Technology, organization and structure - a morphogenetic approach Dr Alistair Mutch Professor of Information and Learning, Nottingham Trent University Division of Information Management and Systems, Nottingham Business School, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU Telephone: Fax: Email:
0115 848 2429 0115 848 6512
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Keywords: information technology; information systems; critical realism; data warehouses; organizations and information; reflexivity; agency and structure.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Senior Editor Martha Feldman and three anonymous referees for their tolerance and patience as I developed the arguments presented here. Rick Delbridge has also provided helpful comments during the process.
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Technology, organization and structure - a morphogenetic approach Abstract This article relates the morphogenetic approach of Archer, derived from the philosophical tradition of critical realism, to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in organizations. Three gains are seen to accrue from this approach: greater clarity about the material properties of technology; links to broader structural conditions arising from the conceptualization of the relationship between agency and structure; and the potential to explore the importance of reflexivity in contemporary organizations, especially in conditions of the widespread use of ICT. The importance of disaggregating ICT artifacts into levels and features is stressed, in order to enable analysis to explore the specific impacts of particular combinations. This is developed through a discussion of data warehousing in connection with the attention being given to the importance of analytics in organizational strategies. Key features are located in wider aspects of the cultural and structural context, demonstrating the fruitfulness of a morphogenetic approach.
Introduction There is growing interest in the application of ideas from the tradition of critical realism to organization studies in general (Ackroyd 2002; Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004; Mutch, Delbridge and Ventresca 2006; Reed 1997, 2005a, 2005b) and information systems (IS) in particular (de Vaujany 2008; Dobson, Myles and Jackson 2007; Mingers 2004a, 2004b; Morton 2006; Mutch 2002; Smith 2006; Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). Critical realism is a philosophical project that asserts the existence of a reality independent of our knowing of it (Bhaskar 1979). We can gain corrigible and provisional knowledge of that reality only through our fallible conceptual apparatus. Such assumptions are compatible with a range of substantive theories of the world as explored in more detail
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below. This article presents one such theory, the morphogenetic approach developed by the social theorist and sociologist of education Archer (1995) and shows the benefits of adapting it to explore the broad domain of IS. I seek to complement and extend the more applied focus of Volkoff, Strong and Elmes (2007).1 Their use of critical realism to examine the organizational changes connected with the implementation of an enterprise system (ES) emphasizes the value of considering the material aspects of technology and I extend this discussion. However, a morphogenetic approach offers us much more, notably in its formulations of the relationship between agency and structure. While much of Archer’s early work is concerned with clarifying the nature of culture and structure in social analysis, a morphogenetic approach is emphatically not to be assimilated to a ‘new structuralism’ (Lounsbury and Ventresca 2003). It does, though, provide us with a conceptualization of the relationship between agency and structure, which suggests ways of linking organizational changes, especially those involving technology, to wider economic and political structures which tackles some of the deficits some observers have noted in existing approaches (Jones, Orlikowski and Munir 2004). A further observation emerging out of work on technological change in organizations is the need to be more specific about the form that technology takes (Orlikowski and Iaconno 2001). This is an area that is also weakly developed in morphogenetic approaches, and so I suggest a view of IS artifacts that builds on the notions of stratification and emergence present in critical realism. Stated in summary I seek to suggest that technology renders some aspects of structures more durable in time and space. For the purpose of this discussion I focus on information and communication technology (ICT) which I define as ‘technologies for the processing, storage and transmission of digital material, consisting of ensembles of hardware and software with distinctive feature sets allowing for the physical storage and logical representation of different forms of data’. I take information and communication to be processes of meaning creation (Boland 1987) to which such forms of technology have an important relation, but which need to be held apart for the purpose of analysis. The definition points to the importance of
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ensembles and below I discuss the importance of seeing the architecture of such ensembles as an important dimension of the scope, as distinguished from the role, of technology (Orlikowski 1992) . Such a definition means that the material properties of technology are important and I suggest that these need to be considered in terms of levels and features. That is, we need to decompose technology down to be able to examine the pace and nature of change at different levels. In particular, I argue that we need to pay attention to the emergence of data structures from particular combinations of hardware and software. However, I do not seek to argue that this makes technology a structure in its own right, rather that technology mediates the impact of structures such as economic formations. Such mediations still require the skilled interpretations of more or less knowledgeable users, but without a conception of the specific nature of a particular constellation of technology and its relationship to broader structures we will fail to gain adequate analytical purchase on such interpretations. A morphogenetic approach enables us to take account of the different modes of agential reflexivity and how these might be impacted by technology. In the first section I explore some of the basic tenets of critical realism, with a particular focus on its relation to substantive theories of the social world. Here I am concerned to show that critical realism is compatible with a range of theories, some of which can compete. Thus Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach and the ‘strong structuration’ of Stones (2005) both draw upon shared notions of stratification and emergence, but diverge on questions of how to apply them to social analysis. I suggest that students of IS and organizations need to attend more to these social theories against the backdrop of the broader philosophical debate. This prepares the ground for a closer examination of Archer’s formulation. This is shown to be profoundly relational in character, with the focus here on the relationship between agency and structure. Archer’s strategy of analytical dualism is seen to rest on a stronger conceptualization of structure than that found in other approaches, notably in Giddens’ structuration theory. The influence of this latter approach on the study of IS, especially in the influential work of Walsham (1993, 1997, 2001a) and Orlikowski (Orlikoswki 1992; Yates
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and Orlikowski 1992; Orlikowski and Yates 1994; Orlikowski and Gash 1994; Orlikowski 2000; Orlikowski and Iaconno 2001; Orlikowski 2007), is seen to lead to a focus on agential knowledgeability that tends to neglect broader structural influences. In addition, this welcome focus on how understanding and reception of technological artifacts is mediated through interpretive schema is seen to run the danger of conflating the flexibility of the technological artifact and the interpretive flexibility of agents. This leads to a downplaying of the material properties of different forms of technology and, in particular, to an underestimation of the degree to which aspects of structure are inscribed into such properties. I explore these issues through a discussion of data warehousing, seeking to show the specificity of technology at a number of levels and these specificities can be related to both organizational and broader economic structures. From this I conclude with some observations about how a morphogenetic approach might be developed.
