1.1.1.1. Technology as an element in determining social behavior

The founding assumptions of this approach, considered in its most absolute form, are as follows:

• – daughter of science, technology is an autonomous variable;
• – a society is determined by the technologies in use;
• – the technical evolution is linear, due to the irreversibility of the technologies;
• – for better or for worse, the technological imperative is imposed on everyone: it is inevitable and universal.

For example, Canadian historian Harold Innis (1894–1952), a pioneer in the formulation of communication theories (Innis, 1950), associates the spread of the papyrus with the development of the Roman Empire and bureaucratic power. He then states that the invention of the parchment led to a shift from places of knowledge to monasteries and a strengthening of religious power. The latter is, in turn, reduced by the invention of paper, which encouraged the development of trade in Italy and northern Europe.

Another classic author case, among the most characteristic of this trend, is that of the American sociologist William Ogburn (1886–1959) who explained that technology changes society by changing the environment to which individuals, in turn, must adapt. This change, he believed, is common in the material environment, and the adaptation we make to it often changes social mores and institutions. He deduced that inventions influence society, first by being produced in large quantities and then by being used by a large number of consumers. Ogburn devoted several studies to the specific social effects of inventions. One of his most famous analyses concerns the invention of radio, for which he listed no less than 150 effects. We provide some extracts, with the numbering assigned by this author, in Box 1.1.

While determinism is no longer popular in academic circles – we will see its limits later on (see section 1.1.1.4) – this approach remains surprisingly prominent in public discourse, despite (because of?) its reductionism. Judging by the questions encountered in the press and in widely circulated books, at random: “what is the impact of ICT on business performance?”, “what are the effects of digital technologies on employment?”, “what is the influence of the Internet on doctor-patient relationships?”, etc.

Basically, this approach does not, in itself, make any value judgments about the effects of technology. This is not the case for some of its orientations, which we will now discuss. Some are very enthusiastic about the latest technologies (“promising technology”). Others are resolutely critical of one or all technologies (“technology that causes much harm”).

1.1.1.2. Technology, which holds promise

This “techno-enthusiastic” approach nurtures a glorifying vision of technology and praises new technical objects. For its supporters, the source of social progress must be sought in innovations and mainly in material inventions and discoveries, which would occur more quickly and cumulatively than intangible innovations – it should be noted that no evidence has been produced in this regard.

The engineer’s desire to register his/her invention in the world by sharing his/her passion with as many people as possible and the merchant’s desire to disseminate the new technical objects as widely as possible are united in the same fervor. So a technophile euphoria is expressed when announcing all the new features. We recall the communicative utopia celebrated in the late 1960s by media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), famous for his notion of the “global village” and his famous formula “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1967).

In the 1990s, a new utopia of communication emerged around the notion of cyberspace, exalting collective intelligence and the potentialities of virtual worlds. A representative figure of this trend is that of the philosopher Pierre Lévy (Lévy, 1994).

In a report submitted to the Council of Europe entitled “Cyberculture”, it is written:

“[…] I claim that cyberculture can be considered as a worthy (though distant) heir to the progressive project of 18th Century philosophers. Indeed, it values the participation in communities of debate and argumentation” (Lévy, 1997, p. 302).

Each new feature feeds the techno-enthusiasts. In the 1980s, pioneering authors in the cognitive sciences, such as Douglas Hofstadter (2000) and Marvin Minsky (1990), with widely published books, praised the possibilities of simulating, and stimulating, the brain through computers. These authors have, at least indirectly, fueled the vision of a spiritual fusion between man and machine, preceding the transhumanist wave (see an illustration in Box 1.2).

