Explaining sociotechnical change: an unstable equilibrium perspective
基于对40名知识工作者三年的访谈数据，提出一种不稳定均衡视角，解释个体如何应对社会与技术结构间的复杂挑战，揭示技术个性化与社会化互补的生成机制。
Within the domain of Information Systems, assumptions around sociotechnical change cohesively build on establishing a stable and balanced relationship between the social and technical structures. When these structures become too rigid, revolutionary moments that punctuate the status quo are required for the structures to accommodate to a new situation. Approaching sociotechnical change with “punctuation of equilibrium” is becoming increasingly ineffective. In line with rising instability and rapid digital development, we argue that new sociotechnical change approaches are needed. In this paper we investigate how individual knowledge workers respond to the increasingly complex challenges they face when orchestrating social and technical structures to support efficient and creative knowledge work. We suggest a new perspective that covers an unstable equilibrium emerging from the interplay between individuals and their usage of “the collection of rigid and flexible workplace technologies”. Our study is based on data from interviews made with 40 knowledge professionals over a period of three years, inquiring into individual experiences with sociotechnical change. Our study reveals contradictory patterns of both technological-individualisation and -socialisation. A universal generative mechanism emerges when these patterns complement each other and generates continuous change that seems to diminish inertia from rigid structures while also intensifying agile responses.