Enacting Integrated Information Technology:

Inertia, Improvised Learning and Reinvention

(Research Seminar, March 06, 2003)

Daniel Robey
MIS Department, Terry School of Business, Georgia State University

Abstract

We investigated the use of an integrated, enterprise information system following its implementation in a large government agency. Our results demonstrate the value of and extend Orlikowski’s (2000) practice lens, which privileges human enactment of technology in organizations over technological constraints on human agency. Consistent with the practice lens, users initially manifested inertia toward the system. They later changed their practices to accommodate a less perfunctory application, which we call reinvention. We explain the change in users’ enactments with the concept of improvised learning, which compensated in the organization for ineffective formal training. We extend the practice lens by showing the enactment of an inflexible, integrated technology in contrast to the more flexible technologies that informed Orlikowski’s (2000) theory. In addition, we observed enactments in a public institutional context and provide insight into the attitudinal conditions for enactment. Our analysis supports a temporal view of human agency (Emirbayer and Mische 1998) that focuses both on the persistence of past practice and the learning of new practices.