Critical realism and morphogenesis Much of the interest in the ideas of critical realism is often expressed in a return to the work of Bhaskar (1979) and supplies accounts labelled ‘critical realist’. It is important to note that this is formally incorrect; there are no critical realist substantive theories of anything. This is because critical realism is a philosophical tradition that seeks to perform an ‘under labouring’ function for those anxious to build a wide range of theories in both the natural and the social domains. Accordingly, there may be considerable debate (as we will see) between those developing substantive theories about the validity of particular concepts, but agreement about the underlying philosophical positions. The task is, therefore, to use the conceptual clarity supplied by some of the notions that we review below to develop substantive theories. One such theory, firmly located within sociology and social theory, is Archer’s morphogenetic approach. By contrast, much of the work in IS that seeks to draw on critical realism tends to engage in more philosophical debates (Dobson 2002; Mingers 2004a, 2004b, Klein 2004; Smith 2006). Whilst social theorists have, as Giddens (1984, p. xvii) notes, to be alive to the concerns of philosophers, they do so in order to help them shed light on “the concrete
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processes of social life”. For the study of IS as a social phenomenon it seems appropriate to turn to those working more directly in the social sciences. Accordingly, our focus is on Archer’s morphogenetic approach, but a consideration of this requires some preliminary observations about key concepts in critical realism. Critical realism is a sophisticated and growing body of work; what is supplied here can only be an introduction to concepts ably developed elsewhere (Collier 1994; Sayer 1992, 2000; Fleetwood 2005). The focus here is on those elements that will help with the problems we will identify below. The starting point has to be the ontological commitment, in stark contrast to the social constructivism that is employed in some aspects of IS research, to a world external to our knowing of it. That is, accounts (Grint and Woolgar 1997) that render the world as a text, which can be interpreted in multiple ways, rest on an idealist ontology that is rejected here. However, it is important not to confuse this commitment to realism with the form of scientific realism espoused in much organization theory (Boal, Hunt and Jaros 2003; McKelvey 2003). For critical realists, reality is stratified. At the level of the ‘empirical’, that is, events recorded through the senses, is the domain of naïve or commonsense realism. However, our senses can be misleading and underneath the empirical is the ‘actual’, a domain that is often the concern of what has been termed scientific realism. However, Bhaskar’s (1979) explorations in the philosophy of science indicate that the ‘real’ is concerned with the generative mechanisms that produce actual events manifested in empirical sensations. It is the task of natural and social scientists to uncover these mechanisms and so approach better understanding, albeit that such understanding is always provisional, reversible and corrigible. The ‘real’ is therefore far more than the material appearances of the world, although such material properties are an important part of our analyses. This is important both in distancing our investigations from more naïve forms of realism and in suggesting that our investigations of the world will be concerned with a search for mechanisms that produce particular phenomena (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007).
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Two further important concepts are those of stratification and emergence. Reality is held to be stratified, with phenomena emerging from a particular level but not being reducible to that level. So, for example, memory emerges from the biological but is not reducible to it (Rose 1993). That is, once emergent it possesses properties that are proper to it as a system at that level and not reducible to biological components. In such emergence, time is of central importance. The consequence is that the methodological injunction is to construct analytical narratives in which the unfolding of events over time is the key to the isolation of causal mechanisms. Crucially, phenomena at different levels change at different paces. Archer has used such ideas to develop what she terms a ‘morphogenetic’ approach to the study of social life, the key features of which we explore below. A further feature of her approach that is related to her use of critical realism as an under labourer is her methodological commitment to analytical dualism. Thus, to anticipate our later discussion, where Giddens proposes to overcome the problem of dualism by conceptualizing structure and agency as a duality, Archer suggests that it is more productive to use dualism as an analytical strategy to explore relational processes of change over time. Her use of analytical dualism is at an abstract and macro level, treating of substantial shifts of ideas in fields like education, religion and science over large sweeps of time. However, she argues firmly that Analytical dualism can be used by any researcher to gain theoretical purchase on much smaller problems where the major difficulty of seeing the wood from the trees becomes much more tractable if they can be sorted out into the components of temporal cycles of morphogenesis – however short the time-span involved may be (Archer 1996: p. 228). Her early formulations of relational concepts of the interaction between agency and structure were elaborated in her work on the development of educational systems (Archer 1979). This work paid particular attention to the importance of time, examining the shaping of educational systems over periods extending to several centuries. This gave her a strong sense of the
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conditioning of social action by structures that emerged and endured over long periods of time (Archer 1982). It also led to a sustained engagement with and critique of the ideas of Bhaskar, developed over a series of (to date) five books (Archer 1995; 1996; 2000; 2003; 2007). Her first work (later revised to be congruent with her development of her broader approach) was concerned with the nature of culture (Archer 1996). In this she challenged what she termed ‘the myth of cultural integration’, seeking to outline aspects of contradiction as well as complementarity both within sets of ideas and between ideas and social action. Her development of the emergence of ideas to then come to hold causal powers over action, by framing the context of such action, was further developed in her morphogenetic approach (Archer 1995). Examined more closely later, this can be summarized as separating out structure and agency and exploring their interplay over time using the methodological strategy of analytical dualism. Her tighter and stronger formulation of the notion of structure is the early part of her project to develop a truly relational sociology. In her more recent work (Archer 2000, 2003, 2007), she has been concerned, in the spirit of critical realism, to uncover the mechanisms that bring humans into collision with the structures that other humans have created and that both constrain and enable their actions. This is therefore a very rich, sophisticated and complex body of ideas, only a small proportion of which can be deployed here. If the focus is primarily on the relationship between agency and structure, because of the centrality of debate over this in much of the IS literature, the potential of Archer’s more recent work on reflexivity is considered towards the close of the discussion. In developing her early work, Archer’s central concern was to avoid falling into either of the twin poles of structuralism or individualism. Archer used a diagram (figure one) to illustrate her concerns. Take in figure one about here
