Technology, organization and materiality: Reflections on the Problem of Agency

In management and information systems research, there has been a long-standing debate over the relationship between technology and the organization in which it is embedded. This debate flares up periodically and this is one such time. At one extreme is technological determinism, which makes the claim that technology is the cause and organizational change is the effect. At the other extreme is social determinism, which claims that social action and interaction is the cause and technological change is the effect. Is there a way out of this debate? How can we make sense of the interactions between people and machines? In this paper, we will examine the debate, discuss what is at stake in its resolution and explore an alternative