The prestige of technological modernity attached to a particular technical object is shifting as the corresponding market develops and its purchase price and operating cost fall. This was the case in the change from horse-drawn carriages to cars, from fixed phones to mobile phones, from phones to the Internet, etc. All these “novelties” were, at their release, the prerogative of a few privileged people. Today, 3D printing, “augmented reality”, artificial intelligence and biotechnologies, in turn, convey new promises: a world in which any object can be manufactured quickly and anywhere, for 3D printing; the disappearance of screens and omniscience in real time, with augmented reality; personal assistants helping us in daily life, interacting with us, whatever our language, with artificial intelligence; completely restoring or even improving the human body, with biotechnologies.

1.1.1.3. Technology, the cause of many harmful effects

Faced with the praiseworthy vision of techno-enthusiasts, a critique of technical thinking has developed, carried by those who are generally referred to as technophobes. Far from being marginal, mistrust of technology is widespread among HSS authors. As the philosopher Jean-Yves Goffi rightly points out: “The list of authors who have emerged from the long list of contemporary technophobes is almost infinite”. (Goffi, 1988, p. 11). Contrary to technological consumerism, “technocritics” (Jarrige, 2016) share most of the deterministic assumptions, but strongly contest the idea that technology is the mother of the social progress it would bring forward.

This current of thought is far from being reducible to the posture of a few conservative intellectuals. Long before the development of philosophical criticism of technology, it is necessary to note the social conflicts that marked the beginning of the 19th Century in the context of the industrialization of most European countries, particularly in the textile industry. In France, there were the successive revolts of the Canuts lyonnais, rebelling against their working conditions, as well as against the machines that competed with them and deprived them of their livelihood by taking work from their very arms. In England, at the same time, it was the Luddites that came to the fore. To those for whom the triumph of mechanization was inevitable, the struggle of these textile workers, “machine breakers” (the Luddites owe their name to the young Ned Ludd, an apprentice who broke a loom), may have seemed to express an unhealthy and retrograde rage.

But, as the British historian Edward P. Thompson (1963) wrote:

“The character of Luddism was not that of a blind protest, or of a food riot (as took place in many other districts). Nor will it do to describe Luddism as a form of ‘primitive’ trade unionism. […] the men who organized, sheltered, or condoned Luddism were far from primitive. They were shrewd and humorous; next to the London artisans, some of them were amongst the most articulate of the ‘industrious classes’.”

Today, some people claiming the ravages of technological progress and the unemployment induced by automation do not hesitate to accept an identity as neo-Luddites. For example, Chellis Glendinning (1990), a psychologist from New Mexico, published a neo-Luddite manifesto in an alternative press magazine, where she wrote: “The technologies created and disseminated by modern Western societies are out of control and desecrating the fragile fabric of life on Earth.” This point of view is far from being isolated (see section 1.3).

1.1.1.4. Contributions and limitations of technological determinism

The posture of techno-enthusiasts has brought about the idea of progress and directed the attention of individuals towards a promising future. But the exaltation of which it is the source is not without unfortunate consequences. Moreover, as the American historian Jeffrey Herf (1986) has shown with regard to Nazi Germany, material modernity can very well be accommodated by a reactionary ideology, far removed from the idea of progress; at the very least, adherence to technological modernity is not a guarantee of emancipation.

Technocritics are also to blame, in the excesses of their radical contestation of technosciences. Nevertheless, unlike technophile proselytism, which tends to mask the harmful effects of technology in the name of progress and its requirements, criticism of technology has the advantage that it questions the technological phenomenon, revealing its hidden face, and “denaturalizes” it. However, it does not provide instructions for its use and, in its exaggerations, it can slow down the progress of a society.

The rejection of technological determinism is not only fueled by the excesses of its two opposite sides. More substantially, it is the irremediability of the technology that is in question and, in particular, its supposed dependence on science.

In fact, technologies, which have their own rationality, are not reduced to scientific applications. Technical gestures are underpinned by representations that are not necessarily part of scholarly knowledge. Moreover, technology develops independently of science; the proof is the architect’s empirical know-how. In this field there is indeed knowledge, but this knowledge is not the knowledge that is derived from a particular science. Moreover, if we can go from science to technology, it is quite possible to do the opposite. Science is indebted to technology whenever practice advances theory, for example the case of the steam engine, which owes its birth to the tricks of mechanics whose practice contributed to the development of thermodynamics, which prior to that did not exist (Daumas, 1963).

