There are two sides to every story: A study of how various interpretations and goals affect technology usage

Abstract

New technologies are developing faster than ever before and are becoming increasingly significant in all business sectors. This article investigates how a workshop facilitation tool is used at the Swedish Tax Agency, within the setting of employee dialogue workshops, during an ongoing change process. A qualitative case study has been conducted in order to investigate the usage and corresponding immediate consequences for the Swedish Tax Agency. By the use of a sociomateriality perspective and a technology affordances and constraints lens, this study has identified a set of digital features affording; engagement, interactivity and management control for the STA within this particular setting. Furthermore, the study has identified affording and constraining actions and behaviour enabled by the technology, based on various interpretations and goals, which within the workshop setting resulted in immediate consequences for the STA. The result also shows that the unique closed character of the workshop facilitation tool afforded management control for the STA and the consultant. Since previous research primarily has studied ICTs characterised by openness our study contributes with new empirical insights. Further on, since ICTs is playing an increasingly important role in most business sectors, and since change processes is difficult to manage, it is also suggested that further studies focus on the usage of this type of ICTs. This in order to investigate how to steer discussions and interactions within organisations.