• Identify and explain the perspectives on technology and organization presented in the course, including their underlying assumptions and approaches
• Compare and contrast the perspectives with respect to the analysis of technology and organization in a digital world.
• Apply the perspectives on real cases to analyze technologies in their social and organizational context.
• Evaluate practical implications resulting from the interplay between technology and organization and propose improvements at an independent and reflected academic level

Developing and implementing information systems (IS) in and across organizational contexts is a rather multifaceted challenge that does not only involve their design, but also the development of supportive social frameworks, institutional structures as well as normative conventions that complement and reinforce their adoption and diffusion at large. Therefore, investigating the technological nature of IS without examining their prevalent social aspects yields an incomplete and somewhat shortsighted understanding of the underlying issues at stake.
 
Thus far, the prevailing discourse in IS has had a techno-centric orientation in spite of the far-reaching social ramifications of these systems. The aim of this course is to move beyond this focus and to include additional ways of describing and analyzing the interrelationship between technology and people in organizations. The course will enable the students to unfold how organizational life is constructed and managed by technology and how social relations influence the technology's ability to contribute to a company's success. We do so by exploring social, organizational, and technological aspects of information systems by building on perspectives of technological determinism, actor-networks, social construction of technology, institutional structures, sensemaking processes, and other approaches used in organization studies. In particular, the course builds on perspectives that explain, apply, build on, and/or compare social aspects of information systems.
 
The unifying themes that we wish to discuss in the course are: what assumptions about the design, implementation, and use of information systems are embedded in the perspectives? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these perspectives in terms of understanding the interplay between technology and organization, including individual and collective practices with respect to the design and use of technology? How can the different perspectives be applied to real cases of technology use in organizations and what are the practical implications? How do social relations influence the technology's ability to contribute to a company's success?

The course's development of personal competences:
This course will develop the students' skills in analyzing how information systems impact social relations and organizational structures in organizations, and how social relations influence the design, implementation and adoption of IS. In this respect, the course will enhance the students' understanding of the complexity of information systems.

The course readings include academic peer-reviewed articles on the perspectives covered during the course (such as technological determinism, social construction of technology, etc.). 

For example:

• Orlikowski W. and Iacono S. 2001. Desperately Seeking the IT in IT Research: a Call to Theorizing the IT Artefact. Information Systems Research, 12(2), pp. 121-134 
• Winner L., 1980. Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, 109(1), pp. 121-136 
• Bijker W. 1995. King of the Road: The Social Construction of the Safety Bicycle. In “Of Bicycles, Bakelite and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change”, Bijker W., MIT Press, pp.19-100 
• Weick, K. E., K. M. Sutcliffe, et al. 2005. Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), pp. 409-421 

Please note that the specific articles are subject to change.