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For Archer, structuralist forms of explanation never strayed beyond T2, concerned as they were to specify the way in which structures determined action. This form of analysis she termed ‘downwards conflation’, for the nature of action was conflated into and equated with the structural conditions of possibility. She contrasted this to ‘upwards conflation’, which is where structure was seen as a pure aggregate of individual actions in which events before T2 were not considered and the focus was on action up until T3. Archer suggests a third category, that of ‘central conflationism’ in which the differences between structure and agency are elided. She suggests that this is particularly the case with the work of Giddens (1984), whose work has been influential in the development of some significant works in IS, notably those of Walsham and Orlikowski. Archer argues that in practice Giddens’ account, because of its ontological claims about structure, remains between the points T2 and T3 – that is, in her terms it is ‘centrally conflationist’. The weak specification of structures as rules and resources held as memory traces and instantiated in action means that in practice structures are conflated into agency. We need to hold the two apart, she contends, in order to be able to analyse the unfolding relationship over time. It is time that gives us a stronger sense of structures, coupled with the notion of emergent properties. Structures are dependent, Archer argues, on human action, but not necessarily on ‘those here present now.’ That is, in many circumstances structures, language being a key one, are bequeathed to us by actors no longer present, but they form the involuntary context, a context that can both constrain and enable, for our actions now. This leads Archer to question the notion of structures as virtual. What, she asks, of concepts such as roles or institutions which have associated relations, rights and responsibilities that pre-exist those who come to hold them? This is, following the tenets of critical realism, an approach which is relational in character, arguing that certain social positions exist because of their place in a network of relations, carrying with them necessary internal relations. Thus, for example, the institution of rent carries with it the associated roles of landlord and tenant, both of which carry with them certain properties as a consequence of their necessary and internal
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relations (Sayer 1992). Of course, it is feasible for a person to go against the constraints of such a role, but this is not without cost and brings the person into conflict with wider structures. Further, Archer suggests that the ‘library’ of knowledge exceeds the capacity of any individual to recreate and has been generated over time in a fashion that renders it independent of any knower at any particular time (Archer 1996). Relations of landlord and tenant, for example, are buttressed not only by legal regulation but also by bodies of theory. The analysis of any concrete situation needs to take into account such bodies of propositions, which may contain contradictions either within themselves or between themselves and social action that open up space for change. By the same token, bodies of ideas and social institutions can contain complementarities that reinforce their position and lead to reproduction: such, indeed, is the more likely and enduring situation. Stated in outline, Archer argues that every morphogenetic cycle distinguishes three broad analytical phases consisting of (a) a given structure (a complex set of relations between parts), which conditions but does not determine (b), social interaction. Here, (b) also arises in part from action orientations unconditioned by social organization but emanating from current agents, and in turn leads to (c), structural elaboration or modification - that is, to a change in the relations between parts where morphogenesis rather than morphostasis ensued (Archer 1995, p. 91; emphasis added) The approach suggests that in approaching the analysis of organizational life, time will be crucial (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). It also gives us a formulation that stresses the importance of structures in their own right and does not collapse them into the activities of agents. However, Archer has little to say about the use or impact of forms of technology. Whilst Giddens’ own work contains some limited observations about the impact of technology (Jones, Orlikowski and Munir 2004) Archer seems even less concerned, having little to say about technology in her critiques of theories of post-industrialism (Archer 1990). From within the tradition of critical realism, Lawson (2007:42) suggests that “technology can
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be understood as the site in which the social achieves a different mode of existence through its embodiment in material things.” That is, the relative durability of technology enables persistence of arrangements through both time and space. However, one concern with Lawson’s formulation is that it pays little attention to notions of interpretive flexibility. For example, he argues that when we acquire a new CD player we read the instruction manual, which tells us who designed this particular player, what it is for and how it is to be used. We then simply use it in line with the designer's intentions (Lawson 2007: 41). This seems to underplay the efforts required in translation that we can observe in the numerous studies of the reception of particular forms of technology, where not only is use not obvious on first encounter but also users prove remarkably inventive in their adoption of particular features in creative fashion. This is particularly the case with ICT where, as we will see, both at the level of software and of data structure there are often degrees of freedom in customizing and adapting technology. Accordingly, we can suggest the following dimensions of a morphogenetic approach to technology, each of which we will then proceed to consider in more detail:
Structures emerge over time from human activity but once in place form objective contexts for the exercise of agency. Technology renders some of these more durable in both time and space.
Technology has particular material properties best conceptualized as composed of particular combinations of levels and features. The existence of data structures is particularly important in embedding particular forms of position-practices.
Arguing that technology possesses particular material properties does not mean that agents will not have particular conceptions of such properties and their implications. What it means is that we need to explore the interplay between material properties and agents’ conceptions.
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Agents’ conceptions are shaped not only by their engagement with technology but also by the broader situational logics supplied by cultural schema. There is a relationship of relative autonomy between such bodies of ideas and institutional arrangements.
