Organization Science

Vol. 21, No. 2, MarchApril 2010, pp. 507520 issn 1047-7039 eissn 1526-5455 10 2102 0507

informs

doi 10.1287/orsc.1090.0441 2010 INFORMS

Technology, Organization, and StructureA Morphogenetic Approach

Division of Information Management and Systems, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4BU, United Kingdom, alistair.mutch@ntu.ac.uk

Alistair Mutch

his article relates Archers morphogenetic approach, derived from the philosophical tradition of critical realism, to the use of information and communication technology in organizations. Three gains are seen to accrue from this approach: greater clarity about the material properties of technology, links to broader structural conditions arising from the conceptualization of the relationship between agency and structure, and the potential to explore the importance of reexivity in contemporary organizations, especially in conditions of the widespread use of information and communication technology. The importance of disaggregating the artifacts of this technology into levels and features is stressed to enable analysis to explore the specic impacts of particular combinations. This is developed through a discussion of data warehousing in connection with the attention being given to the importance of analytics in organizational strategies. Key features are in wider aspects of the cultural and structural context, demonstrating the fruitfulness of a morphogenetic approach. Key words : information technology; information systems; critical realism; data warehouses; organizations and information; reexivity; agency and structure History : Published online in Articles in Advance July 28, 2009.

Introduction

There is growing interest in the application of ideas from the tradition of critical realism to organization studies in general (Ackroyd 2002; Ackroyd and Fleetwood 2000; Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004; Mutch et al. 2006; Reed 1997, 2005a, b) and information systems (IS) in particular (de Vaujany 2008; Dobson et al. 2007; Mingers 2004a, b; Morton 2006; Mutch 2002; Smith 2006; Volkoff et al. 2007). Critical realism is a philosophical project that asserts the existence of a reality independent of our knowing of it (Bhaskar 1979). We can gain corrigible and provisional knowledge of that reality only through our fallible conceptual apparatus. Such assumptions are compatible with a range of substantive theories of the world, as explored in more detail below. This article presents one such theory, the morphogenetic approach developed by the social theorist and sociologist of education Archer (1995), and shows the benets of adapting it to explore the broad domain of IS. I seek to complement and extend the more-applied focus of Volkoff et al. (2007).1 Their use of critical realism to examine the organizational changes connected with the implementation of an enterprise system (ES) emphasizes the value of considering the material aspects of technology, and I extend this discussion. However, a morphogenetic approach offers us much morenotably, in its formulations of the relationship between agency and structure. Whereas much of Archers early work is concerned with clarifying the nature of culture and structure in social analysis, a morphogenetic approach is emphatically not
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to be assimilated to a new structuralism (Lounsbury and Ventresca 2003). It does, however, provide us with a conceptualization of the relationship between agency and structure, which suggests ways of linking organizational changes, especially those involving technology, to wider economic and political structures, which tackles some of the decits some observers have noted in existing approaches (Jones et al. 2004). A further observation emerging out of work on technological change in organizations is the need to be more specic about the form that technology takes (Orlikowski and Iaconno 2001). This is an area that is also weakly developed in morphogenetic approaches, and so I suggest a view of IS artifacts that builds on the notions of stratication and emergence present in critical realism. Stated in summary, I seek to suggest that technology renders some aspects of structures more durable in time and space. For the purpose of this discussion, I focus on information and communication technology (ICT), which I dene as technologies for the processing, storage, and transmission of digital material, consisting of ensembles of hardware and software with distinctive feature sets allowing for the physical storage and logical representation of different forms of data. I take information and communication to be processes of meaning creation (Boland 1987) to which such forms of technology have an important relation, but which need to be held apart for the purpose of analysis. The denition points to the importance of ensembles, and below I discuss the importance of seeing the architecture of such

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ensembles as an important dimension of the scope, as distinguished from the role, of technology (Orlikowski 1992). Such a denition means that the material properties of technology are important, and I suggest that these need to be considered in terms of levels and features. That is, we need to decompose technology down to examine the pace and nature of change at different levels. In particular, I argue that we need to pay attention to the emergence of data structures from particular combinations of hardware and software. However, I do not seek to argue that this makes technology a structure in its own right, rather that technology mediates the impact of structures such as economic formations. Such mediations still require the skilled interpretations of more or less knowledgeable users, but without a conception of the specic nature of a particular constellation of technology and its relationship to broader structures we will fail to gain adequate analytical purchase on such interpretations. A morphogenetic approach enables us to take account of the different modes of agential reexivity and how these might be impacted by technology. In the rst section I explore some of the basic tenets of critical realism, with a particular focus on its relation to substantive theories of the social world. Here I am concerned with showing that critical realism is compatible with a range of theories, some of which can compete. Thus, Archers (1995) morphogenetic approach and the strong structuration of Stones (2005) both draw on shared notions of stratication and emergence, but diverge on questions of how to apply them to social analysis. I suggest that students of IS and organizations need to attend more to these social theories against the backdrop of the broader philosophical debate. This prepares the ground for a closer examination of Archers formulation. This is shown to be profoundly relational in character, with the focus here on the relationship between agency and structure. Archers strategy of analytical dualism is seen to rest on a stronger conceptualization of structure than that found in other approaches, notably in Giddens structuration theory. The inuence of this latter approach on the study of IS, especially in the inuential work of Walsham (1993, 1997, 2001a) and Orlikowski (Orlikoswki 1992, 2000, 2007; Yates and Orlikowski 1992; Orlikowski and Yates 1994; Orlikowski and Gash 1994; Orlikowski and Iaconno 2001), is seen to lead to a focus on agential knowledgeability that tends to neglect broader structural inuences. In addition, this welcome focus on how understanding and reception of technological artifacts is mediated through interpretive schema is seen to run the danger of conating the exibility of the technological artifact and the interpretive exibility of agents. This leads to a downplaying of the material properties of different forms of technology and, in particular, to an underestimation of the degree to which aspects of structure are inscribed into such properties.

