Technology Choice and its Performance: Toward a Sociology of Software Package Procurement

Information & Organisation, Vol. 17, pp. 131-61, 2007

42 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2008

See all articles by Robin Williams

Robin Williams

University of Edinburgh - Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation

Neil Pollock

University of Edinburgh

Date Written: 2007

Abstract

Technology acquisition is an important but neglected issue within the social science analysis of technology. The limited number of studies undertaken reproduce a schism between rationalist (e.g., economic) forms of analysis, where the assumption is that choice is the outcome of formal assessment, and cultural sociological approaches which see choice as driven by the micro-politics of the organisational setting, interests, prevalent rhetorics, fads, etc. While sympathetic to the latter critical view, we are dissatisfied with the relativist portrayal of technology selection: that decisions beset with uncertainties and tensions are divorced from formal decision making criteria. Influenced by Michel Callon's writing on the 'performativity' of economic concepts and tools, we argue that formal assessment has a stronger relationship to technology decisions than suggested by cultural sociologists. We focus on a procurement which is characterised by high levels of organisational tension and where there is deep uncertainty about each of the solutions on offer. We show how the procurement team are able to arrive at a decision through laboriously establishing a 'comparison'. That is, they attempt to drag the choice from the informal domain onto a more formal, accountable plane through the mobilisation and performance of a number of 'comparative measures' and criteria. These measures constituted a stabilised form of accountability, which we describe through the metaphor of a 'scaffolding', erected in the course of the procurement. Our argument is threefold: first, we argue that comparisons are possible but that they require much effort; second, that it is not the properties of the technology which determines choice but the way these properties are given form through the various comparative measures put in place; and finally, whilst comparative measures might be imposed by one group upon others in a procurement team, these measures remain relatively malleable.

Keywords: Procurement, Performativity, Decision Making, Software Packages

Suggested Citation

Williams, Robin and Pollock, Neil, Technology Choice and its Performance: Toward a Sociology of Software Package Procurement (2007). Information & Organisation, Vol. 17, pp. 131-61, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1258934

Robin Williams

University of Edinburgh - Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation ( email )

United Kingdom

Neil Pollock (Contact Author)

University of Edinburgh ( email )

Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9JY
United Kingdom

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