A relativist approach to studying the social construction of information technology

Abstract

Recently, attention has been paid to relativist methods for studying the implementation and use of information technology in organizations. In contrast to positivist methods, relativist methods emphasise greater sensitivity to the context within which social phenomena are manifested and interpreted. This paper describes a relativist approach to studying the social interpretations of information technology. The approach calls for the systematic collection and analysis of interview data to discern the meanings that actors ascribe to information technology. The approach applies qualitative methods of data analysis to construct technological frames of meaning that are shared by actors from homogeneous social groups within an organization. The approach seeks to validate the shared frames of meaning with a quantitative analysis using multi-dimensional scaling methods.