‘We have crossed the rubicon’

Both in the literature and in practice, technology has tended to be conceived as a determinant or driver of the business in private sector organizations. Partly this is a reflection of a human preoccupation with finding simple causal explanations for complex realities (e.g. Blauner 1964; Woodward 1958, 1965; Thompson 1967). However, it is also a function of new or changing technologies appearing to be more easily captured than broader ranging organizational or social change. Criticisms of such approaches have been vociferous in recent years (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985; Knights and Murray 1994; Bloomfield et al. 1996; Grint and Woolgar 1997; see also McLoughlin and Dawson, Chapter 2, and Laurila and Preece, Chapter 1, this volume). Yet just when we think that technological determinism has finally been buried, it rises from the ashes, most recently in the guise of business process re-engineering (see Hammer and Champy, 1993). Technological panaceas appear irresistible despite the irrefutable conclusion that they promise more than they can deliver.