Socio-Technical Attachments and IT Change: A Case of Unsuccessful Software Replacement

The paper examines how organizations and people are attached to the existing technologies. Doing so, we propose a socio-technical attachment perspective that helps us unpack different types of attachment between organizations and technologies. Based on an exploratory case study of an unsuccessful technology replacement process, we identify nine types of socio-technical attachments between the old technology and the organization. Our analysis shows that socio-technical attachments are heterogeneous, as they are related to different social and technological aspects, they possess different dynamics, and they interact over the change process. The findings contribute to the literature on resistance and inertial by adopting a balanced socio-technical perspective and unpacking the heterogeneity and dynamic micro-mechanisms that underlie resistance and inertia.

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