Representations and actions: the transformation of

INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATION Information and Organization 15 (2005) 65–89 www.elsevier.com/locate/infoandorg

Representations and actions: the transformation of work practices with IT use Emmanuelle Vaast

a,*

, Geoff Walsham

b,1

a

b

School of Business Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus 1, University Plaza, H 700 Brooklyn, NY 11 201, USA Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK Received 19 October 2003; received in revised form 5 October 2004; accepted 18 October 2004

Abstract The implementation of new information technology (IT) often aims at transforming work practices. The information systems (IS) literature has detailed numerous cases of reproduction or changes of practice associated with IT use. The literature has also drawn from the practice and structurationist perspectives to suggest that changes in practice are related to changes in organizations. The micro-level issue of how practices change with IT use, however, has so far remained under-explored. This paper investigates this issue and analyzes what makes agents transform how they work with IT and how these transformations may be shared among members of the same work group. The conceptual lens proposed in this paper builds on the emerging literature in IS on the relationships between action and cognition, and introduces the notion of social representations to the IS field in order to clarify these relationships. The adopted conceptual lens helps us to examine a longitudinal case study of the implementation and use of an intranet system in an occupational network. The analysis suggests that practices are reproduced with IT use when agents experience a sustained consonance between actions, practices and representations. Conversely, when agents undergo dissonance between actions, practices and representations, they gradually adapt their practices and representations to reestablish consonance. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 917 306 5348; fax: +1 718 488 1125. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E. Vaast), [email protected] (G. Walsham). 1 Tel.: +44 1223 339 606. 1471-7721/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2004.10.001

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E. Vaast, G. Walsham / Information and Organization 15 (2005) 65–89

Keywords: Practice; Representation; Dissonance; Consonance; Intranet; Case study

1. Introduction The implementation of new information technology (IT) often aims at triggering changes in work practices and in organizations. The information systems (IS) literature has widely documented the diverse, often unanticipated, and at times inconsistent, changes in work practices that emerge as different technologies are introduced in work environments (Robey & Boudreau, 1999). In some cases, the implementation of IT only leads to a reproduction of work practices (Schultze & Boland, 2000), in others the use of IT contributes to drastic changes in work practices (Barrett & Walsham, 1999), in others still the same technology in comparable environments prompts contradictory results (Robey & Sahay, 1996). In some cases, work practices are altered over time, as the new technology becomes increasingly used and transformed by such use (Orlikowski, 1996b). The IS literature has also conceptualized the various organizational changes that arise as work practices change with IT use. In the structurational and practice perspectives (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994; Orlikowski, 2000; Orlikowski & Robey, 1991), changes in work practices enact changes in the organization. Studies that have investigated the link between changes in practices and organizational transformation abound: some have documented the reproduction of the main structural properties with IT use (Newell, Scarbrough, & Swan, 2001), others have showed that local and subtle shifts in practice gradually transform the organization (Orlikowski, 1996a), while others have related changes in agentsÕ actions and interactions to broader changes in the ways companies deal with their customers (Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004). The IS literature has thus documented changes in practices that emerge with IT use as well as how these changes are related to organizational transformation. One related issue, however, remains under-explored: how exactly do work practices change with IT use? The structurational and the practice perspectives have conceptualized the link between practice change and organizational change, but they have not theorized how these changes in work practices take place. The literature has not yet examined, at the micro-level, what makes agents transform the way they work and how these changes may be shared among members of the same work group, as IT is used. The present paper aims at contributing to this understanding of how work practices change with IT use by proposing a conceptual lens that posits changes in work practices as a result of interdependent transformations of how agents act (their actions) and how they make sense of their actions and of their environment (their representations). The perspective we propose builds on the emerging literature in IS on the relationships between social actions and cognition (Bhattacherjee & Premkumar, 2004; Davidson, 2002; Orlikowski & Gash, 1994), and on the insights provided by research in social psychology on the relationship between representations and actions (Grenco, 1995; Moscovici, 1961; Valsiner, 2003).


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The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section examines the notion of practice and introduces the notion of representation to understand processes of reproduction and transformation of practice with IT use. The methodology section then presents the research design of a longitudinal case study that combined various sources of qualitative data to grasp empirically the dynamics of agentsÕ practices and representations. The analysis of the case details the processes of reproduction and transformation of practices with IT use, as well as the dynamic interplays between practices and representations. We then propose a conceptualization of practice reproduction as a process of sustained consonance between actions, practices and representations, and of practice change as a process of initial dissonance and then reestablished consonance between actions, practices and representations. Finally, the conclusion section presents the limitations of the research, summarizes its main conceptual contributions and suggests two areas for future research.

2. Conceptual framework: relating actions and representations to understand practice change 2.1. Changing practice with IT use Theories of practice have so far been more concerned with the issue of how agentsÕ practice of Ôeveryday life Õ enacts (and, hence, reproduces or transforms) wider social structural properties than with the micro-level issue of what makes agents change their practice (Bourdieu, 1977, 1980; De Certeau, 1980; Giddens, 1984; Lave, 1988). Practice may be defined as the ‘‘recurrent, materially bounded and situated action engaged in by members of the community’’ (Orlikowski, 2002, p. 256). An examination of the main dimensions of the notion of practice does not yet answer the question of how practices change, but it indicates what a change in practice involves in the context of IT use. First, practice is recurrent. The recurrent dimension of practice is key to the dynamic between agency and structure in practice theory (Bourdieu, 1980, 1990; Law, 1994). As agents repeatedly and regularly act in certain ways, they contribute to the enactment of social structural properties. This recurrent dimension implies that a change in practice involves a repeated change in how agents act (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). If, for instance, a professional user disrupts her common ways of communicating by posting a message on a list-serve, but does not receive any contribution back, it is likely that her action will remain isolated and will not contribute to a change in the practice of the other members of her community. Hence, to understand practice change with IT use, it is important to distinguish between one-time changes in actions and repeated changes in the way agents act, which lead to practice change (Limayen & Hirt, 2003). Second, practice is a materially bounded and situated action. Practice is embedded in its context of occurrence (Lave, 1988; Suchman, 1987). This dimension suggests a recursive dynamic relationship between agentsÕ practice and their situation. As agents experience a change in their situation (e.g., introduction of a new IT in the

