The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology: Innovation, Actors, and Contexts

The study of information and communication technology (ICT) in organizations has historically focused on the organizational outcomes of the development, implementation, or use of this technology. Such research has largely focused on how organizations shape and are in turn shaped by technological change. Paralleling this organizational research, however, a plethora of anthropology, sociology, social psychology, political economy, and philosophy theorists have written on ICT change outcomes. Increasingly, a number of commentators have proffered theoretical perspectives that incorporate the congruency between these different approaches, evinced, for example, by the growing popularity of structurational theory or actor network theory. In particular, research that incorporates the human dimension to explain the development, emergence, and use of ICTs epitomizes this more encompassing perspective. Yet, while ICT research in organizations has grown to encompass an increasingly broad field, our knowledge of this technology outside the domain of management and computer science is still limited. Exploring this subject, The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology is an attempt to expand the horizons of mainstream ICT research.