Getting caught between discourse(s): hybrid choices in technology use at work

• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Chris Ivory,Rebecca Casey,Kayleigh Watson,Fred Sherratt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12152
• Published date: 01 March 2020

80 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:1

ISSN 1468-005X

Getting caught between discourse(s): hybrid

choices in technology use at work

Chris Ivory , Fred Sherratt, Rebecca Casey and Kayleigh

Watson

Winner (1977, Autonomous Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 77), in defense of technology determinism, cautioned

against ‘throwing out the baby with the methodological bath-

water’. His concern was that in so doing STS research would

underplay, or be unable to account for, the effects that technol-

ogy change does have on society. We similarly now nd that

powerful explanatory concepts like ‘structural‐discourse’ have

been largely expunged from the contemporary STS analytical

lexicon; with consequences, we believe, for our ability as re-

searchers to interpret and explain the rapid change we see in

contemporary work places. In this paper we make the case

for the continued use of a strong structural‐discourse theory

alongside other emergent forms of discourse. We show how

workers, responding to conicting and different types of dis-

course, produce varying hybrid responses—actions that react

to and combine elements of emergent and structural discourses.

Our work considers the implications of this nding for con-

temporary STS theory.

Keywords: communications, discourse, sociomaterial, mobile

phones, communities of practice, repair workers.

Introduction

This article builds on recent debates around the role of discourse theory in emerging

post‐interpretivist thinking around the relationship between the social and the material

Chris Ivory (chris.ivory@anglia.ac.uk), Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin

University, UK. Is a Professor of Organisation and Technology in the Faculty of Business and Law at

ARU. He holds a PhD from Manchester University on Innovation in Construction. Chris has a written

about Technology Change, Technology and Work, Technology in Health-care Settings, The Role of the Construc-

tion Client in Innovation and Project Management.

Fred Sherratt (fred.sherratt@anglia.ac.uk), Faculty of Science and Engineering, Anglia Ruskin Univer-

sity, UK. Is a Reader in Construction Management at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at ARU.

She holds a PhD in Construction Site Safety. Her research focuses on Worker Health, Safety and Wellbeing,

and most recently on The Consequences of Construction 4.0 and Other Technological Change on the Workforce.

Rebecca Casey (rebecca.casey@newcastle.ac.uk), Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle

University, UK. Holds a PhD from Northumbria University on Benets Realisation of Information Sys-

tems. She is a lecturer in Information Systems Management at Newcastle University Business School.

Her research interests include Information Systems Management, Sociomateriality, Digital Technologies,

Digital Business and Digital Health.

Kayleigh Watson (kayleigh.watson@northumbria.ac.uk), Newcastle Business School, Northumbria

University, UK. Is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle Business School in Northumbria University. She

holds a PhD on Business Plan Competition from Sunderland University. Kayleigh’s research interests

are related to the promotion of start‐up competitions as an entrepreneurial learning experience. She has

written on Entrepreneurship Competitions, Education and Communities of Practice.

Hybrid choices in technology use at work 81

© 2019 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

(see, for example, Hardy and Thomas, 2015; Orlikowski and Scott, 2015; Putnam, 2015).

Discourse theorists, particularly Critical Discourse theorists like Hardy and Thomas (2015),

are perplexed by post‐interpretivism’s sidelining of discourse as a means of theorizing

agency. We similarly note that contemporary sociomaterial notions of the relationship be-

tween the social and the material have largely expunged a structural version of discourse

(discourse asa strong, subject‐positioning entity) from its analytical lexicon. We argue that

doing so is problematic for any attempt to explain differences in technology use‐choices,

particularly at a high level of granularity, such as within the same community of workers.

Here, we draw on the work of Badham (2004, 2006) to examine these theoretical chal-

lenges, and demonstrate how the use of the theoretical construct of discourse in the social

studies of technology (SST) has shifted from structural to emergent and, in the process,

been stripped of its power as a form of explanation.

Using mobile phones as our empirical example, we explore how a community of

domestic boiler repair engineers, by using their mobile phones in contrasting ways,

reveal the presence and role both of emergent and structural discourses in shaping

their choices. The implications for progressing theory on the relationship between

work and technology are then discussed. We argue that if we wish to be able to explain

why different technology use‐choices occur within the same community of workers,

then we need to also re‐habituate a strong version of discourse in contemporary theo-

rizing around the relationships between work and technology.

Theoretical approaches to work and technology and the role of dis-

course

Badham’s (2004, 2006) framework divides the way in which technology and work has

been analyzed into: the structural‐impact approach, the social‐agency approach and

three‐dimensional approaches. Our contribution is to show how these different views

also provide an alternative basis for thinking about the role of discourse in the study of

work and technology.

The structural‐impact approach

The structural‐impact approach (Badham, 2004, 2006) conceives of an unmalleable ma-

terial that reects and imports existing social structures directly into work practices.

Typical of the one‐dimensional version of this orientation are one‐way street macro‐

structural theories of technology impacts, in particular Structural Marxism (Blauner,

1964; Braverman, 1974; Kaplinsky, 1984 and Fernie and Metcalf, 1988) in which succes-

sive waves of production technology shape work and organizations in ways that di-

rectly reect the logic and ideology of capitalism (Barley, 1990).

Softer versions of the structural‐agency view (Badham, 2004, 2006) do allow that

organizations respond in complex ways to technologies (e.g. Barley, 1990, on the intro-

duction of CT scanners in different hospitals and the contrasting re‐forming of techni-

cian’s roles in those hospitals; and Grint and Woolgar, 1997, on the also ‘social’ nature

of technology itself, pointing to the fact that technologies also have social assumptions

built‐in at source).

The structural‐agency view, we suggest, gives discourse a powerful shaping role: a

role reected in what Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) refer to as (D)iscourse and

Fairclough (2000), orders of discourse. That is, persistent discourses that shape percep-

tions of social and organizational reality. Leitch and Davenport (2005) point, for exam-

ple, to the role of shifting national discourses in re‐shaping science and innovation

systems—in particular the increasing need to show economic relevance. Harmon and

Mazmanian (2013) have employed discourse as a means to discuss how users are cul-

turally read by their particular uses of technology—in this case smart‐phones. Users

are positioned, they argue, within binary discourses such as ‘well‐connected’ verses

‘luddites’, and ‘phone addicts’ verses ‘authentic’ humans. At a societal level, Harraway