Technological Change and Organizational Action

In recent decades an extensive array of changes and innovations have taken place in and across work organizations and networks of organizations and workers, facilitated by new technologies and technological forms. This has initiated an interest in technological change as one of the conditions for organizational action and researchers have begun to draw inspiration from a wider spectrum of conceptual issues, perspectives and theoretical traditions.
This book is interested in both what is occurring at the level of praxis and how this might be understood and theorized. It brings together a comprehensive collection of empirically-grounded and theoretically-informed research projects which are based upon and deploy new material gathered from studies of organizational practice and which explore a number of technological changes in a variety of organizational, work, sectoral and country contexts. These papers are informed by contemporary debates within and across theoretical approaches including the sociology of technology, work and organizations, actor network theory, technology as text and metaphor, processual and political perspectives, social and business network-based approaches to the analysis of technology and innovation, and the social construction and shaping of technology.
This book will be essential reading for researchers and advanced students within the field of technology, work and organizations and also organization studies and management studies.

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Table of contents : 1. Juha Laurila and David Preece Looking Backwards and Sideways to See Forward: Some Notes on Technological Change and Organizational Action
2. Ian McLoughlin and Patrick Dawson The Mutual Shaping of Technology and Organization: 'Between Cinema and a Hard Place'
3. David Preece and Ken Clarke Company Intranets, Technology and Texts
4. Christian Koch ERP Software Packages: Between Mass Production and a Hard Place
5. Richard Bahdam, Ian McLoughlin and Karin Garrety 'Push People's Balls and Push People's Balls and Push People's Balls Until Something Comes Out': Understanding Implementation as a 'Configurational Practice'
6. Hanuu Hanninen Normalization of Risks: A Stream of Bow Visor Incidents and the Estonia Ferry Accident
7. Ossie Jones Kicking Against the Pricks: Corporate Entrepreneurship in Mature Organizations
8. Sari Yli-Kauhaluoma Experimentation as a Boundary Practice in Exploring Technological Development Processes in Chemistry
9. Chris Hendry, Jim Brown, Hans-Dieter Ganter and Susanne Hilland Regional Technology Systems or Global Networks? The Sources of Innovation in Opto-Electronics in Wales and Thuringia
10. David Knights and Darren McCabe 'We Have Crossed the Rubicon': A 'One Team' Approach Towards Knowledge Management