Technology, organization and structure - a morphogenetic approach

41 Pages·2016·0.84 MB·English

Technology, organization and structure - a
morphogenetic approach
Dr Alistair Mutch

Professor of Information and Learning, Nottingham Trent University

Division of Information Management and Systems, Nottingham Business School,
Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU

Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]

Keywords: information technology; information systems; critical realism; data
warehouses; organizations and information; reflexivity; agency and structure.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Senior Editor Martha Feldman and three anonymous referees for their
tolerance and patience as I developed the arguments presented here. Rick Delbridge
has also provided helpful comments during the process.
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Technology, organization and structure - a
morphogenetic approach
Abstract
This article relates the morphogenetic approach of Archer, derived from the philosophical
tradition of critical realism, to the use of information and communication technology (ICT) 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 reflexivity in contemporary organizations, especially in conditions
of the widespread use of ICT. The importance of disaggregating ICT artifacts into levels and
features is stressed, in order to enable analysis to explore the specific 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 located in wider aspects of the cultural and structural context, demonstrating the
fruitfulness of a morphogenetic approach.
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, Delbridge and Ventresca 2006; Reed 1997, 2005a, 2005b) and
information systems (IS) in particular (de Vaujany 2008; Dobson, Myles and Jackson 2007;
Mingers 2004a, 2004b; Morton 2006; Mutch 2002; Smith 2006; Volkoff, Strong and Elmes
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
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below. This article presents one such theory, the morphogenetic approach developed by the
social theorist and sociologist of education Archer (1995) and shows the benefits of adapting
it to explore the broad domain of IS. I seek to complement and extend the more applied focus
of Volkoff, Strong and Elmes (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 more, notably in its
formulations of the relationship between agency and structure. While much of Archer’s early
work is concerned with clarifying the nature of culture and structure in social analysis, a
morphogenetic approach is emphatically not to be assimilated to a ‘new structuralism’
(Lounsbury and Ventresca 2003). It does, though, 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 deficits some observers have noted in existing approaches (Jones,
Orlikowski and Munir 2004). A further observation emerging out of work on technological
change in organizations is the need to be more specific 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
stratification 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 define 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 definition points to the importance of
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ensembles and below I discuss the importance of seeing the architecture of such ensembles as
an important dimension of the scope, as distinguished from the role, of technology
(Orlikowski 1992) . Such a definition 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 be able 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 specific 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
reflexivity and how these might be impacted by technology.

In the first 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 to show that
critical realism is compatible with a range of theories, some of which can compete. Thus
Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach and the ‘strong structuration’ of Stones (2005) both
draw upon shared notions of stratification 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 Archer’s formulation. This is shown to be
profoundly relational in character, with the focus here on the relationship between agency and
structure. Archer’s 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 influence of this latter approach on the study of IS, especially in the
influential work of Walsham (1993, 1997, 2001a) and Orlikowski (Orlikoswki 1992; Yates
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and Orlikowski 1992; Orlikowski and Yates 1994; Orlikowski and Gash 1994; Orlikowski
2000; Orlikowski and Iaconno 2001; Orlikowski 2007), is seen to lead to a focus on agential
knowledgeability that tends to neglect broader structural influences. 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 conflating the flexibility of the technological
artifact and the interpretive flexibility 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 specificity of technology at a
number of levels and these specificities 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’. It is important to 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, firmly located within sociology and social theory, is Archer’s 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, 2004b, Klein 2004;
Smith 2006). Whilst 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
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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
Archer’s 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 employed 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 scientific realism espoused in much organization theory (Boal, Hunt and Jaros 2003;
McKelvey 2003). For critical realists, reality is stratified. At the level of the ‘empirical’, that
is, events recorded through the senses, is the domain of naïve or commonsense realism.
However, our senses can be misleading and underneath the empirical is the ‘actual’, a domain
that is often the concern of what has been termed scientific realism. However, Bhaskar’s
(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 naïve 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, Strong and Elmes 2007).

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Two further important concepts are those of stratification and emergence. Reality is held to be
stratified, 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 emergent it possesses 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 under labourer 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 fields like education, religion and science over large sweeps of
time. However, she argues firmly that
Analytical dualism can be used by any researcher to gain theoretical purchase on
much smaller problems where the major difficulty of seeing the wood from the trees
becomes much more tractable if they can be sorted out into the components of
temporal cycles of morphogenesis – however short the time-span involved may be
(Archer 1996: p. 228).
Her early formulations of relational concepts of the interaction between agency and structure
were elaborated in her work on the development of educational 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
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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) five books (Archer 1995; 1996; 2000; 2003;
2007). Her first 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 to then come 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, to uncover
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 Archer’s more
recent work on reflexivity is considered towards the close of the discussion.

In developing her early work, Archer’s central concern was to avoid falling into either of the
twin poles of structuralism or individualism. Archer used a diagram (figure one) to illustrate
her concerns.

Take in figure one about here

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For Archer, structuralist forms of explanation never strayed beyond T2, concerned as they
were to specify the way in which structures determined action. This form of analysis she
termed ‘downwards conflation’, for the nature of action was conflated into and equated with
the structural conditions of possibility. She contrasted this to ‘upwards conflation’, 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 conflationism’ 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 influential in the development of some significant 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 T3 – that
is, in her terms it is ‘centrally conflationist’. The weak specification of structures as rules and
resources held as memory traces and instantiated in action means that in practice structures
are conflated into agency. We need to hold the two apart, she contends, in order to be able 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 which have associated relations, rights and responsibilities that
pre-exist those who come to hold them? This is, following the tenets of critical realism, an
approach which 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
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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 conflict with wider
structures. Further, 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 either within themselves 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 modification - that 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, Strong and Elmes 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.
Whilst Giddens’ own work contains some limited observations about the impact of
technology (Jones, Orlikowski and Munir 2004) Archer seems even less concerned, having
little to say about technology in her critiques of theories of post-industrialism (Archer 1990).
From within the tradition of critical realism, Lawson (2007:42) suggests that “technology can
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