I explore these issues through a discussion of data warehousing, seeking to show the specicity of technology at a number of levels, and these specicities can be related to both organizational and broader economic structures. From this I conclude with some observations about how a morphogenetic approach might be developed.

Critical Realism and Morphogenesis

Much of the interest in the ideas of critical realism is often expressed in a return to the work of Bhaskar (1979) and supplies accounts labelled critical realist. Note that this is formally incorrect; there are no critical realist substantive theories of anything. This is because critical realism is a philosophical tradition that seeks to perform an under labouring function for those anxious to build a wide range of theories in both the natural and the social domains. Accordingly, there may be considerable debate (as we will see) between those developing substantive theories about the validity of particular concepts, but agreement about the underlying philosophical positions. The task is, therefore, to use the conceptual clarity supplied by some of the notions that we review below to develop substantive theories. One such theory, rmly located within sociology and social theory, is Archers morphogenetic approach. By contrast, much of the work in IS that seeks to draw on critical realism tends to engage in more philosophical debates (Dobson 2002; Mingers 2004a, b; Klein 2004; Smith 2006). Although social theorists have, as Giddens (1984, p. xvii) notes, to be alive to the concerns of philosophers, they do so in order to help them shed light on the concrete processes of social life. For the study of IS as a social phenomenon, it seems appropriate to turn to those working more directly in the social sciences. Accordingly, our focus is on Archers morphogenetic approach, but a consideration of this requires some preliminary observations about key concepts in critical realism. Critical realism is a sophisticated and growing body of work; what is supplied here can only be an introduction to concepts ably developed elsewhere (Collier 1994; Sayer 1992, 2000; Fleetwood 2005). The focus here is on those elements that will help with the problems we will identify below. The starting point has to be the ontological commitment, in stark contrast to the social constructivism that is used in some aspects of IS research, to a world external to our knowing of it. That is, accounts (Grint and Woolgar 1997) that render the world as a text, which can be interpreted in multiple ways, rest on an idealist ontology that is rejected here. However, it is important not to confuse this commitment to realism with the form of scientic realism espoused in much organization theory (Boal et al. 2003, McKelvey 2003). For critical realists, reality is stratied. At the level of the empirical, that is, events recorded through the senses, is the domain of nave or commonsense realism. However, our

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senses can be misleading and underneath the empirical is the actual, a domain that is often the concern of what has been termed scientic realism. However, Bhaskars (1979) explorations in the philosophy of science indicate that the real is concerned with the generative mechanisms that produce actual events manifested in empirical sensations. It is the task of natural and social scientists to uncover these mechanisms and so approach better understanding, albeit that such understanding is always provisional, reversible, and corrigible. The real is therefore far more than the material appearances of the world, although such material properties are an important part of our analyses. This is important both in distancing our investigations from more nave forms of realism and in suggesting that our investigations of the world will be concerned with a search for mechanisms that produce particular phenomena (Volkoff et al. 2007). Two further important concepts are those of stratication and emergence. Reality is held to be stratied, with phenomena emerging from a particular level, but not being reducible to that level. So, for example, memory emerges from the biological, but is not reducible to it (Rose 1993). That is, once emerged it has properties that are proper to it as a system at that level and not reducible to biological components. In such emergence, time is of central importance. The consequence is that the methodological injunction is to construct analytical narratives in which the unfolding of events over time is the key to the isolation of causal mechanisms. Crucially, phenomena at different levels change at different paces. Archer has used such ideas to develop what she terms a morphogenetic approach to the study of social life, the key features of which we explore below. A further feature of her approach that is related to her use of critical realism as an underlabourer is her methodological commitment to analytical dualism. Thus, to anticipate our later discussion, where Giddens proposes to overcome the problem of dualism by conceptualizing structure and agency as a duality, Archer suggests that it is more productive to use dualism as an analytical strategy to explore relational processes of change over time. Her use of analytical dualism is at an abstract and macro level, treating of substantial shifts of ideas in elds like education, religion, and science over large sweeps of time. However, she argues rmly that
Analytical dualism can be used by any researcher to gain theoretical purchase on much smaller problems where the major difculty of seeing the wood from the trees becomes much more tractable if they can be sorted out into the components of temporal cycles of morphogenesishowever short the time-span involved may be. (Archer 1996, p. 228)

systems (Archer 1979). This work paid particular attention to the importance of time, examining the shaping of educational systems over periods extending to several centuries. This gave her a strong sense of the conditioning of social action by structures that emerged and endured over long periods of time (Archer 1982). It also led to a sustained engagement with, and critique of, the ideas of Bhaskar, developed over a series of (to date) ve books (Archer 1995, 1996, 2000, 2003, 2007). Her rst work (later revised to be congruent with her development of her broader approach) was concerned with the nature of culture (Archer 1996). In this, she challenged what she termed the myth of cultural integration, seeking to outline aspects of contradiction as well as complementarity, both within sets of ideas and between ideas and social action. Her development of the emergence of ideas coming to hold causal powers over action, by framing the context of such action, was further developed in her morphogenetic approach (Archer 1995). Examined more closely later, this can be summarized as separating out structure and agency and exploring their interplay over time using the methodological strategy of analytical dualism. Her tighter and stronger formulation of the notion of structure is the early part of her project to develop a truly relational sociology. In her more recent work (Archer 2000, 2003, 2007), she has been concerned, in the spirit of critical realism, with uncovering the mechanisms that bring humans into collision with the structures that other humans have created, and that both constrain and enable their actions. This is therefore a very rich, sophisticated, and complex body of ideas, only a small proportion of which can be deployed here. If the focus is primarily on the relationship between agency and structure, because of the centrality of debate over this in much of the IS literature, the potential of Archers more recent work on reexivity is considered towards the close of the discussion. In developing her early work, Archers central concern was to avoid falling into one of the twin poles of structuralism or individualism. Archer used a diagram (Figure 1) to illustrate her concerns. For Archer, structuralist forms of explanation never strayed beyond T2, concerned as they were with specifying the way in which structures determined action. This form of analysis she termed downwards conation, for the nature of action was conated into and equated with
Figure 1 Morphogenetic Cycle