The overall approach is summarized in figure 2. In the discussion that follows I pay rather more attention to the first two elements as these are central to elucidating the place of technology in a morphogenetic approach. Take in figure 2 about here
Technology and morphogenesis Inscribing structure in technology In order to consider the relationship between structures and technology, a useful starting point is the distinction that Feenberg (2001) makes between primary and secondary phases of what he terms ‘instrumentalization’. Here he suggests a primary and a secondary phase of the construction of technology. In the primary phase designers abstract certain features from the world in order to construct a technological artifact that is then presented back as if it were natural. This artifact is then appropriated in a secondary phase in which users creatively receive it. It is the second phase which is often more important within organizations, especially when we distinguish between levels. That is, whilst hardware is socially shaped and bears the marks of assumptions about the nature of the world, these are embedded to a degree which is more resistant to change and appears more ‘natural’ than aspects of the software and data structure. Indeed, the latter is far more under the control of organizational actors, even when deploying software bought ‘off the shelf’ and used in uncustomized fashion. So we need to consider not only the ways in which structures can be embedded in
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technology and at which levels, but also how such embedding is perceived by and responded to by a range of users (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). Structures which have emergent properties sedimented over time to form the context for action impact on the constitution of technology in a number of ways. Initially, they have an influence on what technology is developed at all. That is, the broader structures of, for example, market competition and capital accumulation select certain technologies and features for development and not others according to mechanisms that operate at the level of such structures and not at the level of technical efficiency (Benders 1993). Once in the development process then broader structures influence the shape and range of features. Thus much of the development of systems for intensive data processing (such as the data warehousing that we explore in more detail below) can be seen in the context of an AngloAmerican focus on performance measurement, a focus that found instantiation in earlier systems such as Executive Information Systems (EIS) (Rockart 1979). This led to the development of features such as ‘executive dashboards’ that purport to reduce the operations of an organization to a limited number of indicators. In some discussions the very real problems that such systems face in their simplification of complex reality lead commentators to write them off too readily (Baumard 1999). If we, by contrast, and in the spirit of a morphogenetic approach, view them as changing over a number of iterations we see that such systems often achieve a degree of embeddedness in organizational practices (Wheeler, Chang and Thomas 1993; Lapointe and Rivard 2007). For all their faults, such systems inscribe assumptions about performance management into the heart of the operation of many global organizations (Ackroyd 2002). Of course, organizations do not simply represent empty containers into which such systems are poured. Rather, accounts of the historical development of management suggest power struggles between different groups of managers to represent themselves as the most trustworthy agents of the owners of the business and so to secure status and material rewards
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(Armstrong 1986; Shenhav 1999). At first this battle was between accountants and engineers, but latterly marketing, using the language of championing the customer, has vied for this status. Such divisions leave their mark, argues Neil Fligstein (1990), on the shape of organizations. In the course of such battles, information becomes a crucial weapon. As Keith Negus argues in the context of his examination of the music industry It informs intra-departmental rivalry to the extent that knowledge of what consumers are doing - and legitimating that knowledge through 'hard' information and verifiable data rather than 'hunches' or 'intuition' - is deployed in struggles for influence and position within the organization (Negus 1999, p. 59). Technology forms a valuable ally in such battles, especially with its ability to store and manipulate large bodies of data. Of course, such data are dependent on particular struggles over the definition of key items that determine whether they are collected at all and, once collected, how they are stored (Davenport 1994). Once such definitions are inscribed into software then they in turn appear as an accomplished social fact, often being regarded as the ‘official’ version (D’Adderio 2004). Indeed, those proposing enterprise systems often argue for the need to present one version of organizational truth (Davenport and Harris 2007). In such struggles, ICT systems such as data warehousing become significant allies, leading, for example, to moves by some marketing functions to assume responsibility for broader knowledge management (Troilo 2006). In this way classifications which reflect the concerns of particular organizational configurations at particular times become written into data structures (Carlile 2004; Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). Once made durable in software, such configurations form part of the objective context for future action. Technology has to be seen, therefore, as Orlikowski and Iaconno (2001) suggest, in dynamic relationship with its context. Technology is not a structure in its own right, but it is one of the ways in which structures are mediated. It operates by inscribing features into technology at a number of levels, but most importantly at the level of the data structure. What is suggested is that we need to employ the method of analytical dualism to separate out these elements, while
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recognizing that they are ontologically intertwined. In so doing, we are able to suggest that technology represents a further means of connecting locally situated action to broader structural factors. Stones (2005), drawing on the resources of critical realism, suggests that we see organizations as constituted by constellations of ‘position-practices’, that is, sets of structural factors such as roles and their associated practices. ICT inscribes important aspects of such position-practices into material forms that make up the context for agents’ conduct. So Volkoff, Strong and Elmes (2007) note that in the manufacturing company they examined roles were embedded into software in such a way that it was impossible to operate outside them. So, for example, “even the weekend plant shift supervisor could not create purchase orders, but had to call in a materials buyer planner” (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007, 840). This is not just a feature of more data-intensive systems. Ciborra and Patriotta (1996) found similar effects in their study of the implementation of a groupware system in a multinational company, with particular emphasis on what they termed the ‘infostructure’. Such contentions about the inscription (Pentland and Feldman 2007) of structural features into ICT require that we consider the notion of materiality in more detail.
Material properties: levels and features Given that a morphogenetic approach stresses the importance of the material properties of particular forms of technology, further discussion of what we take ‘materiality’ to mean is helpful. As Hutchby (2001) points out materiality here need not be thought of only in physical terms. We may, for instance, be able to conceive of the telephone as having a materiality affecting the distribution of interactional space through the promotion of what I will call conversational ‘intimacy at a distance' ... Likewise, we can conceive of the interfaces of expert systems or internet conferencing software as having a materiality affecting navigation through a technically bounded interactional space as people attempt to orient themselves in the sequential order of a particular interaction (p. 3).
