Conceiving IT-Enabled Organizational Change

Abstract

Management models of IT-enabled organizational change like business process re-engineering, networking organizations, and complementary IT-to-business strategies, circulate broadly through the academic literature and popular business press. But h ow do these models carried within the management discourse influence the praxis of strategic planning? This study examines a strategic planning process as it is shaped by a popular IT-enabled change model. We found that popular cultural models of IT-ena bled change shape the organizational planning process by defining the mode of participant expression and pre-defining taken-for-granted assumptions of work and work organization. Our data show how models of IT-enabled change facilitate sense-making. We di fferentiate between socially-rich and socially-thin models, and argue that the latter, linked to popularized conceptions of management carried in the practitioner literature, are especially problematic for organizational participants and can undermine eff ective organizational action.