Structural conditioning T1 T2 Social interaction T3

Her early formulations of relational concepts of the interaction between agency and structure were elaborated in her work on the development of educational

Structural elaboration T4
Note. Adapted from Archer (1995, p. 82).

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the structural conditions of possibility. She contrasted this with upwards conation, which is where structure was seen as a pure aggregate of individual actions in which events before T2 were not considered and the focus was on action up until T3. Archer suggests a third category, that of central conationism, in which the differences between structure and agency are elided. She suggests that this is particularly the case with the work of Giddens (1984), whose work has been inuential in the development of some signicant works in IS, notably those of Walsham and Orlikowski. Archer argues that in practice, Giddens account, because of its ontological claims about structure, remains between the points T2 and T3that is, in her terms it is centrally conationist. The weak specication of structures as rules and resources held as memory traces and instantiated in action means that in practice structures are conated into agency. We need to hold the two apart, she contends, to analyse the unfolding relationship over time. It is time that gives us a stronger sense of structures, coupled with the notion of emergent properties. Structures are dependent, Archer argues, on human action, but not necessarily on those here present now. That is, in many circumstances, structures, language being a key one, are bequeathed to us by actors no longer present, but they form the involuntary context, a context that can both constrain and enable, for our actions now. This leads Archer to question the notion of structures as virtual. What, she asks, of concepts such as roles or institutions that have associated relations, rights, and responsibilities that preexist those who come to hold them? This is, following the tenets of critical realism, an approach that is relational in character, arguing that certain social positions exist because of their place in a network of relations, carrying with them necessary internal relations. Thus, for example, the institution of rent carries with it the associated roles of landlord and tenant, both of which carry with them certain properties as a consequence of their necessary and internal relations (Sayer 1992). Of course, it is feasible for a person to go against the constraints of such a role, but this is not without cost and brings the person into conict with wider structures. Furthermore, Archer suggests that the library of knowledge exceeds the capacity of any individual to recreate and has been generated over time in a fashion that renders it independent of any knower at any particular time (Archer 1996). Relations of landlord and tenant, for example, are buttressed not only by legal regulation, but also by bodies of theory. The analysis of any concrete situation needs to take into account such bodies of propositions, which may contain contradictions within or between themselves and social action that open up space for change. By the same token, bodies of ideas and social institutions can contain complementarities that reinforce their position and lead to reproduction: such, indeed, is the more likely and enduring situation.

Stated in outline, Archer argues that

every morphogenetic cycle distinguishes three broad analytical phases consisting of (a) a given structure (a complex set of relations between parts), which conditions but does not determine (b), social interaction. Here, (b) also arises in part from action orientations unconditioned by social organization but emanating from current agents, and in turn leads to (c), structural elaboration or modicationthat is, to a change in the relations between parts where morphogenesis rather than morphostasis ensued. (Archer 1995, p. 91; emphasis added)

The approach suggests that in approaching the analysis of organizational life, time will be crucial (Volkoff et al. 2007). It also gives us a formulation that stresses the importance of structures in their own right and does not collapse them into the activities of agents. However, Archer has little to say about the use or impact of forms of technology. Whereas Giddens own work contains some limited observations about the impact of technology (Jones et al. 2004), Archer seems even less concerned, having little to say about technology in her critiques of theories of postindustrialism (Archer 1990). From within the tradition of critical realism, Lawson (2007, p. 42) suggests that technology can be understood as the site in which the social achieves a different mode of existence through its embodiment in material things. That is, the relative durability of technology enables persistence of arrangements through both time and space. However, one concern with Lawsons formulation is that it pays little attention to notions of interpretive exibility. For example, he argues that
when we acquire a new CD player we read the instruction manual, which tells us who designed this particular player, what it is for and how it is to be used. We then simply use it in line with the designers intentions. (Lawson 2007, p. 41)

This seems to underplay the efforts required in translation that we can observe in the numerous studies of the reception of particular forms of technology, where not only is use not obvious on rst encounter, but users also prove remarkably inventive in their adoption of particular features in creative fashion. This is particularly the case with ICT where, as we will see, both at the level of software and of data structure there are often degrees of freedom in customizing and adapting technology. Accordingly, we can suggest the following dimensions of a morphogenetic approach to technology, each of which we will then proceed to consider in more detail: Structures emerge over time from human activity, but once in place form objective contexts for the exercise of agency. Technology renders some of these more durable in both time and space. Technology has particular material properties best conceptualized as composed of particular combinations of levels and features. The existence of data structures is

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Figure 2

Outlining a Morphogenetic Approach to Technology and Organizational Action

Structure

Culture

Position-practices (agents context)

Mediated by Inscribed in Data structure Software Hardware

Technology Sociocultural action

Agential reflexivity

Sociocultural elaboration
Inscribed in Data structure Software Hardware

Technology

particularly important in embedding particular forms of position-practices. Arguing that technology has particular material properties does not mean that agents will not have particular conceptions of such properties and their implications. What it means is that we need to explore the interplay between material properties and agents conceptions. Agents conceptions are shaped not only by their engagement with technology, but also by the broader situational logics supplied by cultural schema. There is a relationship of relative autonomy between such bodies of ideas and institutional arrangements. The overall approach is summarized in Figure 2. In the discussion that follows, I pay rather more attention to the rst two elements because these are central to elucidating the place of technology in a morphogenetic approach.