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This consideration of materiality as involving more than the concrete physicality of particular technological artefacts parallels the focus of Clark et al (1988) on architecture in their consideration of engineering systems. That is, the same hardware and software could be configured in different ways to produce very different implications for organizational arrangements. Clark et al stress the need to take a systemic approach, in which the crucial system properties are those which emerge from particular forms of organization of technology. In considering such material properties we will also wish to remember that users are not faced by ‘technology’ as an abstraction but by concrete instantiations (D’Adderio 2004). That is, some of the discussion in social constructivist accounts (Grint and Woolgar 1997; Edwards, Ashmore and Potter 1995) is posed at a hypothetical level, which pushes the discussion beyond the practical constraints faced by both users and organizations (Hutchby 2001). Whilst these constraints are ultimately social and economic, the material constraints posed by technology can not all be released or changed at the same pace. We can only see this if, as Orlikowski and Iaconno (2001) suggest, we disaggregate ‘technology’ into its component parts. Based on a content analysis of one journal, they suggest that the largest number of articles failed to be specific about the IT artifact at all – it was simply absent from discussion. In calling for greater attention to the nature of the IT artifact, they suggest a number of factors for consideration. Accounts need to recognise that technology is not in some sense ‘natural’ but is shaped by social interests. In turn, the specific material features shaped by such social contexts were important. In examining such features, it would be necessary to disaggregate the artifact and not speak of it as in some sense stable and seamless in make up. Finally, we would need to recognise that technology is both emergent and dynamic. Such a perspective therefore echoes injunctions (Montiero and Hanseth 1995) to ‘be specific about technology’. Critical realism is helpful in opening up the ‘black box’ of ICT firstly because of recognition of materiality and secondly because of the notions of stratification and emergence that we
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have already discussed. In an account that draws on critical realism, Whyte’s (2005) study of virtual reality deploys such notions to emphasize that different levels are subject to change at different pace and are more or less amenable to user change and involvement. In her study she distinguished between hardware, operating systems, formats and standards, application and add-on packages. Change at one level raised tensions at other levels when, for example, expertise and capabilities at the software level were threatened by a move from a hardware architecture based on workstations to one based on personal computers. This focus on different levels enabled the analysis to be sensitive to the importance of the installed base, with its concomitant interdependencies. In developing this approach I focus in this discussion on hardware, software and the emergent data structure in the context of applications aimed at intensive data analysis, particularly the group of technologies known as ‘data warehousing’. This is a relatively under-researched group of technologies, despite their clear importance in sections of the contemporary economy. Davenport (2006) highlights an emerging trend which he labels as ‘competing on analytics’ in which companies such as Wal-Mart in the USA and Tesco in the UK seek to derive trends from large volumes of transaction data, facilitated by specific applications of ICT. Data warehouses are thus related to the enterprise systems that Volkoff, Strong and Elmes (2007) consider, but while accounts of such systems (Boudreau and Robey 2005) tend to focus on the constraints such systems impose on users (and the degree to which they can escape or work round such constraints), data warehouses raise a different set of issues. Emerging from the capacity of organizations, especially those in sectors such as retail and financial services, to collect large volumes of transaction data, data warehouses have been a key approach in overcoming their lack of capability to analyze such data. Based largely on specialized machines that stand apart from operational technology, data warehouses involve the extraction and transfer of data from operational systems. The characteristics of both the hardware (notably massively parallel processing) and the software enable the analysis of large volumes of data, with a view to establishing trends and patterns. A concomitant requirement
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is the capacity to store large volumes of historical data in order to facilitate time series analysis. These technological capacities in their turn raise important questions to do with data definitions that suggest the ways in which such systems come up against existing organizational boundaries, notably those between functional groupings. While the focus of work on enterprise systems, that is, tends to be on the impact on the workforce, data warehouses in addition raise important questions about managerial agency and conflict. These implications are important if we are to follow the injunction to be specific about technology; in following it we can illustrate the importance of looking at different levels. The constraints at the level of hardware may be two fold. On the one hand, once installed, aspects of ICT are difficult to change, even if new technical possibilities become available (Ciborra 2000). This is partly because of the substantial infrastructure that is built upon them and is dependent on them, with the concomitant interdependencies. Such constraints are particularly powerful in case of the scale of investment required for more intensive data processing applications (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). That is, while the cost of many technologically-based applications is reducing with the mass production of processing and storage technology, the scale of investment for data intensive applications is still a significant factor. Moreover, such investment is often dedicated to the particular form of technology, rather than being, as with desk-based personal computing, capable of being shared between a range of applications. It is therefore more visible as an organizational investment. On the other hand, demand may outrun technical capacity at particular times, because not all forms of technology are in step. So, for example, in the earlier days of transaction processing in retail industries the ability of ICT to capture transaction data far outweighed the capacity of hardware devices to store and, more importantly, process the data (Westerman 2001). So it was not until the advent of massively parallel processing that analysis of transactions at the basket level became available. Whilst data warehousing is far more than just the hardware, the hardware capacity was a vital enabler. In particular, there is a more one to one relationship between hardware and software applications. Hardware for data warehousing, especially in
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the larger installations, tends to be more specialized. It is produced by specialist suppliers and designed for particular tasks At the level of software there are distinctions to be drawn between levels more amenable to user change and those more resistant. While some data intensive applications allow for the possibility of accessing data via familiar (and relatively customizable) applications like spreadsheets, most tend to require the use of specialist applications that require a considerable degree of expertise to use. Many such systems use software such as neural networks and artificial intelligence where expert involvement is required to be able to elicit and translate decision rules. So the extent of changeability is open to considerable question. In general this is not by the same person who uses the data, leading to the emergence of categories such as the ‘power user’ (Massa and Testa 2005). The structured queries on which data analysis is based require considerable knowledge not only of the language used but also of the underlying data structures. It is at this level that the notion of materiality takes full force. Database designers draw a distinction between physical and logical forms of design, with data often not ‘existing’ other than as the result of manipulation by programs, but appearing as representations on screens, which then have considerable impact on user action (Volkoff, Strong and Elmes 2007). However, the selection of data types and tools for handling them can, once selected, pose considerable constraints on the extent and nature of this emergent level. So, for example, a data structure and physical architecture that is perfectly capable of handling operational data needs may prove completely ineffective for analytical purposes, shaping the range of possibilities (Finnegan and Sammon 2002). It is perhaps tempting to suggest that this is simply a matter of sophisticated programming. However, this would be to ignore the constraints that particular data structures impose on such programming. 2 That is, the effort involved in creating data structures is not a trivial one. Further than this, such structures require a degree of stability over time if trend analysis is to be feasible (Bowker 2000).