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work place), they often gradually adapt their practices. In turn, the change in practices may contribute to transform the situation further. For instance, in the case analyzed by Schultze & Orlikowski (2004), faced with the availability of Internet-based self-serve technologies, sales representatives gradually transformed the way they interacted with customers. In turn, the change in their practices deepened the transformation of their context of work. The practice perspective also helps conceptualize the IT artifact (Orlikowski, 2000; Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001). This paper follows such a conceptualization. Inspired by practice theory, Orlikowski suggests an analytical distinction between the technological artifact (i.e., the technical properties encapsulated in the technology itself, in its software and hardware components) and technology-in-use, which corresponds to what agents do with the technological artifact in their recurrent and situated practices (Orlikowski, 2000, p. 408). Through their situated use of IT, agents deeply appropriate some features of the artifact, while ignoring others that do not fit their situation. A simple office software package, including word processing and spreadsheets, for instance, acquires different meanings for different professions, as different professionals (be they, for instance, secretaries, accountants, consultants) develop distinct uses of the same artifact. Through their practices of the technology, agents (re-)shape IT-in-use. In other words, if practices change, IT-in use also changes. Third, and finally, members of a community engage in practice. This dimension of practice reflects the ambition of theories of practice to go beyond the individual/social dualism (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984). On the one hand, practice is socially shared. Different communities exhibit specific ways of acting and uses of the same technology. Hence, if after the implementation of IT, an individual agent changes her recurrent ways of acting, but if this change at the individual level is not spread at the level of the community, this does not constitute a change in practice. On the other hand, reflexive agents act purposefully, and agents who engage themselves in new actions are the ones who carry out changes in practice (Giddens, 1984). Change in practice thus emerges from changes in individual agentsÕ actions, which, collectively but in the absence of any specified order, transform the social practice and enact new social structural properties. According to BourdieuÕs (1977) analogy, changes in practice emerge from agentsÕ engagement in actions that are collectively orchestrated in the absence of the organizing intervention of any Ôconductor Õ. These three dimensions of practice thus help us to understand what a change in practice involves in the context of IT use. Practice changes if social agentsÕ recurrent and situated actions change, if agents use IT in new ways and shape a different IT-inuse, and if these changes are socially shared and repeated. 2.2. Representations and actions to understand how practices change One way to conceive of how practices change with IT use is to relate what agents do to the way they represent their actions and context. The practice perspective relies on a conception of the ÔrealÕ world as an inter-subjective construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Robey & Sahay, 1996; Weick, 1969), in which social agents act and make sense of their and othersÕ actions. Such relationship between actions


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and representations is suggested by Orlikowski (1996a, p. 65) as a key aspect of the relationship between practice change and organizational change: ‘‘Organizational transformation is seen here to be an ongoing improvisation enacted by organizational actors trying to make sense of and act coherently in the world’’ (emphasis added). Moreover, Schultze & Boland (2000) showed that potential users of a new knowledge management system (KMS) only minimally used the system and reproduced their work practices, because an extensive use of the new system would have contradicted their representations of their job as ‘‘gatekeepers’’ of information in their company. This case thus suggests that uncovering the dynamics of the relationships between actions and representations may help understand practice change or reproduction. The IS literature has already touched upon the socio-cognitive aspects of IS, especially in studies devoted to usersÕ ‘‘attitudes’’ (Lucas, 1974; Robey, 1979), to their ‘‘beliefs’’ (Lewis, Agarwal, & Sambamurthy, 2003) to the ‘‘perceived’’ ease of use or usefulness (Chin & Gopal, 1995; Davis, 1989), or to ‘‘technological frames’’ (Bostrom & Heinen, 1977; Davidson, 2002; Orlikowski & Gash, 1994). The notion of social representation, which has been at the core of social psychology for the last forty years, helps consolidate and push further these reflections in order to unpack the dynamics of practice (Flament, 1994; Grenco, 1995; Jodelet, 1989; Moscovici, 1961, 1973). The notion of representations may be defined as a stable and socially shared set of common knowledge and ideas that agents elaborate to make sense of their environment (definition inspired by Jodelet, 1989; Moscovici, 1973, 1984). Examining the notion of representation reveals its significance for the IS literature, especially to clarify how practices may change with IT use. The definition of representations posits them as stable and socially shared. These aspects echo the recurrent and social dimensions of practice. Agents from the same social environment will tend to represent the world around them in similar (yet not identical) ways, and their representations mediate their perceptions and understanding of ÔtheirÕ reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Weick, 1969). According to Lewin (1947), ‘‘reality for the individual is, to a high degree, determined by what is socially accepted as reality’’. Social representations give sense to agentsÕ environment, encounters and actions (Weick, 1995). Moreover, they also affect agentsÕ responses to this reality (Abric, 1976; Moscovici, 1961). For instance, how agents represent the technology (e.g., whether they see it as user-friendly) influences their actual use and satisfaction with it (Davis, 1989). The difference between the notions of usersÕ ‘‘attitudes’’ or ‘‘beliefs’’ (Davis, 1989; Segars & Grover, 1993), and the notion of representation, relates to the adopted level of analysis. Focusing on usersÕ attitude or beliefs involves considering the (individual) agent as the focal point. The notion of representation furthers the consideration of users as social agents (Lamb & Kling, 2003), and situates how agents represent their world according to the social context they experience. The notion of ‘‘technological frame’’ (Davidson, 2002; Orlikowski & Gash, 1994), which also posits the user as a social agent, appears more restrictive than the notion of social representation. Technological frames refer mostly to the ways in which agents ‘‘frame’’ (represent) the technology, while through their repre-

