Formative contexts and information technology: Understanding the dynamics of innovation in organizations

Most accounts of computer-based innovation in organizational settings assume a naive picture of organizational change, overlooking events, features, and behaviors that, though unexpected and puzzling, may be the sources of inventions, new knowledge, new organizational routines and arrangements. The ambivalent, untidy, and often unpredictable character of IT-based innovation and change is hardly captured, even by more recent theoretical approaches that have nevertheless provided a deeper understanding of the complex interaction between technology and organizations. Based on field observations of the failures and successes during a major systems development effort in a large European computer manufacturer, we tell a different story: We submit that failures at innovation, surprises, and a whole range of related phenomena can be accounted for by introducing the notion of formative context, that is, the set of institutional arrangements and cognitive imageries that inform the actors' practical and reasoning routines in organizations. Limited capability to inquire into formative contexts is responsible for the actors' limited learning, irrespective of their strategies, interests, espoused theories, and methods. Still, we suggest, plenty of opportunities for innovation lie in the open, pasted-up nature of formative contexts and a new vision of design based on “context-making” interventions can bring them to light.