1.1.2.1. Technology, always subordinated to society

The idea of technological determinism, which could be thought to be inspired by the metaphor of contagion in medicine (evolutionary model) or the ballistics of artillerymen (ballistic model), has always been a controversial issue. As a counterpoint, there is a social constructivism based on the following assumptions, more or less asserted according to the currents of thought:

• – social structures determine technological change;
• – there are technical alternatives, depending on social expectations;
• – technology does not determine anything by itself; it always gives the actors room for maneuver;
• – the notion of impact is to be rejected, because everything depends on the way in which technical objects (uses) are used.

This point of view does not deny that technology entails choices and orientations. Some authors have come to argue that it is the social relationships embedded in the technology that are imposed on the users of it.

This conception deeply questions the autonomy of technology, since it considers it only as a transmission medium for the representations of those who promote it. The media coverage of economic, political or other projects via a technology that serves as a relay is not without implementation difficulties, such as those raised by integrated management systems (see Box 1.6).

In the end, it is the organizational actors who interpret the elements applied to them and who, through their interaction and according to various strategies, reach a certain state resulting from technological change. When the weight of the technical factor is reduced to the extreme (radical version), this approach takes the form of a kind of social determinism, or at least the determination of technological change by the social factor.

1.1.2.2. A moderate version: in the face of technicism, the interplay of social actors

Developed by Michel Crozier (Crozier, 1964; Crozier and Friedberg, 1977), the strategic actor theory is one of the foundations of a moderate approach. For them, behavior in a situation of technological change does not result from technological determinisms but from the strategic intentions of social actors who aim to achieve certain goals. In other words, technology is always subject to the verdict of its users and the logic of negotiation always prevails over instrumental rationality.

The formulation of this theory is largely based on a critique of contingency theory and specifically technological determinism (Crozier and Friedberg, 1977, Chapter 4, Section 1). This relativization of the influence of technology is a sociological tradition that can be found markedly in work specifically related to information science (e.g. Pavé, 1989, or more recently, Segrestin et al., 2004).

Concerning the computerization of companies, the work of sociologists, often working in teams with economists, has been particularly visible in France. They generally conclude that while technologies are a variable that influence the organization and conditions of work, they are by no means the only and determining factor (Bernoux, 2004). Among the surveys carried out, we describe in Box 1.7 some conclusions from a report supported by a statistical survey on the link between ICT (information and communication technologies) and working conditions. This theme has particularly fueled the social debate around the increase in suffering at work.

In practice, the “mechanical” logic inevitably comes into confrontation with another one, that of the social. This results in the “computer conflict” because, as Pichault (1990) points out, the acceptance of a technology, however sophisticated it may be, is always subject to the verdict of its users.

This “externalistic” vision of technology – in that it does not concern itself with the way in which technical objects are manufactured – does not go as far as social determinism, because it rejects any simple determinism.

1.1.2.3. A radical version: the metaphor of ventriloquism

More radically, social constructivism can be transformed into social determinism. This approach essentially refers to the idea that it is the interactions (debates, negotiations, exchanges, consultations and confrontations) between the actors that ensure that a technology develops and exists through uses. For social determinism, any technological project brings together actors who come together to define the technology, to specify its uses and its effectiveness (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987). It is therefore society that determines technology.

Technical objects provide a range of implicit functions that help to control and promote the acceptance of a change that is not fundamentally technical. It is not uncommon for technical objects, although not designed in this spirit, to serve as lightning rods, channeling the strong emotions (bitterness, anger, etc.) that inevitably manifest themselves during radical organizational changes. Their implementation is then an opportunity to liquidate problems that could not be addressed head-on, without going through the open conflict and the negative consequences that would result.