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sentations, agents make sense of all aspects of their experience and engagement in the social world. For instance, it has been shown that different agents represent themselves and their mission differently, and that they identify with specific ideas and values that distinguish them from other groups in and among organizations (Sabherwal, 2003). These representations of oneself and of others impact how various groups interact and use IT (Agarwal & Prasad, 1998; Moore & Benbasat, 1991; Walsham, 1998). In contrast with the previous point, however, it should be clear that representations are not fixed once and for all, and that they are constantly re-elaborated as reflexive agents adapt how they represent their environment according to their engagement in it, and to the responses they perceive from such engagement (Valsiner, 2003). The notion of representation thus echoes the dual social/individual dimension of practice, as agents represent their environment in ways that are shaped by their social memberships, but not determined by them. Moreover, in a similar fashion that the organizational literature has distinguished between organization and organizing as well as between knowledge and knowing, one may differentiate analytically between representations (as a stabilized set of common knowledge that provides agents with a certain lens to interpret contexts and events) and representing (as the constant recreation – and potential transformation – of this lens through how agents represent their environment, which is captured in the notion of sense-making: Weick, 1990, 1995). In this sense, the notion of representation conceptually bridges the gap between ‘‘sense-making’’, which focuses on individual agents making sense of their environment, and the notions of ‘‘habitus’’ (Bourdieu, 1980) or ‘‘structures of signification’’ (Giddens, 1984). Habitus and structures of signification account for the predispositions to interpret events in a certain way according to agentsÕ engagements in social environments, as well as for the transformation of these predispositions over time, but they are less concerned with the details of the lower level issue of how these predispositions change through agentsÕ reflexive processes. It is noteworthy that BourdieuÕs notion of habitus goes beyond the cognition/action relation and also encompasses agentsÕ physical engagement in practice, including in their bodily moves (Bourdieu, 1977, 1987). While we believe that integrating such physical dimensions would certainly be useful to clarify the dynamic of practice, in this paper we focus on the notion of representation and on the relationship between cognition and action, as a first step toward an understanding of how practice changes. Representations are not static images of reality that agents merely apply to any given situation. Rather, they continuously arise from a process of representing that agents trigger as they act, communicate and reflect on their situation (Flament, 1994; Grenco, 1995). This dynamic aspect of representations may help us understand why, over time, the same technology may trigger different practices and different perceptions of practices. As agents change the way they represent their environment, their use of the technology and their practices may change. The implementation of a new technology may thus be the occasion for changes in both practices and representations. BarleyÕs (1986) classic study of the introduction of CT scanner in two hospitals showed that the implementation of the new technology triggered changes in work practices of technicians and radiologists, but also changes in how members of these


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two professions considered themselves and each other. Changes in representations further supported the changes in practices. 2.3. Practice change and the dynamic relationships between actions and representations: a preliminary conceptualization The preceding example suggested a relationship between practice, representations and actions. Clarifying this relationship should therefore help us to understand how practice changes. The social psychology literature has investigated the dynamics between actions, practices and representations and has showed that representations orient actions and behaviors (Moscovici, 1961, 1984). For instance, how end-users represent IT and their work environment affects their adoption and use of IT (Hayes & Walsham, 2001; Segars & Grover, 1993). Moreover, the literature has also suggested that for changes in practices to emerge (i.e., to be socially shared and recurrent), social agents also have to change the way they represent their environment (Belisle & Schiele, 1984; Tajfel, 1978). Changes in representations thus support changes in practices. Conversely, what agents do impacts how they represent their environment and their own situation (Beauvois & Joule, 1981; Festinger, 1957; Kiesler, 1971). In particular, FestingerÕs (1957) notion of (cognitive) dissonance suggests intriguing ways in which actions and representations are related to each other. The notion of dissonance corresponds to the discomfort experienced when agents perceive an inconsistency between their beliefs, attitudes, or actions. In order to reestablish tolerable consonance, agents change the way they act and/or the way they represent their environment. FestingerÕs notion of dissonance has been pushed further and applied in the IS field in order to understand how usersÕ attitudes and beliefs change over time, through a process of expectations/disconfirmation (which corresponds to a dissonance between expectations and actual results of use) (Bhattacherjee & Premkumar, 2004). The current paper contrasts with this stream of research in that it considers users as social agents rather than as (implicitly isolated) individuals, and in that it analyzes recursive relationships between actions and representations in order to understand practice change. In comparison, FestingerÕs model (and its successors) mostly accounts for changes in individual attitudes that arise from cognitive dissonance. The notions of dissonance and consonance however appear extremely helpful to understand practice change or lack thereof. Through this lens, Schultze & BolandÕs (2000) example of practice reproduction with KMS use may be further interpreted as an initial potential contradiction between expectations of the implementation of the KMS (i.e., favoring direct information exchange) and agentsÕ representations of their work (i.e., being gatekeepers of information). End-users avoided experiencing the discomfort of dissonance by maintaining consonance through reproduction of their work practices, minimal use of the KMS and sustained representations of work. This section has suggested that changes in practices are tightly related to changes in agentsÕ actions and representations. Analyses from a case study will help us specify the impact on practices of the consonance or the dissonance that agents may experience as they use IT in a changing context.

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3. Methodology 3.1. Research design In relation to this conceptualization, the methodological challenge was to analyze an empirical case in which a field researcher had been able to access how agents recurrently act and how they represent their environment when they use IT. ‘‘To discover who people think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it, it is necessary to gain familiarity with the frames of meaning [representations] within which they enact their lives. This does not involve feeling anyone elseÕs feelings, or thinking anyone elseÕs thoughts, simple impossibilities. (...). It involves learning how, as a being from elsewhere and with a world of oneÕs own, to live with them.’’ (Geertz, 2000, p. 16). To get a substantial sense of both practices and representations of agents in the field, the field researcher thus ‘‘lived with them’’ for a sustained period. Participant observation provided fine-grained examination of practices and of their transformation over time, and helped the researcher to become well-acquainted with how agents represented their environment. The field researcher investigated Insura, a commercial network of sales agents of financial services that had implemented and used a specific intranet site. 3.2. Data collection and analysis Our data collection relied on a combination of three main qualitative data sources: participant observation, individual semi-structured interviews and focus groups as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Main data collection methods What?

How?

Participant observation

Four months of direct participant observation on a half-time weekly basis. Observation of work in different local offices and at headquarters. Extensive field notes taken during sessions, then rewritten and extended. Follow-ups after the four months of participant observation (new visits, phone conversations, e-mails) Individual semi-structured interviews with 25 sales agents from Insura. Interviews lasted from 45 min to 1 h and a half, were recorded and then transcribed. Respondents had been selected to mirror the diversity of sales agent in terms of geographical location, previous professional experiences and length of service Three focus groups of four to six individual sales agents. Discussions among sales agents backed up by a loose interview guide close to the one used for individual interviews. Focus groups of local sales agent from the same geographical area, but not from the same team. Two interviewers: one author of this paper and the webmaster of the intranet. Extensive notes taken during focus groups, then rewritten and extended. Conversations during focus groups were recorded and partially transcribed

Individual interviews

Focus groups


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Other data sources included key informants, observation of actual hits of intranet sites, archives, official documentation, and direct browsing of the intranet. Typical of qualitative longitudinal case studies in the IS field (Hayes, 2001; Orlikowski, 1991; Walsham, 1993), the analytical process we followed aimed at building Table 2 Application of Klein and MyersÕ (1999) principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in IS Klein and Myers (1999) principles

Application in the analytical process of this research

Hermeneutical process. This principle suggests that all human understanding is achieved by iterating between considering the interdependent meaning of parts and the whole that they form

The analysis constantly related agentsÕ practices and representations with their context (material environment as well as structural social properties) of occurrence

The principle of contextualization. Requires critical reflection of the social and historical background of the research setting, so that the intended audience can see how the current situation under investigation emerged.