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Considerable effort is involved in extracting source data from supporting systems, cleansing them by rendering them in standard form and attaching additional data items. There are clearly choices to be made at certain times but those choices, once made, commit particular groups of users to something which in practical terms is given. So the data structure of a data warehouse is amenable to decision, but once made that structure affects the ability of users to interact with the system and change, although possible, is slow and protracted. Such considerations pose significant practical problems for users and organizations. For example, it became feasible with the spread of relational databases for users to write queries that could run against operational databases. However, the consequence, given physical capacity and data structures optimized for operational purposes, was severe performance degradation (Westerman 2001). These might have been labelled ‘technical’ problems but they were of organizational consequence. Of course, there were solutions to such problems, but they were not trivial ones and they required time to implement. For example, it took Tesco seven years to move from pilot investigation to full data investigation on all customers, Wal-Mart some 12 years to develop their systems (Humby, Hunt and Phillips 2003; Westerman 2001). During that time, of course, hardware availability has changed making such applications more viable, but if we take account of both time and the practical considerations for operational life, then material constraints are significant. They are also significant in that they are different for different instantiations of ICT. We could spend much time debating what the core features of a particular technology set are, but as Jasperson, Carter and Zmud (2005) point out, without at least some attempt to take these into account we will find it hard to account for interactions. To put the applications that we have been examining, data warehouses and their equivalents, against the groupware-enabled that applications that figure strongly in the literature (Ciborra and Patriota 1996; Hayes and Walsham 2000; Monteiro and Hepsø 2000; Orlikowski 2000) is to see the contrast in features starkly (table 1). One feature set is optimized for high volume data manipulation, the other for
20
unstructured information sharing. The need, then, is to be more specific about the levels and features of technology as these considerations are not ‘technical’ ones, but ones with real organizational consequences (Griffith 1999). One might wish to argue that users can either be creative with ICT, pushing it beyond the bounds of what designers envisaged, or that they might misperceive ICT altogether and so fail in their attempts to use it beyond its capabilities, and these are valid arguments. However, making such claims demands that we have some measure of what the features and levels of a particular instantiation of ICT are. The specific effects of a particular constellation of technological levels and features, that is, are a matter for concrete investigation but such investigations need to be guided by an approach which holds such features apart from the forms of interpretation which are possible. While technology may fix some position-practices and make them appear more ‘natural’, this does not remove the need for interpretation. The sources of such interpretations are thus also of importance and in this way we can connect both to some of the important findings of Orlikowski and others and also to some of the broader concerns of Archer with the relationship between culture and agency.
Material properties and agents’ interpretations Walsham (2001b, p. 45) argues that “[i]nformation technologies have properties that can and do influence their adoption and use, but there is considerable flexibility in how they are interpreted and used”. It is the first part of this relationship that has been stressed in the previous discussion, but interpretive flexibility which seems to be the focus of many accounts, especially those which focus on practice (Orlikowski 2000; Kellog, Orlikowski and Yates 2006; Boudreau and Robey 2005). In stressing the importance, and delineating the properties of, information technologies it is not the intention of a morphogenetic approach to downplay the importance of interpretive flexibility. Rather it is to examine the relationship between material properties and such interpretive flexibility. Clearly, the account presented above suggests that material properties can become naturalised and present themselves in such a way as to form a powerful constraint on flexibility. The constraints, for example of the data
21
structures which are imposed on data warehousing constrain the ways in which analysis can be conducted. However, it is not just the materiality of technology which provides such a constraint. The materiality of previous practices, from filing cabinets to paper documents form powerful models on which to base responses to new forms of technology. So, for example, the word processor replicates many features of the typewriter that preceded it as the main means of producing documents (Carroll and Mack 1995). The keyboard layout mimicked that of the typewriter and many of the features, such as tab stops, bear a resemblance to those familiar on the older technology. Such metaphors facilitated the widespread acceptance of word processing, but they could also mean that the more extended features were not applied – such as when a list was required it was re-typed, rather than using sets of data as input. This is because the technology is being assimilated to the familiar analogy of paper. Similar metaphorical framing can be found in other instances. The spreadsheet, for example, won widespread acceptance on the basis of its similarity to traditional analysis paper. However, without training in modelling techniques it can often be used as little more than a convenient calculator (Kreie et al 2000). That is, the features that technology possesses are often filtered through existing practices, but, building on Archer, I suggest that we need to hold the features apart from the ways in which they are conceived in order to explore their inter-relationship in different contexts. Clearly here the notion of genre as deployed by Orlikowski and Yates (1994) is one important way by which such conceptions are shaped. Genres are taken for granted modes of communication, such as the memo, the report or the presentation, which are the more powerful for being bound up with particular forms of technology (such as the memo and the filing cabinet). Kellog, Orlikowski and Yates (2006) observe that in a web advertising company the deployment of PowerPoint in conjunction with the genre ‘presentation’ enabled workers to respond rapidly to changing demands, but at the expense of reflection on their activities. This suggests the way in which to-hand genres can shape the encounter with the enablements that technology presents, but it also points to a reaction back in the shaping of
22
forms of reflexivity. One central concern of both Giddens (1990) and Archer (2007) is with the nature of reflexivity. This is expressed in different forms in their work, but it is related in both cases to changes in which both organizations and technology are implicated. Jones (1999) notes that in the case of Giddens that his work on reflexivity has been relatively neglected in applications of structuration theory to ICT. There is a parallel danger that what is taken from Archer’s work is simply her earlier work that is concerned with an explication of the nature of culture and structure with a view to clarifying their relationship with agency. In her more recent work, she suggests that developments in organizational form, such as managerial structures within global organizations, and in ICT, alter the nature of reflexivity, shifting it away from what she terms ‘conversational reflexivity’ (Archer 2007). This form of reflexivity, which depends on shared assumptions and contextual continuity, has many parallels with the focus on tacit knowing (Baumard 1999). For those working with concepts such as ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1999) learning is a matter of identity construction through experience in contrast to the focus on cognitions associated with formal learning encounters. The stress on experience emphasises the formation of relationships which in turn rest on shared assumptions, developed through embedded practice, about the nature of the world. Such assumptions mark the world of the conversational reflexive, who needs the participation through conversation of others to enable effective thought. This stress on experiential learning with its focus on tacit forms of knowing stands in sharp contrast to the more abstract and systemic forms of thought implicated in analytics. That is, the activities enabled by applications such as data warehousing support a more detached, autonomous and strategic form of thought. These qualities accord well with Archer’s suggestion that developments in organizations shape what she terms ‘autonomous reflexivity’. This is where actors complete their thinking in relative autonomy, with a much more strategic approach to the world. These distinctions between forms of reflexivity could be a useful guide to future research programs, They also provide a link between organizational encounters with technology and broader social structures.