Technology and Morphogenesis

Inscribing Structure in Technology To consider the relationship between structures and technology, a useful starting point is the distinction that Feenberg (2001) makes between primary and secondary phases of what he terms instrumentalization. Here he suggests a primary and a secondary phase of the construction of technology. In the primary phase, designers abstract certain features from the world in order to construct a technological artifact that is then presented back as if it were natural. This artifact is then appropriated in

a secondary phase, in which users creatively receive it. It is the second phase that is often more important within organizations, especially when we distinguish between levels. That is, although hardware is socially shaped and bears the marks of assumptions about the nature of the world, these are embedded to a degree that is more resistant to change and appears more natural than aspects of the software and data structure. Indeed, the latter is far more under the control of organizational actors, even when deploying software bought off the shelf and used in uncustomized fashion. Therefore, we need to consider not only the ways in which structures can be embedded in technology and at which levels, but also how such embedding is perceived by and responded to by a range of users (Volkoff et al. 2007). Structures that have emergent properties sedimented over time to form the context for action impact on the constitution of technology in a number of ways. Initially, they have an inuence on what technology is developed at all. That is, the broader structures of, for example, market competition and capital accumulation select certain technologies and features for development, and not others, according to mechanisms that operate at the level of such structures and not at the level of technical efciency (Benders 1993). Once in the development process, then, broader structures inuence the shape and range of features. Thus, much of the development of systems for intensive data processing (such as the data warehousing that we explore in more detail below) can be seen in the context of an Anglo-American focus on

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performance measurement, a focus that found instantiation in earlier systems such as Executive Information Systems (EIS) (Rockart 1979). This led to the development of features such as executive dashboards that purport to reduce the operations of an organization to a limited number of indicators. In some discussions, the very real problems that such systems face in their simplication of complex reality lead commentators to write them off too readily (Baumard 1999). If we, by contrast, and in the spirit of a morphogenetic approach, view them as changing over a number of iterations, we see that such systems often achieve a degree of embeddedness in organizational practices (Wheeler et al. 1993, Lapointe and Rivard 2007). For all their faults, such systems inscribe assumptions about performance management into the heart of the operation of many global organizations (Ackroyd 2002). Of course, organizations do not simply represent empty containers into which such systems are poured. Rather, accounts of the historical development of management suggest power struggles between different groups of managers to represent themselves as the most trustworthy agents of the owners of the business and so to secure status and material rewards (Armstrong 1986, Shenhav 1999). At rst this battle was between accountants and engineers, but more recently marketing, using the language of championing the customer, has vied for this status. Such divisions leave their mark, argues Neil Fligstein (1990), on the shape of organizations. In the course of such battles, information becomes a crucial weapon. As Keith Negus argues in the context of his examination of the music industry.
It informs intra-departmental rivalry to the extent that knowledge of what consumers are doingand legitimating that knowledge through hard information and veriable data rather than hunches or intuitionis deployed in struggles for inuence and position within the organization. (Negus 1999, p. 59)

at particular times become written into data structures (Carlile 2004, Volkoff et al. 2007). Once made durable in software, such congurations form part of the objective context for future action. Technology has to be seen, therefore, as Orlikowski and Iaconno (2001) suggest, in dynamic relationship with its context. Technology is not a structure in its own right, but it is one of the ways in which structures are mediated. It operates by inscribing features into technology at a number of levels, but, most important, at the level of the data structure. What is suggested is that we need to use the method of analytical dualism to separate out these elements, while recognizing that they are ontologically intertwined. In so doing, we can suggest that technology represents a further means of connecting locally situated action to broader structural factors. Stones (2005), drawing on the resources of critical realism, suggests that we see organizations as constituted by constellations of position practices, that is, sets of structural factors such as roles and their associated practices. ICT inscribes important aspects of such position practices into material forms that make up the context for agents conduct. Volkoff et al. (2007) note that in the manufacturing company they examined, roles were embedded into software in such a way that it was impossible to operate outside them. Therefore, for example, even the weekend plant shift supervisor could not create purchase orders, but had to call in a materials buyer planner (Volkoff et al. 2007, p. 840). This is not just a feature of more data-intensive systems. Ciborra and Patriotta (1996) found similar effects in their study of the implementation of a groupware system in a multinational company, with particular emphasis on what they termed the infostructure. Such contentions about the inscription (Pentland and Feldman 2007) of structural features into ICT require that we consider the notion of materiality in more detail. Material Properties: Levels and Features Given that a morphogenetic approach stresses the importance of the material properties of particular forms of technology, further discussion of what we take materiality to mean is helpful. As Hutchby (2001) points out,
materiality here need not be thought of only in physical terms. We may, for instance, be able to conceive of the telephone as having a materiality affecting the distribution of interactional space through the promotion of what I will call conversational intimacy at a distance Likewise, we can conceive of the interfaces of expert systems or internet conferencing software as having a materiality affecting navigation through a technically bounded interactional space as people attempt to orient themselves in the sequential order of a particular interaction. (p. 3)

Technology forms a valuable ally in such battles, especially with its ability to store and manipulate large bodies of data. Of course, such data are dependent on particular struggles over the denition of key items that determine whether they are collected at all and, once collected, how they are stored (Davenport 1994). Once such denitions are inscribed into software; they then in turn appear as an accomplished social fact, often being regarded as the ofcial version (DAdderio 2004). Indeed, those proposing enterprise systems often argue for the need to present one version of organizational truth (Davenport and Harris 2007). In such struggles, ICT systems such as data warehousing become signicant allies, leading, for example, to moves by some marketing functions to assume responsibility for broader knowledge management (Troilo 2006). In this way, classications that reect the concerns of particular organizational congurations

This consideration of materiality as involving more than the concrete physicality of particular technological artefacts parallels the focus of Clark et al. (1988) on architecture in their consideration of engineering systems.

