Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) Anglia Polytechnic University

2The paper, based on a major comparative study of the introduction of management information systems in retailing, health and higher education, argues for a broader and more differentiated account of users in studies of technological innovation. End-users play a crucial and active part in embedding new systems into organisations and into their own organisational lives. The particular foci of this paper are two key aspects of the relationship between users and systems- usability and utility. Detailed analyses of qualitative interviews with users reveal that the issue of how a system becomes usable encompasses much more than the technical problem of making it ‘user-friendly’. By classifying discussions of usability into six distinct components the paper recasts usability as a multifaceted phenomenon that is as much social as it is technological. The development of utility is explored through a discussion of three different groups of users- one drawn from each of our research sites. Each group is taken to exemplify different locations in and stances toward