Let us return to the typical example of integrated management systems (discussed in Box 1.6). They have been highly criticized for their effects on work and the balance of responsibilities. However, should they be considered as an expression of a new form of difficulty at work and a factor of exclusion? In large companies, at the heart of the tensions that affect business management, the software package sometimes appears as a mediator designed to manage the tensions resulting from the call for the development of autonomy, by more decentralized organizations, associated with the strengthening of control, through the control of information and its processing processes. Integrated management systems have been introduced in companies facing contradictions in strategy, political discourse and effective practices. One of their roles has been to somehow absorb these tensions and contradictions.

As in the case of the integrated management systems just mentioned, it could be said that humans delegate a negotiating role to technical objects. François Cooren (2010) goes further, stating that silent objects speak through their interlocutors. He proposes the metaphor of ventriloquism to express the idea that humans make objects speak, while letting objects speak through them:

“The advantage of such a metaphor is that it makes it possible not only to identify the beings that the interlocutors animate in their conversations, but also to show that, in doing so, these same interlocutors position themselves as animated by the beings they animate. In other words, the ventriloquist is not necessarily who you think they are…” (Cooren, 2010, p. 41, authors’ translation).

This analysis “unmasks” technological determinism by replacing it with social determinism. Thus, today, any major organizational change is argued on the basis of technological imperatives. To say that digital technology imposes a particular restructuring, or that it is the computer application that obliges a particular measure: is this not a way of making the weight of transformation bear on technology, by letting it speak for those who want change and whose intentions no longer need to be debated? “It’s the technology that wants that.”

1.1.2.4. Contributions and limitations of social constructivism

Among the approaches dealing with confrontation, happy or gloomy, with technology and social issues, social constructivism brings with it a notable difference. It has the merit of drawing attention to factors other than those that are strictly technical and yet contribute to technological change (see the example we give above of the motorization on agriculture).

But this approach is open to criticism when it leads to absolute social relativism, affirming the total neutrality of the technology and denying that it can produce effects by itself. The conclusion we could draw from this is that technology is devoid of any structuring action, which would obviously be suspicious.

If we admit that the phenomena traditionally called “impacts” are not really impacts, we must also recognize that the tendency to see in the implementation of a technical object only a pretext or an “opportunity” is just as erroneous. The introduction of new technologies has consequences for both organizations and social functioning. In other words, while technology does not determine much, it is not without effect. It is in this in-between that the following approach takes place.

1.1.3.1. The anthropotechnical¹ perspective: moving beyond the two determinisms

Emancipating itself from the archetypal opposition between the social construction of technology and the technical construction of society, the theory of the co-structuring of technology and society postulates that there are no simple relations between the two domains, but ambiguous and complex relations. This view can be found in the work of classical philosophers or ethnologists such as Gilbert Simondon, Bertrand Gille or André Leroy-Gourhan.

This approach jointly refutes both determinisms and postulates a double movement. Its main assumptions are as follows:

• – technologies only occur in a social context that favors it;
• – technology is a cultural fact; each technology conveys a conception of social relations, a culture. Thus, Dagognet (1989, p. 41), inspired by Mauss (1926), argues that the technical object is precisely a “total social fact” that we must learn to read and decipher in order to discover “the cultural that is part of it”;
• – technologies are not neutral; they have social effects;
• – but not all of them are powerful and their effects are ambivalent.

There are several currents of research here, including the sociology of translation, structuring theory and activity theory.

1.1.3.2. Sociology of translation and model of seamless fabric

The sociology of translation (Akrich et al., 2006), also known as actor–network theory or ANT, has become a leading reference for the social sciences. In the “seamless fabric” model – weaving between technological environments and systems on the one hand, and social environments and systems on the other – technology and society “[…] emerge together from innovation processes and technology appears only as a particular modality of sustainable association of humans with each other and with non-human entities” (Akrich, 1994, p. 107, authors’ translation).

