Working papers in

This paper offers an empirical study of the role of technology in an organisational change and learning process. My focus is on the learning that occurred as the workers decided how to integrate the technology in question (a digital patient record system) into a department’s work practices. In particular I examine how the characteristics of the technology contributed to shaping and organising the process of inquiry, and consequently the change process. I draw upon insights from information infrastructure theory that conceptualise of ICTs as interconnected, layered and extended webs of computerised systems, work practices and regulatory measures. Such information infrastructures are complex assemblages beyond the control of a single actor, and they gradually evolve and extend through time (see e.g. Ciborra et al., 2000; Hanseth and Monteiro, 1997). I combine this theoretical perspective with Karin Knorr Cetina’s concept of “epistemic objects” in knowledge practices (Knorr Cetina, 2001). She describes the objects’ “lack in completeness of being” (ibid., p. 181), their capacity to continuously unfold and point towards further explorations. This perspective allows an emphasis on the evolving and emergent nature of technology-in-context and how it impacts learning. Information infrastructures are gradually and slowly realised, and they are implemented and linked up with existing work practices and with other computer systems through long and cumbersome processes. In settings where infrastructural information technologies are our “epistemic objects” we will see that change and learning are shaped by these two characteristics, first, the unfinished and evolving nature of the technology, and second, the degree to which it is part of an interlinked assemblage and not solitary systems. A better understanding of the character of information and communication technologies is crucial for understanding their role in organisational change. Citation: http://www.ifi.uio.no/forskning/grupper/is/wp/072006.pdf Number 7, 2006 http://www.ifi.uio.no/forskning/grupper/is/wp/072006.pdf