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Organization Studies
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Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work

Wanda J. Orlikowski

MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachussetts, USA, wanda{at}mit.edu

In this essay, I begin with the premise that everyday organizing is inextricably bound up with materiality and contend that this relationship is inadequately reflected in organizational studies that tend to ignore it, take it for granted, or treat it as a special case. The result is an understanding of organizing and its conditions and consequences that is necessarily limited. I then argue for an alternative approach, one that posits the constitutive entanglement of the social and the material in everyday life. I draw on some empirical examples to help ground and illustrate this approach in practice and conclude by suggesting that a reconfiguration of our conventional assumptions and considerations of materiality will help us more effectively recognize and understand the multiple, emergent, and shifting sociomaterial assemblages entailed in contemporary organizing.

Key Words: materiality • organizational research • sociomateriality • technology

Organization Studies, Vol. 28, No. 9, 1435-1448 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0170840607081138
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