Sustained over time participant observation sessions, formal and informal interview made it possible to contextualize our observations. Multiple conversations between the two authors of this paper made it possible to articulate this contextualization for readers

The principle of interaction between the researchers and the subjects. Requires critical reflection on how the research materials (or ‘‘data’’) were socially constructed through the interaction between the researchers and participants.

Subsequent narrations of the case submitted to both members of the field and academic peers led to an increased awareness of the effect of the presence of the field researcher on the investigated field

The principle of abstraction and generalization. Requires relating the idiographic details revealed by the data interpretation through the application of principles one and two to theoretical, general concepts that describe the nature of human understanding and social action

Case analysis was grounded in InsuraÕs specific context, but constantly related to the conceptual framework and this gradually led to a proposed conceptualization of the processes of reproduction and changes in practices

The principle of dialogical reasoning. Requires sensitivity to possible contradictions between the theoretical preconceptions guiding the research design and actual findings (‘‘the story which the data tell’’) with subsequent cycles of revision

The observation of the evolution of the use of the ‘‘best practices’’ folder seemed to contradict the observed representations of the investigated agents and led us to question further the (theoretical as well as empirical) issue of transformation of representation

The principle of multiple interpretations. Requires sensitivity to possible differences in interpretations among the participants as are typically expressed in multiple narratives or stories of the same sequence of events under study. Similar to multiple witness accounts even if all tell it as they saw it

The two authors constantly confronted their own interpretations of the case and from their discussion refined the analysis. Different readers of previous versions of the manuscript also pointed to multiple plausible interpretations and improved the analytical process

The principle of suspicion. Requires sensitivity to possible ‘‘biases’’ and systematic ‘‘distortions’’ in the narratives collected from the participants

The two authors undertook critical readings of the intermediate versions of the analysis. Various readers of the manuscript further challenged the previous narratives

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a conceptual understanding of the problem at hand from qualitative data. One of our first tasks was to process the voluminous sources of information into manageable (and more deeply analyzable) data (Miles, 1979). We relied on guidelines from Miles & Huberman (1984) and from grounded theorizing (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The field researcher wrote several subsequent narrations of the evolution of the field situation, and submitted them to respondents, the other author and colleagues. She returned to the field and her notes, as well as to interview transcripts, to get deeper details of the transformations taking place, and to adjust to participantsÕ reactions to these narrations. The analysis of the case and the proposed conceptualization slowly emerged from constant dialogue between the authors of this paper based on these gradually refined narrations, and on numerous backand-forth interactions on existing theory on practices and representations. Overall, the analytical process followed in this paper is characteristic of qualitative interpretive case studies in the IS field (Walsham, 1993, 1995). Klein & MyersÕ (1999) principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive case studies can be used to summarize our approach to this study, as shown in Table 2.

4. Case description 4.1. InsuraÕs overall organization Insura was an autonomous department of FranceInsurance, a French insurance company (28,000 employees, turnover 17.1 billion euros in 2002). Insura designed and sold financial services such as collective bonds, saving plans and retirement plans for households. Its 4000 employees worked either in the Parisian headquarters or in local teams of about 20 sales agents (cf. Fig. 1). Headquarters defined InsuraÕs strategy. They created new services (for instance, a new life insurance policy dedicated to a specific niche of clients), designed the marketing strategy (media planning, advertising and promotions), and continuously adapted bonds and indexes related to market changes. 4.2. Sales agentsÕ work Local sales agents sold these services to clients. Sales agents worked alone but they met once a week at the local office to review the past weekÕs performance in terms of sales, to preview the following weekÕs objectives, and to prepare commercial initiatives. Commercial initiatives aimed at selling specific products or targeting an appeal to a niche of clients. At the level of the local team, sales agents collectively prepared these initiatives. They subsequently individually applied them to their portfolio of clients. Except for this weekly meeting, sales agents did not meet on a regular basis and they carried out most of their work away from the local office. They met clients at their clientsÕ homes. A substantial part of their daily activities consisted of scheduling meetings with clients. Sales agents prepared their meetings by documenting the ser-


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Fig. 1. InsuraÕs organization.

vices they aimed at selling. When sales agents had contracted a new deal, they keyed in their information on the production information system to validate the sale, to print the contract and to determine their salary. Sales agents described their job as primarily dealing with relationships with clients. They also explicitly represented it as individualistic and highly competitive. Traditionally, sales agents who had developed a broad portfolio of clients, and who sold a lot of contracts, were considered to be successful by their colleagues. Sales agentsÕ performance and success at work were evaluated in terms of sales: number and value of deals. Furthermore, sales agents considered the aspects of their work activities that did not help them in their relationships with clients as of secondary importance, and even as valueless. This made sales agents highly critical of some headquartersÕ actions toward them. 4.3. Longstanding, and recently exacerbated, perceived distance between local teams and headquarters The relationships between the Parisian headquarters and local teams had traditionally been aloof. Sales agents in local teams complained about the tools that the headquarters provided them. They considered that headquartersÕ media strategies were too abstract and lacked sufficient detail to be directly applied in local areas. They also resented an absence of information and interpretation regarding the current evolution of financial markets. As sales agents were in direct contact with customers, they were the ones who had to deal with clientsÕ concerns when the financial

