"It's as if Somebody Slammed the Door" On the Limits of Organisational Change around Information Technology

This paper examines the notion of organizational change around information technology. In doing so, I take a position that focuses on negotiations between actors, negotiations that are translated into technological form. IT artifacts are interpretatively flexible, but while recognizing this, one needs to direct attention to how IT artifacts stabilizes, how peoples ideas about the technology reaches a point where it becomes stable, which also puts limits to how organizations can evolve around the technology. The purpose of this paper is to generate a better understanding of the limits of organizational change around information technology. The concepts of interpretative flexibility, technological frame, closure, and stabilization are presented and used as tools to analyze an IT design project at a major Swedish corporation. The paper concludes that the initial phases of an IT design project is crucial for change related to a new IT artifact. Change is unlikely once a technological frame–the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge concerning an IT artifact–has stabilized.