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Situational logics Critical political economists such as Adler (2007) and Ackroyd (2002) suggest that the micro focus on tacit forms of knowing that we have called into question neglects broader trends, such as an increasing dependence on intellectual capital founded on scientific knowledge. The exploration of the articulation between tacit and more explicit forms of knowing raises questions about links to broader bodies of ideas and here Archer’s work on the nature of culture provides useful conceptual resources. Drawing on notions of ‘objective knowledge’ drawn from the work of Popper (1979) in combination with the concept of emergence from critical realism, she suggests that ideas once produced form bodies of inter-related propositions that stand in relations of contradiction and complementarity to each other (Archer 1996). Such bodies of propositions then form ‘situational logics’ for particular episodes of social interaction. In our focal case of the data warehouse we can point to two such bodies of ideas that might frame particular uses of technology, marking some uses as more appropriate than others. These two bodies of ideas would be those on performance management and on retailing. The first, which forms a widespread and influential body of discourse in society more generally, privileges particular uses of data and encourages the development of those aspects of ICT that can generate performance measures based on ‘objective’ data. The second is related to broader notions about customer sovereignty which support those conceptualizations of marketing that emphasise ‘hard’ data over intuition. Clearly, the second complex of ideas in particular is related to more material forms of structure, in that its prestige is closely related to the expansion and profitability of many retailing organizations – a point which returns us to our starting point in the success of organizations such as Wal-Mart and Tesco.
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It is noticeable that many recent accounts of ICT and organizational change have tended to work with forms of technology that are flexible and dynamic and to examine their deployment in flexible forms of organization. This is particularly true of the extensive focus on groupware packages, notably Lotus Notes. For example, recent work by Kellog, Orlikowski and Yates (2006) is set in a Web-based advertising agency and examines flexible forms of organizing using, largely, standard desktop tools. Such settings feature the “dynamically reconfigurable, user-programmable, and highly internetworked technologies being developed and used today” (Orlikowski 2000, p. 406). Clearly such companies and such tools are vital parts of the contemporary economy, but the tendency is to ignore the continuing centrality of the large corporation, with its use of extensive data analysis for performance measurement and control (Ackroyd 2002; Dobson, Myles and Jackson 2007). This contrast can be seen in a recent critical collection of essays about Wal-Mart (Lichtenstein 2006). The collection in question pays relatively little attention to ICT but its central message is that on the basis of the use of systems such as data warehousing, in tandem with other strategies, the company has become, in their terms, a “template for twenty-century capitalism” (Lichtenstein 2006, p.3). Rather than seeing the demise of large organizations in favour of smaller, more flexible forms of organization, the argument is that ICT has enabled Wal-Mart to combine both size and centralization (Hoopes 2006, pp. 100-1).3 And, of course, Wal-Mart is not the only such corporation. In the UK, Tesco has developed market dominance on the basis of, amongst other things, extensive manipulation of its sales and customer data (Humby, Hunt and Phillips 2003). Such examples suggest that there is a need to place detailed accounts of practice in a broader social and economic context. The morphogenetic approach outlined here provides valuable resources for such investigations by stressing cultural as well as economic aspects of performance.