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results of the services Insura provided were poor. Sales agents thus considered that they needed more information from headquarters in order to give better advice to their clients. 4.4. Implementation of the intranet To reduce the distance between the Parisian headquarters and local teams, InsuraÕs general manager decided to implement an intranet system in 1999. He wanted the intranet to constitute a link between sales agents and headquarters. InsuraÕs general manager believed that, thanks to the intranet, a constructive dialogue would emerge between local teams and headquarters. InsuraÕs general manager named Dominique as chief of the intranet project and as its future Webmaster. Dominique had worked for 25 years at Insura. He had been a local sales agent and a team manager for 20 years. He had been working at InsuraÕs headquarters and had taken charge of IS projects for the previous five years. He had directed the implementation of the electronic messaging system and of the electronic occupational production system, through which sales agents keyed in the deals they had signed in order to finalize their sales and to determine their salary. Dominique implemented the intranet in six months. All sales agents could access the intranet system from late 1999 onwards. 4.5. Changes over time in intranet use Sales agentsÕ use of InsuraÕs intranet was limited during the first six to twelve months of its availability. Sales agents used the intranet mainly to key in their sales to the production function, the web-based interface of the preexisting production IS, and to consult the results of sales competitions that regularly took place in the commercial network. In addition to their limited use of the intranet, sales agents were also critical towards it. They considered that the intranet did not provide them with tools that they could usefully integrate into their daily practice and that, therefore, browsing it extensively would constitute a waste of productive time. Gradually, however, more sales agents started using more features more often. Dominique had become concerned about the lack of browsing of his intranet. He considered that part of this situation originated in insufficient communication related to the intranet. To remedy this situation and to trigger more uses of the intranet, Dominique undertook what he called his ‘‘tour de France’’ of local teams. He visited approximately 25 local offices (each local office brought together two to three local teams) and explained the objectives of the intranet. He also received sales agentsÕ feedback. Sales agents complained about the lack of tools and information that could be used when dealing with clients, and about an insufficient update of information. Dominique changed the intranet to acknowledge sales agentsÕ reactions. He also asked some of his former colleagues in local teams to put some of their experiences online. A year and a half after its implementation, most sales agents had appropriated many features of the intranet, and their appropriation had led them to change their work practices.


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5. Case analysis: intranet use and processes of changes in practices and representations at Insura This section examines the initial process of reproduction of sales agentsÕ work practices with intranet use (Section 5.1), the subsequent gradual transformation of practices (Section 5.2), and finally turns to emergent interplays between actions, practices and representations (Section 5.3). 5.1. Initial reproduction of practices with intranet use InsuraÕs general manager had decided to implement the intranet to improve the relationships between headquarters and local teams and, eventually, to promote more active collaboration between them. However, the sales agentsÕ initial use of the intranet contributed, firstly, to the reproduction of their preexisting work practices and, secondly, was consonant with their initial representations of headquarters. We analyze these two points in detail below to illustrate the reproduction of practices as a process of sustained consonance between existing practices and representations. Firstly, sales agentsÕ initial use of the intranet replicated their previous ways of working. Sales agents initially transferred some of their routinized actions to the intranet, but did not change their practices. Most sales agents used only one feature of the intranet: the production function. When the intranet became available, sales agents adopted the intranet to record their sales instead of the preexisting and still available interface. Their use of this feature, however, neither changed how they registered sales nor, more generally, how they routinely worked. Furthermore, during the first six to twelve months, the other features of the intranet remained largely unused and sales agentsÕ main work practices remained the same. Secondly, sales agentsÕ initial use of the intranet was consonant with their critical representation of headquarters. A sales agent expressed the following opinion: ‘‘To be honest with you, the intranet, I do not use it very much. Anyway, thereÕs nothing crucial in it. ItÕs like many things that come from [headquarters]. They look good, but they donÕt help us work very much.’’ Such a statement was typical of sales agentsÕ initial doubts about the usefulness of the intranet. Sales agents represented the intranet in a way that was consonant with the way they represented the headquarters. They represented the intranet as of little use to their trade, which was consistent with their representations of headquarters as unable to provide them with useful tools. Also, they acted consistently with these representations as they used the intranet minimally. The general manager had aimed to improve the relationships between headquarters and local sales agents through intranet use. The realization of such an expectation, however, would have required implied that sales agents experience a dissonance between how they represented the headquarters (badly) and how they used the intranet (extensively). In the absence of external imperatives to use the intranet extensively, sales agents avoided the discomfort of dissonance, and used the intranet in ways that were consonant with the way they represented the headquarters and their work. Sales agents restricted their use of

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the intranet to the features that they considered the most crucial ones in their daily work (i.e., the production feature that registered their sales and determined their paycheck). Sales agentsÕ initial use of the intranet thus also coincided with some of their representations of their work, as the following quotation from a local sales agent illustrates: ‘‘I am a pro[fessional]. I want explanations [regarding the evolutions of financial markets], not furbelows. I want our policy to be accountable to clients. Of course, there is the intranet, but this is cosmetic. We are pros, and we want more.’’ Sales agents explicitly restricted their use of the intranet to a key dimension of the representation of their job: the deals they concluded. Although critical of the intranet, sales agents spontaneously adopted it to register their sales. The greater userfriendliness of a web-based interface than of the original production IS explains the spontaneous adoption of this feature of the intranet. However, sales agents did not take advantage of this user-friendliness to browse the other features of the intranet. The initially restricted use of the intranet was related to sales agentsÕ main representation of their work according to which being a good professional meant selling financial services. These observations suggest a process of reproduction of practice with IT use when agents use and represent IT in ways that are consonant with their preexisting practices and representations. On the one hand, how sales agents represented the intranet was consistent with the way they represented the headquarters and their work and made them use the intranet in a way that was consonant with (and thus reproduced their) previous work practices. On the other hand, sales agentsÕ initial use of the intranet in turn conformed with the way they represented the intranet and the headquarters. As sales agents considered that headquarters only provided them with tools that were not of direct use for their trade, they parsimoniously used it at first. As they did not use many of the available folders and applications (such as documentation on financial services, training or regional news), they became even more convinced that the intranet did not present useful content, and that headquarters were unable to help them in their work. 5.2. Subsequent transformation of practices with intranet use The webmasterÕs reactions to sales agentsÕ initially limited use of the intranet promoted various changes that contributed to the gradual transformation of sales agentsÕ practices. Let us detail the webmasterÕs actions and then the consequences they triggered. From informal conversations with former colleagues and from consultation of web logs, Dominique, the webmaster, soon became aware that sales agents did not use the intranet save for the previously mentioned feature, and that the initial use of the intranet was consonant with the perceived distance between local teams and headquarters. Because he used to be a successful sales agent, sales agents considered Dominique as a peer rather as a member of the aloof headquarters, which made