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That is, the same hardware and software could be congured in different ways to produce very different implications for organizational arrangements. Clark et al. stress the need to take a systemic approach, in which the crucial system properties are those that emerge from particular forms of organization of technology. In considering such material properties we will also wish to remember that users are not faced by technology as an abstraction, but by concrete instantiations (DAdderio 2004). That is, some of the discussion in social constructivist accounts (Grint and Woolgar 1997, Edwards et al. 1995) is posed at a hypothetical level, which pushes the discussion beyond the practical constraints faced by both users and organizations (Hutchby 2001). Although these constraints are ultimately social and economic, the material constraints posed by technology cannot all be released or changed at the same pace. We can only see this if, as Orlikowski and Iaconno (2001) suggest, we disaggregate technology into its component parts. Based on a content analysis of one journal, they suggest that the largest number of articles failed to be specic about the IT artifact at allit was simply absent from discussion. In calling for greater attention to the nature of the IT artifact, they suggest a number of factors for consideration. Accounts need to recognise that technology is not in some sense natural, but is shaped by social interests. In turn, the specic material features shaped by such social contexts were important. In examining such features, it would be necessary to disaggregate the artifact and not speak of it as in some sense stable and seamless in makeup. Finally, we would need to recognise that technology is both emergent and dynamic. Such a perspective therefore echoes injunctions (Montiero and Hanseth 1995) to be specic about technology. Critical realism is helpful in opening up the black box of ICT, rstly because of recognition of materiality and secondly because of the notions of stratication and emergence that we have already discussed. In an account that draws on critical realism, Whytes (2005) study of virtual reality deploys such notions to emphasize that different levels are subject to change at different pace and are more or less amenable to user change and involvement. In her study she distinguished between hardware, operating systems, formats and standards, application, and add-on packages. Change at one level raised tensions at other levels when, for example, expertise and capabilities at the software level were threatened by a move from a hardware architecture based on workstations to one based on personal computers. This focus on different levels enabled the analysis to be sensitive to the importance of the installed base, with its concomitant interdependencies. In developing this approach, I focus in this discussion on hardware, software, and the emergent data structure in the context of applications aimed at intensive data

analysis, particularly the group of technologies known as data warehousing. This is a relatively underresearched group of technologies, despite their clear importance in sections of the contemporary economy. Davenport (2006) highlights an emerging trend that he labels competing on analytics, in which companies such as Wal-Mart in the United States and Tesco in the United Kingdom seek to derive trends from large volumes of transaction data, facilitated by specic applications of ICT. Data warehouses are thus related to the enterprise systems that Volkoff et al. (2007) consider, but whereas accounts of such systems (Boudreau and Robey 2005) tend to focus on the constraints such systems impose on users (and the degree to which they can escape or work round such constraints), data warehouses raise a different set of issues. Emerging from the capacity of organizations, especially those in sectors such as retail and nancial services, to collect large volumes of transaction data, data warehouses have been a key approach in overcoming their lack of capability to analyze such data. Based largely on specialized machines that stand apart from operational technology, data warehouses involve the extraction and transfer of data from operational systems. The characteristics of both the hardware (notably massively parallel processing) and the software enable the analysis of large volumes of data, with a view to establishing trends and patterns. A concomitant requirement is the capacity to store large volumes of historical data to facilitate timeseries analysis. These technological capacities, in their turn, raise important questions to do with data denitions that suggest the ways in which such systems come up against existing organizational boundaries, notably those between functional groupings. Data warehouses raise important questions about managerial agency and conict in addition to the concern with workforce issues found in the literature on enterprise systems. These implications are important if we are to follow the injunction to be specic about technology; in following it we can illustrate the importance of looking at different levels. The constraints at the level of hardware may be twofold. On the one hand, once installed, aspects of ICT are difcult to change, even if new technical possibilities become available (Ciborra 2000). This is partly because of the substantial infrastructure that is built on them and is dependent on them, with the concomitant interdependencies. Such constraints are particularly powerful in case of the scale of investment required for more intensive data-processing applications (Volkoff et al. 2007). That is, although the cost of many technologically based applications is reduced with the mass production of processing and storage technology, the scale of investment for data-intensive applications is still a signicant factor. Moreover, such investment is often dedicated to the particular form of technology, rather than being, as with desk-based personal computing, capable of being shared between a range of applications. It is therefore more

