When user needs do not align with system designers' visions, new technology implementation becomes a complex process as users appropriate the new technology to meet their needs. Prior studies recognize this complexity, but focus on the complex implementation of simple systems in which user groups are well defined and the IT artifact is the primary change. We extend the research lens by examining the implementation of the Brazilian correspondent banking system, a complex system involving multiple actors, system elements, and settings intended to address the social problem of financial exclusion. Our case study comparison of two settingsÑretail stores and post officesÑreveals that actors' appropriations extended beyond the IT artifact to include technical, role, usage, social, and policy appropriations. The intended users (poor clients in remote and underserved areas) barely interacted with the IT artifact or other system elements; instead, they relied upon remote bankers (correspondents) to appropriate the system on their behalf. Because rewards, incentives, and constraints differed by setting, correspondents' appropriations differed by setting. We call the resulting mix of appropriations across multiple elements by multiple actors in multiple settings multiplex appropriation. Complex societal challenges often involve multiple users in multiple settings with varied needs and few technology skills; thus, designing systems to meet user requirements may prove impossible. Instead, allowing multiplex appropriation might foster system success because, rather than forcing a global alignment among system elements or trying to ascertain multiple user needs, it allows for multiple local alignments of system elements that fit local settings.
This paper offers a theory of communication visibility based on a field study of the implementation of a new enterprise social networking site in a large financial services organization. The emerging theory suggests that once invisible communication occurring between others in the organization becomes visible for third parties, those third parties could improve their metaknowledge (i.e., knowledge of <i>who knows what</i> and <i>who knows whom</i>). Communication visibility, in this case made possible by the enterprise social networking site, leads to enhanced awareness of who knows what and whom through two interrelated mechanisms: message transparency and network translucence. Seeing the contents of other’s messages helps third-party observers make inferences about coworkers' knowledge. Tangentially, seeing the structure of coworkers' communication networks helps third-party observers make inferences about those with whom coworkers regularly communicate. The emerging theory further suggests that enhanced metaknowledge can lead to more innovative products and services and less knowledge duplication if employees learn to work in new ways. By learning vicariously rather than through experience, workers can more effectively recombine existing ideas into new ideas and avoid duplicating work. Moreover, they can begin to proactively aggregate information perceived daily rather than engaging in reactive search after confronting a problem. I discuss the important implications of this emerging theory of communication visibility for work in the knowledge economy.
The goal of this study is to augment explanations of how newly implemented technologies enable network change within organizations with an understanding of when such change is likely to happen. Drawing on the emerging literature on technology affordances, the paper suggests that informal network change within interdependent organizational groups is unlikely to occur until users converge on a shared appropriation of the new technology's features such that the affordances the technology enables are jointly realized. In making the argument for the importance of shared affordances, this paper suggests that group-level network change has its most profound implications at the organization level when individuals use the same subset of a new information technology's features. To explore this tentative theory, we turn to a comparative, multimethod, longitudinal study of computer-based simulation technology use in automotive engineering. The findings of this explanatory case study show that engineers used the new technology for more than three months, during which time neither group experienced changes to their advice networks. Initially, divergent uses of the technology's features by engineers in both groups precluded them from being able to coordinate their work in ways that allowed them to structure their advice networks differently. Eventually, engineers in only one of the two groups converged on the use of a common set of the technology's features to enact a shared affordance. This convergence was necessary to turn the technology into a resource that could collectively afford group members the ability to compare their simulation outputs with one another and, in so doing, alter the content and structure of the group's advice network. The implications of these findings for the literatures on technology feature use, affordances, social networks, and post-adoption behaviors in organizations are discussed.
Employees in many contemporary organizations work with flexible routines and flexible technologies. When those employees find that they are unable to achieve their goals in the current environment, how do they decide whether they should change the composition of their routines or the materiality of the technologies with which they work? The perspective advanced in this paper suggests that the answer to this question depends on how human and material agencies—the basic building blocks common to both routines and technologies—are imbricated. Imbrication of human and material agencies creates infrastructure in the form of routines and technologies that people use to carry out their work. Routine or technological infrastructure used at any given moment is the result of previous imbrications of human and material agencies. People draw on this infrastructure to construct a perception that a technology either constrains their ability to achieve their goals, or that the technology affords the possibility of achieving new goals. The case of a computer simulation technology for automotive design used to illustrate this framework suggests that perceptions of constraint lead people to change their technologies while perceptions of affordance lead people to change their routines. This imbrication metaphor is used to suggest how a human agency approach to technology can usefully incorporate notions of material agency into its explanations of organizational change.
Studies have shown the knowledge transfer problems that arise when communication and storage technologies are employed to accomplish work across time and space. Much less is known about knowledge transfer problems associated with transformational technologies, which afford the creation, modification, and manipulation of digital artifacts. Yet, these technologies play a critical role in offshoring by allowing the distribution of work at the task level, what we call task-based offshoring. For example, computer-aided engineering applications transform input like physical dimensions, location coordinates, and material properties into computational models that can be shared electronically among engineers around the world as they work together on analysis tasks. Digital artifacts created via transformational technologies often embody implicit knowledge that must be correctly interpreted to successfully act upon the artifacts. To explore what problems might arise in interpreting this implicit knowledge across time and space, and how individuals might remedy these problems, we studied a firm that sent engineering tasks from home sites in Mexico and the United States to an offshore site in India. Despite having proper formal education and ample tool skills, the Indian engineers had difficulty interpreting the implicit knowledge embodied in artifacts sent to them from Mexico and the United States. To resolve and prevent the problems that subsequently arose, individuals from the home sites developed five new work practices to transfer occupational knowledge to the offshore site. The five practices were defining requirements, monitoring progress, fixing returns, routing tasks strategically, and filtering quality. The extent to which sending engineers in our study were free from having to enact these new work practices because on-site coordinators acted on their behalf predicted their perceptions of the effectiveness of the offshoring arrangement, but Indian engineers preferred learning from sending engineers, not on-site coordinators. Our study contributes to theories of knowledge transfer and has practical implications for managing task-based offshoring arrangements.