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them more willing to share with him their representations of the intranet (and, in a related way, of the headquarters) during formal meetings, as well as informal encounters in his ‘‘Tour de France’’. 5.3. New features, new use, new practices During DominiqueÕs visits, sales agents expressed their resentment towards the headquarters. In order to improve the relationships between headquarters and local teams, Dominique implemented two Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) folders, devoted, respectively, to human resources policies and to legal issues of financial services. Through the FAQ, sales agents sent specific questions, and headquartersÕ experts on these issues posted answers in the next 24 h. The FAQ applications also provided a search engine with key words so that sales agents could access previous answers to typical questions. Within two months of their implementation, the FAQ folders had become used as frequently as the production feature. Sales agents used them extensively to get answers to specific questions related to their job (such as: ‘‘ My client will retire next year. Is he still entitled to subscribe to our [alpha] retirement plan?’’). Sales agents started spontaneously turning to the FAQ to get answers to questions that, previously, remained unanswered, or for which it took longer to get an approximate answer. Before the use of the FAQ folders, to get information on human resources at Insura, or on legal issues, sales agents usually asked their managers or their team colleagues, who were not much more knowledgeable on these issues than they were, and hence could not systematically provide them with comprehensive and updated answers. The use of the FAQ folders thus affected sales agentsÕ practices of accessing human resources and legal information. Instead of relying mainly on their local peers to get approximate information, sales agents got used to relying on documented answers issued by the headquarters. 5.4. The webmasterÕs actions favored changes in sales agentsÕ representations Using the FAQ folders also made sales agents gradually transform the way they represented the intranet and headquarters, which, in turn, favored further changes in practices. Sales agents initially complained that the headquarters remained unaware of what it really took to sell financial services, and questioned the willingness of headquarters to help them in their trade. As they used the FAQ folders extensively, however, sales agents started representing the intranet as useful to them. This shift in representations of the intranet also gradually led sales agents to change the ways they represented headquarters. Their new use of the FAQ folder, and their associated new representations of the intranet, were dissonant with the way they represented headquarters (i.e., as unable to help them). Sales agents gradually reestablished consonance as they started considering the FAQ folders as signals that the headquarters were willing to help them. As sales agents became more convinced of headquartersÕ intention to assist them in their trade, they started to consider that tools from headquarters could actually be of use to them. They were thus more inclined to try new

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features of the intranet. The following quotation from a sales agent exemplifies this gradual shift in how sales agents represented headquarters and the intranet: ‘‘They tried hard, at headquarters, they made it [the intranet] good. Now we can use it and get information to deal with clients. They showed concern, and they help us. ThatÕs pretty new, I must say.’’ Moreover, other changes of the intranet introduced after DominiqueÕs ‘‘Tour de France’’ did not alter the actual features of the system but, rather, led to amendments in sales agentsÕ representations of the intranet and, ultimately, of headquarters. For instance, sales agents previously considered that the intranet was not updated sufficiently frequently. In response to sales agentsÕ critique, the webmaster added the date of the last update on all folders of the intranet, and introduced a ‘‘WhatÕs new’’ icon on the homepage. It is noteworthy that the actual periodicity of updates had not changed, but that sales agents nevertheless stopped complaining about it. Combined with the 24-h policy of the FAQ applications, sales agents started to represent the intranet (and the headquarters) as consonant with the versatility they considered that their job required. 5.5. The webmaster triggered changes in specific sales agentsÕ actions Finally, during his visits to local offices, the webmaster also showed sales agents how to use the intranet in order to get the most out of its content. For instance, he demonstrated how to access interactive training sessions on new financial services. Sales agents could access these sessions at any time to increase their expertise on financial services, or to improve their selling competences. Before DominiqueÕs ‘‘Tour de France’’, the training feature of the intranet was barely used, mainly because sales agents were unaware of it. As informal training sessions took place, some sales agents at the local offices visited by Dominique acknowledged the availability of this feature and learnt how to use it. As they started using it regularly, their colleagues who had not benefited from the training became curious about it and learnt how to use it from them. In six months to one year, many sales agents had appropriated the training feature and used it, as they needed to get documentation and training on financial services (instead of waiting for the traditional class-like training sessions organized quarterly). As more and more individual sales agents used this feature of the intranet, their social practice of getting training evolved. 5.6. Dynamic interplays between practices and representations In sum, the previous subsection detailed three mutually reinforcing sources of changes in sales agentsÕ practices: a perceived transformation of the technology, changes in the way sales agents represented the intranet and headquarters, as well as gradually repeated and socially relayed individual actions. It also suggested that practice change may be illuminated by the dynamic through which agents adjust their actions and representations to reestablish consonance when they perceive a dissonance between their actions and their representations. This sub-section investigates


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this dynamic further by discussing how sales agents first resisted and then gradually put successful ‘‘best practices’’ on to the intranet. 5.6.1. First stage: no contribution to the best practices folder: initial consonance between IT use, existing practices, and representations The intranet contained a ‘‘best practices’’ folder in which sales agents could post the narration of successful sales experiences. The web team that had implemented this feature presumed that sales agents would use it extensively since concrete stories of experiences could help them sell more. It was expected that sales agents would consult it and contribute to it by posting their experiences on line. During the first year of the intranet, however, the ‘‘best practices’’ folder remained virtually empty as sales agents resisted putting their initiatives online: contributing to the intranet would have been dissonant with what sales agents considered as a central dimension of their job, its competitiveness (e.g., they initially assessed their performance solely in terms of sales). Sales agents feared that, if they contributed to the ‘‘best practices’’ folder, they would help others (i.e., other sales agents from remote local offices) to sell more, while they would not sell more. Moreover, as they considered that a good professional was a sales agent who sold more financial services than other agents, putting experiences on line almost equated to giving away oneÕs competitive advantage, and would eventually undermine oneÕs capacity of being recognized as a good sales agent. Hence, during the first year of the intranet, sales agents did not spontaneously put their experiences on line, and the folder remained virtually empty. The initial scant contribution to the intranet was consonant with sales agentsÕ preexisting practices (they did not usually share professional experiences with members of other local teams) as well as with their representations of their job. 5.6.2. Second stage: individual actions dissonant with social representations To remedy this situation, and to promote sales agentsÕ contributions to the ‘‘best practices’’ folder, the webmaster had recourse to his network of personal connections. He asked some of the sales agents he knew best to write up one of their experiences. Asked by someone they considered almost as a friend, about ten sales agents agreed to disclose the details of successful experiences online. To make these contributions more visible and to stimulate additional inputs, the webmaster created a direct link from the homepage to this folder, and published pictures of the authors of the latest released initiatives. Thanks to the link from the homepage, and to the picture online, these specific actions and their authors soon acquired high visibility throughout Insura. Sales agents became aware that some experiences had been put online and could be browsed. These highly visible online experiences intrigued sales agents. Indeed, the individual sales agents who had accepted to put their experiences online had acted in ways that were dissonant with the prevalent social practice as well as representation. Given the initial representation of sales agentsÕ job as highly competitive, it did not make sense to contribute to the ‘‘best practices’’ folder. Yet, the sales agents who had published their initiatives had acquired fame throughout the professional network. Moreover, as sales agents used the folder more often, they started to consider that its contents were helpful to them to inform and improve their