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visible as an organizational investment. On the other hand, demand may outrun technical capacity at particular times, because not all forms of technology are in step. So, for example, in the earlier days of transaction processing in retail industries the ability of ICT to capture transaction data far outweighed the capacity of hardware devices to store and, more important, process the data (Westerman 2001). Therefore, it was not until the advent of massively parallel processing that analysis of transactions at the basket level became available. Although data warehousing is far more than just the hardware, the hardware capacity was a vital enabler. In particular, there is a more one-to-one relationship between hardware and software applications. Hardware for data warehousing, especially in the larger installations, tends to be more specialized. It is produced by specialist suppliers and designed for particular tasks. At the level of software there are distinctions to be drawn between levels more amenable to user change and those more resistant. Although some data-intensive applications allow for the possibility of accessing data via familiar (and relatively customizable) applications like spreadsheets, most tend to require the use of specialist applications that require a considerable degree of expertise to use. Many such systems use software such as neural networks and articial intelligence where expert involvement is required to elicit and translate decision rules. Therefore, the extent of changeability is open to considerable question. In general, this is not by the same person who uses the data, leading to the emergence of categories such as the power user (Massa and Testa 2005). The structured queries on which data analysis is based require considerable knowledge not only of the language used but also of the underlying data structures. It is at this level that the notion of materiality takes full force. Database designers draw a distinction between physical and logical forms of design, with data often not existing other than as the result of manipulation by programs, but appearing as representations on screens, which then have considerable impact on user action (Volkoff et al. 2007). However, the selection of data types and tools for handling them can, once selected, pose considerable constraints on the extent and nature of this emergent level. So, for example, a data structure and physical architecture that is perfectly capable of handling operational data needs may prove completely ineffective for analytical purposes, shaping the range of possibilities (Finnegan and Sammon 2002). It is perhaps tempting to suggest that this is simply a matter of sophisticated programming. However, this would be to ignore the constraints that particular data structures impose on such programming.2 That is, the effort involved in creating data structures is not a trivial one. Beyond this, such structures require a degree of stability over time if

trend analysis is to be feasible (Bowker 2000). Considerable effort is involved in extracting source data from supporting systems, cleansing them by rendering them in standard form and attaching additional data items. There are clearly choices to be made at certain times, but those choices, once made, commit particular groups of users to something that in practical terms is given. Therefore, the data structure of a data warehouse is amenable to decision, but once made, that structure affects the ability of users to interact with the system, and change, although possible, is slow and protracted. Such considerations pose signicant practical problems for users and organizations. For example, it became feasible with the spread of relational databases for users to write queries that could run against operational databases. However, the consequence, given physical capacity and data structures optimized for operational purposes, was severe performance degradation (Westerman 2001). These might have been labelled technical problems, but they were of organizational consequence. Of course, there were solutions to such problems, but they were not trivial ones and they required time to implement. For example, it took Tesco seven years to move from pilot investigation to full-data investigation on all customers, Wal-Mart some 12 years to develop their systems (Humby et al. 2003, Westerman 2001). During that time, of course, hardware availability has changed, making such applications more viable, but if we take account of both time and the practical considerations for operational life, then material constraints are signicant. They are also signicant in that they are different for different instantiations of ICT. We could spend much time debating what the core features of a particular technology set are, but as Jasperson et al. (2005) point out, without at least some attempt to take these into account we will nd it hard to account for interactions. To put the applications that we have been examiningdata warehouses and their equivalentsagainst the groupwareenabled applications that gure strongly in the literature (Ciborra and Patriota 1996, Hayes and Walsham 2000, Monteiro and Heps 2000, Orlikowski 2000) is to see the contrast in features starkly (Table 1). One feature set is optimized for high-volume data manipulation, the other for unstructured information sharing. The need, then, is to be more specic about the levels and features of technology because these considerations are not technical ones, but ones with real organizational consequences (Grifth 1999). One might wish to argue that users can be creative with ICT, pushing it beyond the bounds of what designers envisaged, or that they might misperceive ICT altogether and so fail in their attempts to use it beyond its capabilities, and these are valid arguments. However, making such claims demands that we have some measure of what the features and levels of a particular instantiation of ICT are. The specic effects

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Table 1 Level

Comparing Groupware and Data Warehousing Groupware Data warehousing

Data Unstructured data of Numerical data dependent structure variety of types; often on laid down denitions; group generated generated from source systems requiring routines for cleansing and loading Software User congurable with Some control over possibility of parameters of queries, application but high level of technical development understanding required; specic applications Hardware Personal computers in Mainframe computing, often client server networks standalone using parallel processing and requiring extensive le transfer

of a particular constellation of technological levels and features, that is, are a matter for concrete investigation, but such investigations need to be guided by an approach that holds such features apart from the forms of interpretation that are possible. Although technology may x some position-practices and make them appear more natural, this does not remove the need for interpretation. The sources of such interpretations are thus also of importance, and in this way we can connect both to some of the important ndings of Orlikowski and others and also to some of the broader concerns of Archer with the relationship between culture and agency. Material Properties and Agents Interpretations Walsham (2001a, p. 45) argues that [i]nformation technologies have properties that can and do inuence their adoption and use, but there is considerable exibility in how they are interpreted and used. The discussion above stresses the rst part of this statement, but other accounts, especially those which focus on practice, tend to emphasize interpretive exibility (Orlikowski 2000, Kellog et al. 2006, Boudreau and Robey 2005). In stressing the importance, and delineating the properties, of information technologies, it is not the intention of a morphogenetic approach to downplay the importance of interpretive exibility. Rather, it is to examine the relationship between material properties and such interpretive exibility. Clearly, the account presented above suggests that material properties can become naturalised and present themselves in such a way as to form a powerful constraint on exibility. The constraints, for example, of the data structures that are imposed on data warehousing constrain the ways in which analysis can be conducted. However, it is not just the materiality of technology that provides such a constraint. The materiality of previous practices, from ling cabinets to paper documents, form powerful models on which to base responses to new forms of technology. So, for example, the word processor replicates many features of the

