ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence on how the homogenization of findings from studies on different types of technology is unhelpful, for it glosses over significant varieties of actors with significantly different interests and actions, and also blunts the possible effects of the technology on the community and vice versa. It contributes an analysis of several user community settings around enterprise systems, which is more broadly useful in understanding how user groups around this particular type of software are shaped and how they, in turn, affect the evolution of this class of artifacts. The user group, which once consisted of a small number of special interest groups (SIGs) around Oracle technologies, expanded to more than twenty SIGs around technologies and applications. A major critique of traditional interpretive qualitative studies is that they often provide 'local narratives' and focus on immediate actions that ignore what could occur in longer timeframes.
