Abstract:
In this thesis, an in-depth longitudinal study of over 10 years duration was undertaken at one site of a leading New Zealand educational organisation. The research looked at the technological frames of senior management, staff and Information Technology (IT) groups and how their practices of use of information technology emerged and changed over time. Technological frames are the "cognitive structures that are shared among groups of individuals" (Davidson, 1996, pg 17). Using qualitative research methods and a theoretical framework based on the social cognitive perspective of Orlikowski and Gash (1994), the findings were as follows: - The dominant technological frames of senior managers were a contributing factor to the incongruent frames between senior management and other groups. This is despite frequent periods of reframing and communication. - Within the senior management team particular aspects of frames -- relating to how technology is viewed, user support, IT usage and information legitimacy -- were incongruent. These incongruent frames contributed to difficulties in IT development, implementation and use. - A group of key staff influenced senior management, due to their responsibilities in other areas of the organisation, and used that influence to try and facilitate sharing of technological frames with senior management. These influential managers, called mediating staff, were able to communicate the staffs technology views through to senior management. Repeated historical patterns of technological use prevented the organisation from getting value out of their investments in Information Technology. These repeated patterns represented a failure to leam from past technology use and were deeply embedded in the organisation. These deeply embedded patterns of failure may prevent organisations contributing to the idea of a knowledge-based economy in New Zealand and elsewhere.