typewriter that preceded it as the main means of producing documents (Carroll and Mack 1995). The keyboard layout mimicked that of the typewriter, and many of the features, such as tab stops, bear a resemblance to those familiar on the older technology. Such metaphors facilitated the widespread acceptance of word processing, but they could also mean that the more extended features were not appliedsuch as when a list was required it was retyped, rather than using sets of data as input. This is because the technology is being assimilated to the familiar analogy of paper. Similar metaphorical framing can be found in other instances. The spreadsheet, for example, won widespread acceptance on the basis of its similarity to traditional analysis paper. However, without training in modelling techniques it can often be used as little more than a convenient calculator (Kreie et al. 2000). That is, the features that technology has are often ltered through existing practices, but, building on Archer, I suggest that we need to hold the features apart from the ways in which they are conceived to explore their interrelationship in different contexts. Clearly, here the notion of genre as deployed by Orlikowski and Yates (1994) is one important way by which such conceptions are shaped. Genres are takenfor-granted modes of communication, such as the memo, the report, or the presentation, that are the more powerful for being bound up with particular forms of technology (such as the memo and the ling cabinet). Kellog et al. (2006) observe that in a Web advertising company the deployment of PowerPoint in conjunction with the genre presentation enabled workers to respond rapidly to changing demands, but at the expense of reection on their activities. This suggests the way in which to-hand genres can shape the encounter with the enablements that technology presents, but it also points to a reaction back in the shaping of forms of reexivity. One central concern of both Giddens (1990) and Archer (2007) is with the nature of reexivity. This is expressed in different forms in their work, but it is related in both cases to changes in which both organizations and technology are implicated. Jones (1999) notes that in the case of Giddens that his work on reexivity has been relatively neglected in applications of structuration theory to ICT. There is a parallel danger that what is taken from Archers work is simply her earlier work that is concerned with an explication of the nature of culture and structure with a view to clarifying their relationship with agency. In her more recent work, she suggests that developments in organizational form, such as managerial structures within global organizations, and in ICT, alter the nature of reexivity, shifting it away from what she terms conversational reexivity (Archer 2007). This form of reexivity, which depends on shared assumptions and contextual continuity, has many parallels with the focus on tacit knowing (Baumard 1999).

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For those working with concepts such as communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1999), learning is a matter of identity construction through experience in contrast to the focus on cognitions associated with formal learning encounters. The stress on experience emphasises the formation of relationships that in turn rest on shared assumptions, developed through embedded practice, about the nature of the world. Such assumptions mark the world of the conversational reexive, who needs the participation through conversation of others to enable effective thought. This stress on experiential learning with its focus on tacit forms of knowing stands in sharp contrast to the more abstract and systemic forms of thought implicated in analytics. That is, the activities enabled by applications such as data warehousing support a more detached, autonomous, and strategic form of thought. These qualities accord well with Archers suggestion that developments in organizations shape what she terms autonomous reexivity. This is where actors complete their thinking in relative autonomy, with a much more strategic approach to the world. These distinctions between forms of reexivity could be a useful guide to future research programs. They also provide a link between organizational encounters with technology and broader social structures. Situational Logics Critical political economists such as Adler (2007) and Ackroyd (2002) suggest that the microfocus on tacit forms of knowing that we have called into question neglects broader trends, such as an increasing dependence on intellectual capital founded on scientic knowledge. The exploration of the articulation between tacit and more explicit forms of knowing raises questions about links to broader bodies of ideas, and here Archers work on the nature of culture provides useful conceptual resources. Drawing on notions of objective knowledge drawn from the work of Popper (1979) in combination with the concept of emergence from critical realism, she suggests that ideas once produced form bodies of interrelated propositions that stand in relations of contradiction and complementarity to each other (Archer 1996). Such bodies of propositions then form situational logics for particular episodes of social interaction. In our focal case of the data warehouse, we can point to two such bodies of ideas that might frame particular uses of technology, marking some uses as more appropriate than others. These two bodies of ideas would be those on performance management and on retailing. The rst, which forms a widespread and inuential body of discourse in society more generally, privileges particular uses of data and encourages the development of those aspects of ICT that can generate performance measures based on objective data. The second is related to broader notions about customer sovereignty

that support those conceptualizations of marketing that emphasise hard data over intuition. Clearly, the second complex of ideas in particular is related to more material forms of structure, in that its prestige is closely related to the expansion and protability of many retailing organizationsa point that returns us to our starting point in the success of organizations such as Wal-Mart and Tesco. It is noticeable that many recent accounts of ICT and organizational change have tended to work with forms of technology that are exible and dynamic and to examine their deployment in exible forms of organization. This is particularly true of the extensive focus on groupware packages, notably Lotus Notes. For example, recent work by Kellog et al. (2006) is set in a Webbased advertising agency and examines exible forms of organizing using, largely, standard desktop tools. Such settings feature the dynamically recongurable, userprogrammable, and highly internetworked technologies being developed and used today (Orlikowski 2000, p. 406). Clearly, such companies and such tools are vital parts of the contemporary economy, but the tendency is to ignore the continuing centrality of the large corporation, with its use of extensive data analysis for performance measurement and control (Ackroyd 2002, Dobson et al. 2007). This contrast can be seen in a recent critical collection of essays about Wal-Mart (Lichtenstein 2006). The collection in question pays relatively little attention to ICT but its central message is that on the basis of the use of systems such as data warehousing, in tandem with other strategies, the company has become, in their terms, a template for twenty-rst century capitalism (Lichtenstein 2006, p. 3). Rather than seeing the demise of large organizations in favour of smaller, more exible forms of organization, the argument is that ICT has enabled Wal-Mart to combine both size and centralization (Hoopes 2006, pp. 100101).3 And, of course, Wal-Mart is not the only such corporation. In the United Kingdom, Tesco has developed market dominance on the basis of, amongst other things, extensive manipulation of its sales and customer data (Humby et al. 2003). Such examples suggest that there is a need to place detailed accounts of practice in a broader social and economic context. The morphogenetic approach outlined here provides valuable resources for such investigations by stressing cultural as well as economic aspects of performance.

