ABSTRACT
Technological determinists claim that technology determines the social and social change, leaving little room for social factors in socio-technical change. A key theme in innovation studies is that technological change is situated within institutional change, and management studies highlight the ways in which technology interacts with organizational change. White's technical determinist approach argues that the development of feudalism, as a social system, was the direct product of the stirrup. White's technological determinism is an extreme formulation, asserting that technology causes social development, whereas Marx takes into account economic factors as well as technology in the relations of production. Williams and Edge argue that traditional approaches to innovation separate technologies from their social concepts and fail to identify the social arrangements within which technology emerges and becomes embedded. Social constructivists argue that technology is grounded in, and constituted by socially operative forces.