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own work practices. As noted by a sales agent a few months after the first sales agents had put experiences on line: ‘‘The commercial initiatives folder, I am glad it exists. It is a good source of inspiration. Because, basically, the problems you encounter with your clients in location X, you encounter them everywhere. So what was good somewhere will probably be good here too. But I wouldnÕt put my initiatives in the folder. Not that I donÕt want to help the other ones ... but, well, itÕs a bit like that. [Laughs] I am a sales agent first of all, and a sales agent works for himself.’’ The previous quotation is typical of sales agentsÕ reactions to the first initiatives put online: they still did not want to put their own experiences on the intranet, but they acknowledged the usefulness of the folder, and recognized that the authors of the experiences were good professionals, which contradicted their representation of professionalism. During this intermediary stage, sales agents started perceiving a dissonance between their representations, practices and other agentsÕ actions of contributing to the experiential folder, but they had not yet adjusted their practices or representations. 5.6.3. Third stage: sales agents reestablished consonance through emerging representations and practices Gradually, however, more and more sales agents spontaneously put their initiatives online. They typically published successful experiences on the intranet because they also wanted to get their ‘‘15 min of fame’’ by having their picture on the intranet. As more and more sales agents contributed to the best practices folder, it became more useful to sales agents who could access detailed experiences. Moreover, a composition effect arose: as more sales agents put their experiences online, even more sales agents became willing to do so as well. Initially atypical actions from a few individual sales agents (first on-line initiatives) eventually turned into a social practice; that is, into an action which was recurrent (integrated in the routinized work order and repeated) and social (achieved by members of the sales agentsÕ community). The emergence of this new practice was closely related to a gradual change in the way sales agents represented professionalism as well. Sales agents still represented being a good professional as being successful in selling, but they also started to consider that being recognized by the picture on the homepage also signaled professionalism. Thierry [a sales agent from an Eastern local team] is between two meetings with clients. He logs on to InsuraÕs intranet and examines its homepage. As I look at him, he comments: ‘‘You see, these people are good. Their initiatives worked and you can know how they did. People know them now. ThatÕs good stuff.’’ The previous quotation is characteristic of the gradual shift in the way sales agents represented professionalism. The representation of professionalism now included two complementary dimensions. A good sales agent was not only someone who was able to sell a lot of contracts, but also someone who shared experiences online. While sales agents still considered their job a highly competitive one, this aspect


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of their representation was not contradictory any more with the sharing aspect, as was the case in the second – dissonant – phase. On the contrary, agents now considered these two aspects as complementary: the sales agent who was both successful in sales, and able to share her initiatives with remote colleagues, was considered as doubly successful. Sales agents had gradually transformed the way they represented their profession in a way that created a new consonance between the action of putting experiences online and their representations of professionalism. As agents gradually shifted their representation of professionalism, it now made sense for them to contribute to the best practices folder, which also supported the new social practice of putting experiences online.

6. Practices and representations change with IT use: a conceptualization This section elaborates on the initial conceptual framework and on the findings of the empirical case study to propose a conceptualization of practice reproduction and of practice change with IT use as a dynamic process of consonance/dissonance between practices, representations, and actions. 6.1. Sustained consonance: a model of practice reproduction with IT use A process of reproduction of work practice with IT use may be considered as the result of sustained consonance in the ways agents work, represent their work environment, and use and represent IT. In the absence of perceived drastic change in their environment, reflexive agents represent a new IT in ways that are consonant, rather than dissonant, with their preexisting ways of representing their work environment. Moreover, they tend to use IT in ways that are consonant with the ways they represent IT, and with their preexisting practices. This was initially observed in the Insura case, when sales agents represented the intranet consistently with the negative way they represented headquarters, and also consistently used the new IT in a minimal way. Maintained consonance between work practices, representations and IT use come from reflexive social agents representing their work environment and the new IT in a consistent way and acting in ways that are consonant with their representations. At the social level, sustained consonance contributes to the reproduction of work practices through various dynamics. The Insura case revealed two of them. Selffulfilling prophecies may first contribute to the reproduction of practices (Giddens, 1984). In such situations, agents have preconceptions (based on their initial representations) about certain events and things (such as the new IT) that make them act in specific ways (i.e., use IT in certain ways). As a result of these actions, agentsÕ preconceptions become validated and, thus, the way they represent and use IT remains consonant with their initial representations and work practices. Another, and related, key dynamic of the reproduction of practices emerges when actions that are expected to generate change unexpectedly merely replicate preexisting practices. For instance, the