Conclusion

There is considerable attention being paid in many aspects of the study of organizations, not just in the information systems domain, to the importance of practice. From strategy as practice (Whittington 2007) to institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006), practice-based approaches draw upon a variety of theoretical perspectives, but stress the need to explore

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the emergence of rules from taken for granted and to-hand practices. Based on IS research, Orlikowski (2007) argues that such analyses have tended to neglect the material. She argues for the need to examine what she terms sociomaterial practices, in which the social and the technical are inextricably intertwined. Such an injunction supports our focus on the importance of being specic about the material properties of technology and the ways in which it mediates broader social structures, but it runs the risk of producing rich and detailed accounts that are abstracted from their broader context (Delbridge and Edwards 2007). This article has argued that a morphogenetic approach, with its stronger conception of structures as emergent from action but providing the objective context for future action, provides a means of linking the use of technology in organizations to its wider context. This has been illustrated through the exploration of data warehousing in particular, showing the need to be specic about particular forms of technology, but the approach could be applied to any particular constellation of levels and features. A number of important points ow from this discussion. One is that I have been deliberate in labelling this approach as morphogenetic rather than critical realist. The distinction is important for two reasons. One is that critical realism as a philosophical project is centrally concerned with questions of ontology. This means that much of the debate revolves round the explication of matters such as the nature, recognition, and impact of mechanisms. Such debates are of vital and continuing importance, but it is possible for them to get stuck at the level of ontological abstraction (Reed 2005a, b; Contu and Willmott 2005). For those more concerned with concrete organizational analysis, the importance lies in the work that such concepts can do. Accordingly, the discussion presented is far from the last word on such questions as how best to determine the features of particular technologies. Questions such as which features are core and which peripheral depend on concrete investigations, the results of which can further enhance the theoretical framework (Grifth 1999, Sayer 2000). The second reason for drawing a distinction is that, as we have seen, there can be differences at the level of substantive theory between those who share basic tenets drawn from a common philosophical base such as the need to search for mechanisms that explain observed action. For example, Archer (1995) and Stones (2005), both critical of Giddens and both holding to the emergent properties of social structure, adopt differing perspectives. The matters of difference between morphogenesis and strong structuration are not a central concern of this article, but they suggest that there are ongoing debates that need to be addressed by those interested in ICT and organizational change, as well those concerned with organizations more broadly. Critical realism does not offer a ready-made tool kit of

concepts to be applied in subject domains, but rather a set of resources for the development of domain-specic concepts (Cruickshank 2003). Archers morphogenetic approach is, in turn, developed at the level of social theory, in which both organizations and technology play minor parts. The challenge is to use these resources to work productively in organizational analysis. Such a process depends not only on empirical application, but also, as I have sought to demonstrate, building on existing insights. Much of this work presents both useful insights and valuable concepts that can be brought into fruitful engagement with ideas drawn from morphogenesis to build a more robust and comprehensive approach. The examples drawn from data warehousing have been presented to suggest one avenue for further investigation, but the argument is that the broad framework presented is capable of application to a range of forms of technology. At the same time, a morphogenetic approach suggests ways of embedding such applications and their consequences in broader debates about the nature and direction of contemporary organizations and society. It is important that these ideas are seen in the context of a relational approach, one that sees the exercise of agency in the context of relations with culture and structure (Emirbayer and Mische 1998, Hays 1994, Mutch et al. 2006). Of importance here is the notion of antecedent conditions. Just where we start our analysis is a matter of judgement in a particular context. The daunting aspect of Archers work is that it deals with large sweeps of time. Her discussion of the shaping of educational systems, for example, covers hundreds of years (Archer 1979). This means that, in practical terms, research in IS will have to be a collaborative matter, with researchers whose focus is on the situated organizational nature of particular technologies setting their work in the context supplied by other researchers. This points in particular to the importance of historical work that locates what is claimed to be novel in a much broader context (Yates 1989). A morphogenetic approach is well suited to the production of such accounts. A morphogenetic approach supports the focus on the importance of the attention to the interplay over time between the material features of technology and aspects of organizations (Zammuto et al. 2007). Our example of data warehousing points to the extended periods of time over which particular instantiations become stabilized. Such instantiations are often subject to change in detail over time, but their key contours remain visible, most notably in the form of data structures. Such data structures, whose stability is central to efforts to measure and monitor performance, tend to inscribe particular organizational arrangements. The articulation of such constellations of data and position-practices with more-tacit forms of knowing is a matter for investigation. Given that they appear to lie at the heart of some of the most successful organizations whose inuence is widely felt

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in society more generally, such investigation is a matter of considerable importance. Adopting a morphogenetic approach draws our attention not only to the material properties of technology, but also to their location in a broader political economy. It offers a way of ensuring that rich descriptions of practice are not divorced from this context and thus offers valuable resources for our continuing efforts to understand the interrelationship of technology and organization. Acknowledgments
The author thanks Senior Editor, Martha Feldman, and three anonymous referees for their tolerance and patience as he developed the arguments presented here. Rick Delbridge also provided helpful comments during the process. In doing so, I also acknowledge some points of difference, such as over the characterization of structuration theory as social constructivist. This article is not the place to correct what I consider a misleading characterization, although I do suggest why labelling accounts critical realist can be misleading. Such reservations, however, should not detract from the considerable value in the article, particularly the focus on material embeddness. 2 Although the evidence from trade journals has been treated with care, there is material that suggests the nature of these constraints. For example, a participant in a recent debate in the accountancy press about the feasibility of real-time reporting notes that ERP systems are designed to handle transactional processing and for entering big volumes of data, the worst type of design for reporting (Accountancy Age 2007). The important emphasis is on the design of the system, which then puts constraints on subsequent use. 3 Although Orlikowski does not make a direct case for the advantages of smaller, more exible forms of organizing, her favourable use of Malones work can be contrasted with the very much more critical response accorded to that author by Hoopes.

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