Technological Embeddedness and Organizational Change
通过三年企业系统实施案例研究，提出技术嵌入性理论，解释组织要素（如惯例、角色）在技术中如何获得物质维度，并与表意和执行维度互动，驱动组织变革。
While various theories have been proposed to explain how technology leads to organizational change, in general they have focused either on the technology and ignored the influence of human agency, or on social interaction and ignored the technology. In this paper, we propose a new theory of technology-mediated organizational change that bridges these two extremes. Using grounded theory methodology, we conducted a three-year study of an enterprise system implementation. From the data collected, we identified embeddedness as central to the process of change. When embedded in technology, organizational elements such as routines and roles acquire a material aspect, in addition to the ostensive and performative aspects identified by Feldman and Pentland (2003). Our new theory employs the lens of critical realism because in our view, common constructivist perspectives such as structuration theory or actor network theory have limited our understanding of technology as a mediator of organizational change. Using a critical realist perspective, our theory explains the process of change as a three-stage cycle in which the ostensive, performative, and material aspects of organizational elements interact differently in each stage.