This emergence is achieved in line with “translations”, a metaphor for the way in which certain actors set themselves up as “spokespersons” for other actors whom they seek to mobilize and interest, in order to associate them within a socio-technical network. If the incentive is successful, there is “enrolment”. Instead of a principled opposition between technical and social, human and non-human (called “actants”), translation chains refer to the work by which actants modify, displace and translate their varied and contradictory interests.

ANT invokes a similar treatment of human and non-human actors, refusing to distinguish between what is social and what is technical (“principle of symmetry”). More broadly, proponents of this current of thought reject the distinctions between science, technology and society. Originally, ANT researchers were interested in the conditions for the production of science and the diffusion of technological innovations and wanted to put an end to the extreme positions that considered either that science and technology were external to society, political passions, cultural prejudices, personal feelings, or that the scientific fact was merely the result of power games. Rejecting this dual vision, they consider that society and technology, human and non-human, do not constitute two distinct worlds; they are closely intertwined and interact with each other. Non-human entities (objects, machines, tools, equipment) and the devices set up to represent them have their own way of life: they produce effects on the course of action, in the same way as humans do.

In order to avoid the pitfalls of “naturalization” (scientific rationality) and “socialization” (social constructivism), ANT seeks to offer a balanced vision of the social construction of our artifacts (products of human activity) and the technical construction of our social ties. While common sense generally recognizes that traditional technologies are the result of social construction, as ethnologists have shown, modern equipment and high technology are often assumed to have a less social, more self-determined way of life. ANT shows that this is not the case.

By considering the subject–object relationship as a process of co-incorporation of the object in the social and the social in the object, it proposes an original way of approaching socio-technical networks. It shows that it is not the intrinsic quality of innovation that imposes it, but the process on which it is based and, in particular, the consolidation and expansion of the network that drives it. In this way, ANT provides useful benchmarks for understanding technological change.

Because of the principle of symmetry, the researcher must give equal importance to both failures and successes:

“If we say of a successful project that it existed from the beginning because it was well designed and the failed project broke down because it was poorly designed, we say nothing. We are simply repeating the words ‘success’ and ‘failure’ by placing the cause of both at the beginning of the project, at its conception” (Latour, 1992, pp. 71–72, authors’ translation).

On the basis of this reasoning, one of Latour’s research works focuses on the analysis of a failure: that of Aramis, a revolutionary automatic metro that existed until it became a prototype and was abandoned in 1987 by its three sponsors, the State, RATP and the Matra company (Latour, 1992). This case study summarizes the research carried out over many years on the dynamics of innovation and the way it involves technology (see Box 1.8).

The most common criticism of this approach is that it is an anthropomorphism of technology. The notion of the actant, equating “human” and “non-human” and assigning strategic capacity to technical devices, has sometimes been perceived as a real provocation and has been the subject of numerous attacks. These are particularly nourished by sociologists of a critical orientation who criticize it for reducing the sphere of politics to the sole adaptation to the requirements of technological change (Metzger, 2011).

1.1.3.3. Activity theory: no technical objects outside the activity system

“Activity theory” was developed by Vygotsky (1896–1934), a pioneer of the Soviet historical and cultural school of psychology (Vygotsky, 1997). Vygotsky took from Marx the principle of transformation of the self and the species through the material tools that he considered to be a major psychological fact. In this theory, the genesis of the psyche is achieved through collective activities and the technical mediation of these activities.

