CSD - Customer Support Department
p.3 Where deliberate change is the realization of a new pattern of organizing precisely as originally intended, emergent change is the realization of a new pattern of organizing in the absence of explicit, a priori intentions. Such emergent change is only realized in action and cannot be anticipated or planned (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985)... the notion of emergence is particularly relevant today as unprecedented environmental, technological, and organizational developments facilitate patterns of organizing which cannot be explained or prescribed by appealing to a priori plans and intentions.
p.3-4 A perspective that posits change rather than stability as a way of organizational life may offer a more appropriate conceptual lens with which to think about change in contemporary organizations. I outline such an additional perspective in this paper, suggesting that it affords a particularly powerful analytical strategy for examining and explaining technology-based organizational transformation... the research discussed here questions the beliefs that organizational change must be planned, that technology is the primary cause of technology-based organizational transformation, and that radical changes always occur rapidly and discontinuously... I want to explore another kind of organizational transformation here, one that is enacted more subtly, more slowly, and more smoothly, but no less significantly. Such organizational transformation is grounded in the ongoing practices of organizational actors, and emerges out of their (tacit and not so tacit) accommodations to and experiments with the everyday contingencies, breakdowns, exceptions, opportunities, and unintended consequences that they encounter.
p.4-5 March (1981:564) notes:
Because of the magnitude of some changes in organizations, we are inclined to look for comparably dramatic explanations for change, but the search for drama may often be a mistake... Change takes place because most of the time most people in an organization do about what they are supposed to do; that is, they are intelligently attentive to their environments and their jobs.
...In this perspective... organizational transformation is seen here to be an ongoing improvisation enacted by organizational actors trying to make sense of and act coherently in the world.
p.5 Weick proposes the metaphor of theatrical improvisation, where organization design (1993:348-351):
... tends to be emergent and visible only after the fact. Thus, the design is a piece of history, not a piece of architecture. ...Design, viewed from the perspective of improvisation, is more emergent, more continuous, more filled with surprise, more difficult to control, more tied to the content of action, and more affected by what people pay attention to than are the designs implied by architecture.
The notion of change as ongoing improvisation resonates with the focus on situated action taken by practice researchers (Hutchins, 1991; Lave, 1992; Suchman, 1989). In contrast to the classical view of change as a process of managerial planning, design, and intervention, Hutchins, for example, argues that "several important aspects of a new organization are achieved not by conscious reflection but by local adaptations" (1991:14). In research on information technology, Rice and Rogers' (1980) concept of "reinvention" and Ciborra and Lanzara's (1991) notion of "designing-in-action," similarly echo some of the situated and improvisational ideas invoked here.
p.6 A view of organizational transformation as situated change is grounded in assumptions of action, not stability. Organizations are enacted. They are constituted by the ongoing agency of organizational members, and have no existence apart from such action (Giddens, 1984).
p.7-10 [boring case study... zzzzzzzz]
p.22 Poster (1995:85), drawing on Foucault's analysis of discourse, suggests that "databases are discourse," because they "effect a constitution of the subject."
p.36 Almost fifteen years ago now, March called for theoretical developments that explain "how substantial changes occur as the routine consequence of standard procedures or as the unintended consequence of ordinary adaptation" (1981:575). The practice-based perspective outlined in this paper attempts to take this call seriously. By focusing on change as situated, it provides a way of seeing that change may not always be as planned, inevitable, or discontinuous as we imagine. Rather, it is often realized through the ongoing variations which emerge frequently, even imperceptibly, in the slippages and improvisations of everyday activity. Those variations that are repeated, shared, amplified, and sustained can, over time, produce perceptible and striking organizational changes.
p.37 As members of the CSD attempted to make sense of and appropriate the new technology and its embedded constraints and enablements, they enacted - through the structuring process - a series of metamorphic changes in their organizing practices and structures. These changes were grounded in members' daily actions and interactions as they responded to the expected and unexpected outcomes, breakdowns, and opportunities that their technological sensemaking and appropriation afforded. While some of the changes were deliberate and intended, others were emergent and unanticipated. In contrast to the planned change perspective, thus, many of the changes realized by the CSD were not planned a priori, and neither were they discrete events. Rather, they revealed a pattern of contextualized innovations in practice enacted by all members of the CSD and proceeding over time with no predetermined endpoint.
p.39 As Orlikowski et al. (1995) suggest, because new customizable technologies are so general, local adaptations and ongoing accommodations of such technologies and their use are necessary to make them relevant (and keep them relevant) to particular contexts and situated work practices. Such adaptations and accommodations cannot be known upfront and typically have to be enacted in situ... the process of change outlined here - ongoing local improvisations in response to deliberate and emergent variations in practice - is potentially generalizable and is offered as a stimulus for further research. Of particular interest is the general usefulness of this perspective in those organizations embracing calls for flexibility, experimenting with ongoing learning, or investing in open-ended, tailorable technologies.
p.40 Contemporary demands for organizations to be flexible, responsive, and capable of learning require organizing practices to deal with ongoing change. I have proposed an additional perspective on organizational transformation that avoids the strong assumptions that have characterized prior change perspectives because it focuses on the situated micro-level changes that actors enact over time as they make sense of and act in the world. In its presumption of ongoing action, a practice lens allows for the possibility of ongoing change. It conceives of change as situated and endemic to the practice of organizing. It affords an analysis of technology-based organizational transformations that is ongoing, improvisational, and grounded in everyday, knowledgeable agency. As such, it may offer a unique and especially appropriate strategy of interpretation for the new organizing discourse becoming increasingly common today.
