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Technology Choices: Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology (Acting with Technology) - Hardcover

Book 5 of 8: Acting with Technology

Bailey, Diane E.; Leonardi, Paul M.

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9780262028424: Technology Choices: Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology (Acting with Technology)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0262028425 ISBN 13: 9780262028424
Publisher: The MIT Press, 2015

Synopsis

An analysis of the occupational factors that shape the technology choices made by people who perform the same type of work.

Why do people who perform largely the same type of work make different technology choices in the workplace? An automotive design engineer working in India, for example, finds advanced information and communication technologies essential, allowing him to work with far-flung colleagues; a structural engineer in California relies more on paper-based technologies for her everyday work; and a software engineer in Silicon Valley operates on multiple digital levels simultaneously all day, continuing after hours on a company-supplied home computer and network connection. In Technology Choices, Diane Bailey and Paul Leonardi argue that occupational factors—rather than personal preference or purely technological concerns—strongly shape workers' technology choices.

Drawing on extensive field work—a decade's worth of observations and interviews in seven engineering firms in eight countries—Bailey and Leonardi challenge the traditional views of technology choices: technological determinism and social constructivism. Their innovative occupational perspective allows them to explore how external forces shape ideas, beliefs, and norms in ways that steer individuals to particular technology choices—albeit in somewhat predictable and generalizable ways. They examine three relationships at the heart of technology choices: human to technology, technology to technology, and human to human. An occupational perspective, they argue, helps us not only to understand past technology choices, but also to predict future ones.

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About the Author

Diane E. Bailey is Associate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin.

Paul M. Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Car Crashes without Cars (MIT Press).

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Publisher
The MIT Press
Publication date
2015
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0262028425
ISBN 13 
9780262028424
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
288
Rating
  • 4.00 out of 5 stars
    5 ratings by Goodreads