The 'iron cage' strengthened? Discretion and digital discipline

Research on changes in public administration associated with the adoption and use of information and communication technologies ( ‘ informatization ’), almost univo-cally supports the conclusion that shop fl oor discretion disappears under their infl u-ence. We, however, are ill at ease with this direction in thought about discretion. Our unease is based on the scholarly work about practices, organizational learning and responsiveness. In this article, we test the thesis on the relation between infor-matization and operational discretion in an empirical research of operational discre-tion and informatization in two Dutch public agencies, both large and both automated. Our fi ndings show that informatization does not destroy operational discretion, but rather obscures discretion. Based on the work of Argyris, we show that the phenomenon at work is ‘ participatory boundary practices ’ , the direct per-sonal ties that keep an organization together. ICTs destroy such links and thereby affect organizational learning