technology itself is understood as a collection of dynamically related elements rather than as a static and stable entity. As Hughes (1986) makes clear, the key to the approach is the metaphor of the 'seamless web,' which discourages an isolation of individual elements and encourages a recognition of the multiple determinations of technologies. Within organizational studies, the socio-technical systems (STS) perspective was one of the first to argue for paying attention to the interrelationship of social and technical factors. Classic STS emphasizes the importance of fit or the match between the social and the technical, in order to optimize organizational processes (Emory & Trist, 1961; Mumford, 1983). In another example, it was this commitment to both social and technical factors that helped to launch the field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), which seeks to combine an understanding of the way people work with an expertise in computing technologies (Greif, 1988; Mantovani, 1996; Wilson, 1991). Constructionism Denies That Technologies Are Ever Complete The physical nature of most technologies, including the devices that accompany information and communication technologies, means that we tend to view artifacts as able to exist apart from any context of use (Jackson, 1996). Particularly in organizational contexts, technological artifacts are easily taken for granted, with a fixed and stable nature and a predetermined boundaries. Constructionism rejects this assumption and problematizes the constitution of technology, as in Bucciarelli's (1994) criticism of 'object-world' accounts of technological design. Rather than being complete or at rest, technologies continuously change and reconstitute through their engagement in communities. As a consequence, describing technologies becomes more complicated. Woolgar notes: The social researcher has no 'neutral' (that is, free of the social milieu) description of the technology around which to build a picture of 'social influences'. Instead, the 'technical character' of the technology-like what it can do and how it does it-becomes part of the phenomenon to be explained by reference to social and political factors. (1996:88) An important example with organizational studies is the use of structuration theory (Giddens, 1979; Orlikowski & Robey, 1991). Structuration posits a duality of structure, which is the notion that human action simultaneously creates structures of social systems and is shaped by such structures. Structuration emphasizes the interaction of technology and organization in creating these systems. For example, adaptive structuration theory (AST) (Poole & DeSanctis, 1990; DeSanctis & Poole, 1994), outlines a set of appropriation processes through which a technology comes to constituted differently by different groups of people. Similarly, the emergence perspective (Barley, 1986; Markus & Robey, 1988) demonstrates the ways in which technologies continue to be defined throughout a changing context.