Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 077
Audit the practice the platform produces
The same artifact can reproduce collaboration, surveillance, hierarchy, or learning through different situated patterns of use
Premise
Executives often attribute outcomes directly to artifacts: a platform creates transparency, a CRM improves discipline, or AI accelerates work. Wanda Orlikowski’s practice lens challenges that determinism. The same configured technology can be enacted differently because recurring use reflects local routines, skill, authority, history, incentives, and interpretation.
The executive unit of analysis is therefore technology-in-practice, not feature availability or adoption percentage. Material properties and access controls still constrain action; users are not free to imagine any outcome. Organizational consequences emerge from the recurrent relation among artifact, people, norms, and institution.
What the model is: Technology-in-Practice in Knowledge →
Continue in the series
- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryAnalytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Analytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
Organizes dimensions, distinctions, types or questions so that a situation can be examined systematically. A framework supplies structure, a typology distinguishes forms, and a heuristic offers a usable way to orient judgment.