ABSTRACT
This chapter documents and reflects on the deployment and use of technology using some fieldwork observations to provide an empirical grounding to recent debates about the role and impact of new technologies on organizational life. In recent years in particular, it has been Information Technology of various kinds that has been increasingly seen as a key element in organizational change, especially IT systems that can facilitate coordination and communication of decision making, and support skill and knowledge. Social constructivists such as Bijker provide an account of technology that sees the technological artefact as socially constructed, emerging out of choices and negotiations between relevant social groups. The chapter concerns a different workplace setting; the use of technology in a clinic, based on an observational study of the work of reading mammograms within the UK National Health Service Breast Screening Program.
