Mind the Gap Between Processes and Practice! - The Role of Improvisation in the Implementation of Information Technology

Manuela Faia- Correia

International Studies of Management & Organization, 2003, vol. 33, issue 1, 58-85

Abstract: The implementation of a new information technology in the work setting is seldom unproblematic, and it can trigger unintended and unexpected behaviors. Studies of workplace practice have revealed tensions between the demands of process and the needs of practice. They pit the process-focused need for uniform organizational information against the practice-based struggle for locally coherent meanings. While employees are supplied with routines and information, they have to rely heavily on improvisational practices to close the gap between the world as they find it, and the inevitably limited model of the world embedded in the technology. Examples from case studies of two telebanking systems are described and analyzed. Findings indicate that the way identity is constructed inside the telebanking systems allows work design to be more or less flexible and this, in turn, facilitates or hinders different types of improvisations.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1080/00208825.2003.11043676

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