Title:
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The Agora of Techno-Organisational Change
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This thesis seeks to enhance our understanding of the Technology-Organisation (T-O) relationship by developing a novel theorisation, based on the concept of the Agora of Techno-Organisational Change (ATOC). This concept is developed and examined in relation to detailed studies around a Greek Bank (GB) and a systems supplier (SIF). The thesis starts by exploring various approaches to analyzing the T-O relationship articulated from different disciplines. It identifies a number of shortcomings – linked to key theoretical distinctions/debates in social sciences (action-structure, micro-macro, global-local, T-O) and around specific issues relevant to analysing the shaping of T-O in relation to undertaking an interdisciplinary study of the T-O relationship. These include inconsistencies, partial perspectives and lack of conceptual integration. Building on the Social Shaping of Technology perspective, an alternative analytical focus is suggested to capture and theorize the shaping of the T-O relationship in a more complete manner, integrating different analytical levels and perspectives of actors in differing positions and roles. Specifically, a focus on “instances of T-O change” is proposed capturing the social choices during their initiation, design and implementation, within the space between local change environments and wider socio-economic relations amongst actors (firms) within a global knowledge economy. The ATOC is approached methodologically by paralleling the analyst’s view with the actors’ views addressing the diverse ways that different actors conceive, interpret and act on options for T-O change, through social choices. Two detailed longitudinal studies – one of a large restructuring program in GB as a particular T-O change instance and one of the involvement of SIF in the initiation, design and implementation of various T-O change instances – help explore these concepts empirically. The case examines how instances are initiated, designed and implemented, their links to the wider ATOC environment and how they become a terrain for the emergence of social changes and viewpoints.
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