Question
| Formatting instructions: How to format your review essay 1. Provide at least 1” margins, at least 12-point font, and at least 1.15-line spacing. 2. Number all the pages. 3. Length: The maximum length of the essay is 4 pages, excluding references. 4. Use headings for each section. (see p.4) 5. Place references at the end of your review essay. CIDM Structure of your review essay Your review essay should have the following four sections. Use headings for each section. Below I provide the body of text you should write in each section. 1. Introduction A good introduction encourages readers to read your essay with great interest and prepares them to understand it better. You want to establish common ground, a shared understanding between reader and you about the topic you will write in the following sections. Then, you will concisely introduce what the focused topic is, and how your essay is organized to inform readers. Thissection is usually a single paragraph. Do NOT place summary in the introduction and conclusion sections. If you do so, the level of achievement will be lowered (see rubric). 2. Summary Assume that you are giving someone who has never read the article enough detail so that they could have a summary of the article. This section should provide summary of the following key elements: · Theoretical framework which the author drew on, · Empirical data the author collected and analyzed, · Key findings based on the empirical data the author collected and analyzed Your summary should NOT be a mere copy of paragraph or the bulk of quotes from the article. You should provide a concise, comprehensive summary in your own words. In this section, please show me that you really read and comprehended the article at a level where you can cogently cover the most important parts succinctly. 3. Practical implications In this section, you should write how the crux of the article is applied to a managerial view in information technology in organizations. You should make tight connections between the crux of consider the relationships between Information Technology and organizations. This section should be concrete enough to layout action plans in the organization. 4. Conclusion You wrap up your review. State overall contributions of the article, theoretically and practically. You should also write what more you would like to know. This section is usually a single paragraph. |
Answer
A practice lens for studying technology in organizations
Contents
Practical implications of the practice lens notion. 4
Introduction
The paper under review was authored and presented by Wanda J. Orlikowski and its aim was to provide an insight as to how users interacting with technology will help shape the structures of an organization. The paper builds on previous studies in structuration in order to arrive at its flexible view of structures. The author bases the discussion on the fact that technology and organization are always in constant evolution in terms of form and functionality requiring developers and organizational analysts to maintain constant innovation and improvisation to maintain relevance in practical applications (Orlikowski, 2008). For this reason, the author proposes the reevaluation of the structuration view of technology to include the development of a practice lens that focuses on people’s interaction with the technology and the influence of these interactions on the structure of the ever-evolving technologies. The paper continues to assert that technology should be viewed as part of the structural enactment process which in turn will result in a more conclusive understanding of an organization’s structures and social practices.
Summary of the article
The paper begins by providing a literature review of previous research works carried out by various organizational researchers who were interested in explaining and exposing the relationship between technology and organizational structures, operations, and outcomes. The author observes that a majority of former years research works took divergent views in relation to technology and organization citing examples like the contingency theory, the symbolic interactionist approaches, the network analyses, the structurational models among others. However, due to unprecedented changes taking place in relation to form and structures as a result of the evolution of technology and organizations, the researchers have merged their perspectives to incorporate innovations and improvisations in order to understand the implications of technology on organizational processes and structures citing research works like Barley (1986), Orlikowski and Robey (1991), Orlikowski (1992) and Walsham and Han (1991).
The paper makes use of the research perspectives that consider technology to constitute structures which are identifiable during the implementation of the technology. The paper goes ahead to build upon this notion by proposing a focus on the implementation stage of technology to consider the role of the users who enact the technology (Orlikowski, 2008). The users play an essential role during the enactment process to develop structures and the organization’s social practices that will revolve around the technology. In other words, the paper asserts that while the users work towards understanding the technology and its structural composition, they will impose their social construction on the technology which will force the technology to modify its structural composition to fit the social aspects of the users.
In this proposal, the author sets forth the concept of practice lens which is described as a series of repeated human interaction with particular symbols, properties, and materials of a technology. These repeated interactions of the users of a technology will over time become an impression on the technology as part of its structure. The assumption of this concept or notion is that these recurrent interactions or human actions on the technology originate from a knowledgeable human community of users which will lead to the reconstitution or emergence of new structures of the technology.
Practical implications of the practice lens notion
Although the author’s proposal is based the notion that human community interactions with a particular technology to influence the structural composition of technology, the interactions are not entirely unique to each individual (Orlikowski, 2008). Therefore, the author acknowledges that the people interacting with the technology will always tend to use similar or the same aspects of the technology. This will cause recurrence and consequently the structure of the technology. This, however, will lead to generalizations about the technology based on the social conducts of the community of users which will have an influence on managerial decision in relation organizational processes, the properties of the technology to be availed to the users, and the social structures that the management will be inclined to implement in the organization.
Conclusions
In conclusion, the paper asserts that structural aspect of technology should be interpreted as being influenced and produced through the recurrent human actions of the user community of the technology. The evaluation of technology as it is being practiced will lead to the emergence and/or modification of its structures based on the social aspects of the users. It proposes the application of practice lens in the evaluation and examination these emerging structures and improvisations of the technology based on the how the users adapt to or alter their use of the technology. Therefore, the practice lens aims at ensuring that the focus of discussions on the structure of a given technology takes into account the role of human interactions in with the said technology.
References
Orlikowski, W. J. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures: A practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404-428.