The IT artefact: An ensemble of the social and the technical? – A rejoinder : An ensemble of the social and the technical? – A rejoinder

This paper is part of a discourse on the conceptualisation of the IT artefact. It is commentary paper based on the prior papers of Goldkuhl (2013), Silver & Markus (2013) and Purao et al (2013). It especially addresses the issues of how demarcate the IT artefact and how to concep-tualise it in relation to the social and the technical. As a part of this conceptual inquiry, the paper investigates the notion of the artefact. An artefact has always functions and it has always a context where the use of the artefact and its functions is intended to contribute to some goals. As soon as we speak of an artefact, some use context is implied. Based on these premis-es, the paper articulates a view on the IT artefact to be a social artefact. Social does not mean that there are any humans as part of the artefact; humans appear as the users in the implied context of the artefact. Social means that the IT artefact is a semiotic artefact intended for communication between people. The IT artefact is sociotechnical artefact, which means that it is a combined technical and semiotic artefact and the use of it (by a user) implies combined technical and communicative actions. As a consequence of this view the paper also argues for co-design of IT artefact and work context. This is done in opposition to a techno-centric de-sign of the IT artefact, which will imply a restricted design of context purely through artefact design