Leontiev (1978) took Vygotsky’s theory further and sought the elements that make it possible to define the activity for which he proposed a three-level hierarchical structure (activity, action and operations). The activity is driven by a motive and develops gradually, wanting to satisfy this motive, through actions in the real world; the distinction between “activity” and “actions” is therefore fundamental. Actions, which are the product of the transposition into reality of the will to achieve the “motive” of the activity, refer to conscious goals, designed to achieve them. But they are part of the broader context of an activity and the “reason” for it. In addition, Leontiev proposed to break down the actions into “operations” that concretely carry out the actions in the situation. In continuity with Marx, who maintained that the means of work modify humanity’s “natural nature”, Vygotsky postulated that their appropriation restructures the development of the psyche. Technical objects are therefore not mere auxiliaries that prolong the human psyche by leaving its mental functions unchanged. On the contrary, they transform its development. Their role is therefore central. But they are nothing outside the system of activity. They only produce effects through internal reconstruction by the subject through social cooperation practices.

This theory is used in a wide variety of fields (educational psychology, occupational psychology, ergonomics, didactics, computer science, etc.). It has developed particularly in Northern Europe. Finnish native Engeström (Engeström, 1987, 1999) applied Vygotsky’s ideas to the study of interactions and communication at work, focusing on collective activity and the way it is structured.

For Engeström, analyzing an activity means analyzing a system that includes the individual, the tools, the materials or concepts they use, their relationships with the community around them and the product they propose to produce, the interactions that occur there and the transformations that take place there while maintaining a global vision of the system. The individual is not an isolated subject but is part of a community that represents all the subjects who share the same object (task to be performed, objective to be achieved) targeted by the activity. Their own activity cannot be described outside this context. When new members arrive in a community, they must appropriate distributed knowledge. Relationships between individuals and the community are governed by rules (norms, conventions, shared work practices, etc.), implicit or explicit, that maintain and regulate actions and interactions within the system. The activity is carried out by means of instruments, material or not, according to a division of labor (distribution of actions between subjects) and according to production, concrete or abstract.

Starting from the hierarchical structure of the activity and the components of the activity system, Kuutti (1996) applied this model to the analysis of ways to support activities through information technology (see Table 1.1).

1.1.3.4. Structuration theory and duality of the structural

Structuration theory (Giddens, 1987) seeks to shed light on individuals’ actions by linking them to the characteristics of the structure of the social system. The term “structural” is used to make reference to an approach to structure that involves dynamic processes. It models the processes by which social systems are produced and reproduced. The notion of the “duality of the structural”, central to this theory, underlines that while structures constrain social action, they are also created, modified and renewed by competent actors.

Giddens does not specifically address the link between structuring and technology. But structuring theory is increasingly being used to study the relationships between information systems, human action and social structure. Through this perspective, information systems are conceptualized as human artifacts, produced and reproduced by human actions, and which simultaneously constrain and enable such actions. This approach shares with ANT and activity theory a vision of the contextual and negotiated nature of the links between technical and organizational phenomena. Like the two previous theories, it has made it possible to move away from both technological determinism and an exclusive focus on the behavior of actors by focusing on interactions around technology (Bia Figueiredo and Morley, 2015, p. 48). As such, it constitutes a stimulating entry into the discussion on the impact of new technologies on organizational change.

Stephen Barley and Wanda Orlikowski were pioneers in the application of this theory to the specific field of technology, showing how human actors and organizational structure interact in a structured and structuring process where technology is considered a social construct, both a medium and result of these interactions.

In a seminal article, Barley (1986) analyzes the evolution of interactions within two different radiology units following the introduction of new medical imaging devices, CT scanners. These devices have changed the distribution of roles and skills between radiologists and radiology technicians, thus contributing to the transformation of logical radio work and, beyond that, of organizations. But it also shows how identical scanners that have led to similar structuring processes in two radiology departments have led to divergent forms of organization.

Orlikowski (1992), following on from structuration theory, advanced the notion of duality of technology. In this approach, organizations are not only shaped by information technologies but also strongly influenced by social processes. Technologies are therefore both the product and the medium of human activity. Once implemented, the technology ceases to belong to its designers or promoters and is part of the structural properties of the organization. The ways in which technology is used as a support for action become structural routines that become institutionalized in the organization. Symmetrically, through their reflexive control, actors are also led to change their relationship with technology, intentionally or unintentionally.