Conclusion
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There is considerable attention being paid in many aspects of the study of organizations, not just in the information systems domain, to the importance of practice. From ‘strategy as practice’ (Whittington 2007) to ‘institutional work’ (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006), practice based approaches draw upon a variety of theoretical perspectives but stress the need to explore the emergence of rules from taken for granted and to hand practices. Based on IS research, Orlikowski (2007) argues that such analyses have tended to neglect the material. She argues for the need to examine what she terms ‘sociomaterial practices’ in which the social and the technical are inextricably intertwined. Such an injunction supports our focus on the importance of being specific about the material properties of technology and the ways in which it mediates broader social structures, but it runs the risk of producing rich and detailed accounts which are abstracted from their broader context (Delbridge and Edwards 2007). This article has argued that a morphogenetic approach, with its stronger conception of structures as emergent from action but providing the objective context for future action, provides a means of linking the use of technology in organizations to its wider context. This has been illustrated through the exploration of data warehousing in particular, showing the need to be specific about particular forms of technology, but the approach could be applied to any particular constellation of levels and features. A number of important points flow from this discussion. One is that I have been deliberate in labelling this approach as morphogenetic rather than critical realist. The distinction is important for two reasons. One is that critical realism as a philosophical project is centrally concerned with questions of ontology. This means that much of the debate revolves round the explication of matters such as the nature, recognition and impact of mechanisms. Such debates are of vital and continuing importance, but it is possible for them to get ‘stuck’ at the level of ontological abstraction (Reed 2005a, 2005b; Contu and Willmott 2005). For those more concerned with concrete organizational analysis the importance lies in the work that such concepts can do. Accordingly, the discussion presented is far from the last word on such questions as how best to determine the features of particular technologies. Questions such as
26
which features are core and which peripheral depend on concrete investigations, the results of which can further enhance the theoretical framework (Griffith 1999; Sayer 2000). The second reason for drawing a distinction is that, as we have seen, there can be differences at the level of substantive theory between those who share basic tenets drawn from a common philosophical base such as the need to search for mechanisms that explain observed action. For example, Archer (1995) and Stones (2005), both critical of Giddens and both holding to the emergent properties of social structure, adopt differing perspectives. The matters of difference between morphogenesis and strong structuration are not a central concern of this article, but they suggest that there are ongoing debates that need to be addressed by those interested in ICT and organizational change, as well those concerned with organizations more broadly. Critical realism does not offer a ready made ‘tool kit’ of concepts to be applied in subject domains, but rather a set of resources for the development of domain specific concepts (Cruickshank 2003). Archer’s morphogenetic approach is, in turn, developed at the level of social theory, in which both organizations and technology play minor parts. The challenge is to use these resources to work productively in organizational analysis. Such a process depends not only on empirical application but also, as I have sought to demonstrate, building on existing insights. Much of this work presents both useful insights and valuable concepts that can be brought into fruitful engagement with ideas drawn from morphogenesis to build a more robust and comprehensive approach. The examples drawn from data warehousing have been presented to suggest one avenue for further investigation, but the argument is that the broad framework presented is capable of application to a range of forms of technology. At the same time, a morphogenetic approach suggests ways of embedding such applications and their consequences in broader debates about the nature and direction of contemporary organizations and society. It is important that these ideas are seen in the context of a relational approach, one which sees the exercise of agency in the context of relations with culture and structure (Emirbayer and
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Mische 1998; Hays 1994; Mutch, Delbridge and Ventresca 2006). Of importance here is the notion of antecedent conditions. Just where we start our analysis is a matter of judgement in a particular context. The daunting aspect of Archer’s work is that it deals with large sweeps of time. Her discussion of the shaping of educational systems, for example, covers hundreds of years (Archer 1979). This means that, in practical terms, research in IS will have to be a collaborative matter with researchers whose focus is on the situated organizational nature of particular technologies setting their work in the context supplied by other researchers. This points in particular to the importance of historical work that locates what is claimed to be novel in a much broader context (Yates 1989). A morphogenetic approach is well suited to the production of such accounts. A morphogenetic approach supports the focus on the importance of the attention to the interplay over time between the material features of technology and aspects of organizations (Zammuto et al 2007). Our example of data warehousing points to the extended periods of time over which particular instantiations become stabilized. Such instantiations are often subject to change in detail over time, but their key contours remain visible, most notably in the form of data structures. Such data structures, whose stability is central to efforts to measure and monitor performance, tend to inscribe particular organizational arrangements. The articulation of such constellations of data and position-practices with more tacit forms of knowing is a matter for investigation. Given that they appear to lie at the heart of some of the most successful organizations whose influence is widely felt in society more generally such investigation is a matter of considerable importance. Adopting a morphogenetic approach draws our attention not only to the material properties of technology but also to their location in a broader political economy. It offers a way of ensuring that rich descriptions of practice are not divorced from this context and thus offers valuable resources for our continuing efforts to understand the interrelationship of technology and organization.
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T
1
Structural conditioning T2 Social interaction T3 Structural elaboration T4
Figure 1: the morphogenetic cycle: adapted from Archer, M (1995) 82
38
Structure
Culture
Position-practices (agents’ context) Mediated by Inscribed in
Data structure Software
Hardware
Technology Socio-cultural action Agential reflexivity
Socio-cultural elaboration Inscribed in
Data structure Software
Hardware
Technology
Figure 2: outlining a morphogenetic approach to technology and organizational action
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Table 1: comparing groupware and data warehousing
Level
Groupware
Data warehousing
Data structure
Unstructured data of variety
Numerical data dependent on
of types; often group
laid down definitions;
generated.
generated from source systems requiring routines for ‘cleansing’ and loading
Software
User configurable with
Some control over
possibility of application
parameters of queries, but
development
high level of technical understanding required. Specific applications
Hardware
Personal computers in client
Mainframe computing, often
server networks
standalone using parallel processing and requiring extensive file transfer
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1
In doing so, I also acknowledge some points of difference, such as over the characterization
of structuration theory as ‘social constructivist’. This article is not the place to correct what I consider a misleading characterization, although I do suggest why labelling accounts ‘critical realist’ can be misleading. Such reservations, however, should not detract from the considerable value in the article, particularly the focus on material embeddness. 2
Although the evidence from trade journals has been treated with care, there is material
which suggests the nature of these constraints. For example, a participant in a recent debate in the accountancy press about the feasibility of real time reporting notes that ERP systems ‘are designed to handle transactional processing and for entering big volumes of data, the worst type of design for reporting’ (Accountancy Age 2007). The important emphasis is on the design of the system, which then puts constraints on subsequent use. 3
While Orlikowski does not make a direct case for the advantages of smaller, more flexible
forms of organizing, her favourable use of Malone’s work can be contrasted with the very much more critical response accorded to that author by Hoopes.
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