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official objective of InsuraÕs intranet was to improve the relationships between local teams and headquarters. Instead, however, sales agentsÕ initial minimal use of the intranet maintained the perceived distance between headquarters and local teams. In turn, this perceived sustained distance reassured sales agents in the way that they represented headquarters, and in the way they acted. The observation of sustained consonance helps explain the disappointment that managers and developers experience when a new IT, implemented to trigger changes in end-usersÕ practices, is actually used to reproduce preexisting practices. In the absence of perceived change in their situation, agents represent and use IT in ways that are consonant, rather than dissonant, with their representations and practices. Such consonance in their representations also induces them to reproduce, rather than to transform, their work practices with IT use (Schultze & Boland, 2000). In other words, consonant with prevalent practice and representations, agents use IT (and hence, shape ‘‘IT-in-use’’), and represent IT, in a way that contributes to the reproduction of their work practices. 6.2. From dissonance to consonance: a model of practice change with IT use Practice change with IT use may also be interpreted through the following lens: if, as they use IT in a perceived changing context, agents experience dissonance between their representations, practices and IT use, they will transform their use of IT, IT-in-use, and the way they represent their environment to re-establish consonance between the way they act and the way they represent their work environment. InsuraÕs case has helped identify three main sources of perceived dissonance triggering practice change through agentsÕ attempts to reestablish consonance. First, agents may perceive an enduring change of their work context. Such a change in context may originate in IT implementation or in the transformation of some of its features. What is essential is that this change in context is perceived as significant and enduring by agents. Such a perceived change in context may come from changes in specific features of systems – even something as mundane as, for instance, adding the date of the last update to the intranet. As they perceive a change in their context of work, agents start questioning the way they represent their context, for these representations may not be suited any more to their new perception of their context. Following the previous example, as the date of the last update was provided, agents slowly started questioning their initial representation of headquarters as not able to give them timely information and, hence, more generally, not being suited to provide them with concrete help with their job. Second, perceived dissonance may arise from a change in agentsÕ actions, and in particular, in their use of IT. Agents may experience dissonance as they start acting (e.g., using IT) in ways that they perceive as dissonant from their prevalent practices and their representations. For instance, as sales agents started using the FAQ folders to get legal and human resources-related information, their use of the folders contradicted their previous use of the intranet, as well as their prevalent work practices and ways of representing the headquarters. Sales agents


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started using the FAQ folders more extensively, and they increasingly acknowledged the benefits they obtained from their use. Sales agents experienced a dissonance between how they initially represented the intranet and the headquarters, and their use and appreciation of the FAQ folders. Sales agents gradually reestablished consonance as they transformed their overall use of the intranet, the intranet itself (IT-in-use), as well as the way they represented headquarters. More generally, as agents experience a dissonance between their new actions and their usual practices and representations, they gradually adjust their practices and/or representations to accommodate the new action and, hence, to reestablish consonance. Third, dissonance may also originate in agentsÕ observation of unusual actions from other agents. Some agents may act in ways that deviate from the prevalent practice. If such intriguing actions are repeated over time and across agents, other agents will notice them and will perceive that these actions cannot readily be interpreted in terms that are consistent with their prevalent representations and actions. In InsuraÕs case, the few initial inputs to the best practices folders neither made sense with sales agentsÕ original representation of their job as competitive, nor with the practices they carried out that enacted this representation of competitiveness. Unusual actions from some agents may thus lead other agents to experience a dissonance between actions, practices and representations. It is noteworthy that such a situation is not accounted for by FestingerÕs (1957) model of dissonance, as Festinger considers individualÕs attitudes and beliefs rather than social agentsÕ representations. As agents experience dissonance between actions, representations, and practice, they gradually adapt how they represent their work environment and how they act in order to reestablish consonance between them. If such adaptation is socially shared and repeated over time, practices, representations, and IT-in-use change. This process of reestablishing consonance thus provides a useful lens to understand how practices change. From the previously discussed definition of practice, practice change involves a change in how social agents (members of a certain group, or community) recurrently act. New actions thus have to be recurrent and socially shared to become a new social practice. As more and more sales agents became convinced that headquarters would provide them with valuable information, they increasingly used the FAQ folders and received more answers, which, in turn, corroborated their emerging way of representing headquarters and of using the intranet. Such an example illustrates a case of self-fulfilling prophecies in which newly emerged ÔpropheciesÕ (i.e., representations) supported practice changes. A change in practice may also emerge from unintended consequences of actions (Giddens, 1984). Unintended consequences emerge from actions that agents spontaneously and sometimes mechanically engage in, and which tend to bear unintentional and unexpected results. For instance, sales agents wanted to contribute to the best practices folder for selfish reasons: they wanted to become noticed in the commercial network. Yet, unexpectedly, more and more sales agents contributed to the best practices folder. Their actions thus gradually turned into a social practice.

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7. Conclusion This concluding section briefly points out some limitations of the paper, its main conceptual contributions, and suggests two areas for future research. This paper has focused on the micro-level issue of how practices change. It thus has not dealt with long term and societal changes conditioned by IT use (Castells, 1998; Winter & Taylor, 1996). It did not encompass either the relationships between individual identities and institutional contexts (Barrett & Walsham, 1999). Moreover, the conceptualization proposed in this paper clarifies gradual changes in practices, similar to the ones analyzed by Orlikowski (1996), but it does not account for radical changes that may be triggered by severe environmental disruptions, drastic reorganizations, or technological shifts (Lyytinen & Rose, 2003). The conceptual lens put forward in this paper proposes that practice changes with IT use if agents perceive a dissonance between their context, actions and prevalent representations and practices. Agents then gradually adjust how they represent their environment as well as how they routinely act in order to experience consonance again. This paper contributes to the IS literature on practice and organizational change by suggesting a lens that pays attention to the details of how practices change at the micro level of inter-individual relationships. Hence, it complements ÔgrandÕ theories of change, such as the practice or structurationist ones (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984; Orlikowski & Robey, 1991; Schultze & Boland, 2000; Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004). Moreover, this paper builds on the emerging literature on the relationships between action and cognition and on its impact on IT development and use (Bhattacherjee & Premkumar, 2004; Davidson, 2002; Legris, Ingham, & Collerette, 2003). It suggests that we need to examine the representations that shape agentsÕ understanding of their work and technology, and the consonance or dissonance they may experience, in order to understand to what extent and how IT use can trigger practice change. Finally, this paper leads us to suggest two areas that deserve further investigation. First, it would be interesting to examine the dynamics of practices and representations of different interacting groups (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994). Second, while this paper has contributed to an understanding of the relationships between actions and cognition in the context of IT use, it would be illuminating to question the role of emotions (Cenfetelli, 2004; Venkatesh, 2000) and of agentsÕ physical engagement in their practices (Bourdieu, 1977). This could further advance our understanding of IT use and practice change, regarding users not only as social and cognitive agents, but also as emotional and bodily agents, actively engaged in their context.

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