Sensemaking in Technology-Use

Mediation: Adapting Groupware

Technology in Organizations

JØRGEN P. BANSLER & ERLING HAVNCenter for Information and Communication Technologies, Technical University of Denmark,Building 371, DK-2800, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark (Phone: +45-4525-5187; E-mail: bansler@cict.dtu.dk)

Abstract. Understanding how people in organizations appropriate and adapt groupwaretechnologies to local contexts of use is a key issue for CSCW research, since it is critical to thesuccess of these technologies. In this paper, we argue that the appropriation and adaptation of

groupware and other types of advanced CSCW technologies is basically a problem of sense-making. We analyze how a group of ‘‘technology-use mediators’’ (Orlikowski et al. Org. Sci.(1995) 6(4), 423) in a large, multinational company adapted a groupware technology

(a ‘‘virtual workspace’’) to the local organizational context (and vice versa) by modifyingfeatures of the technology, providing ongoing support for users, and promoting appropriateconventions of use. Our findings corroborate earlier research on technology-use mediation,

which suggests that such mediators can exert considerable influence on how a particulartechnology will be established and used in an organization. However, we also find that theprocess of technology-use mediation is much more complex and indeterminate than prior

research suggests. The reason being, we argue, that new, advanced CSCW technologies, suchas ‘‘virtual workspaces’’ and other groupware applications, challenge the mediators’ and users’sensemaking, because the technologies are equivocal and, therefore, open to many possibleand plausible interpretations.

Key words: appropriation, customization, groupware, sensemaking, tailoring, technology

adaptation

1. Introduction

Implementation of new groupware technologies in organizations often fails,because managers and technologists neglect the need for mutual adaptationof the technology and the local context of use (Orlikowski et al., 1995;Ngwenyama, 1998; Majchrzak et al., 2000; Mark, 2002). Too often, theyseriously underestimate the attention, support and resources it takes tosuccessfully introduce new groupware systems and other CSCW technologiesin the workplace (Bowers, 1994; Ciborra, 1996).Groupware technologies seem to be an ‘‘extremely fragile class’’ of tech-

nology (Ciborra, 1996, p. 6), for two reasons. First, they have to compete

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (2006) 15:55–91 � Springer 2006DOI 10.1007/s10606-005-9012-x

with existent media (Ciborra, 1996; Kraut et al., 1998). No communicationmedium exists in the workplace in isolation and users are not passive con-sumers of media. They use the medium that suits their purpose at a particularpoint in time. When users experience problems using a new communicationtechnology or get the impression that it is unreliable or malfunctioning, theywill switch to another medium in order to continue their work. The alter-native can be fax, email, telephone, a shared LAN drive, ftp, etc. Eventhough these technologies may in certain regards be considered inferior, usersmay, nevertheless, prefer them because they are more familiar and wellknown. This is particularly the case in situations where the users are pressedfor time; why bother with something new. Second, conventions are essentialfor governing communication and cooperation, as Mark (2002) has recentlypointed out. Users cannot just be given a new CSCW technology (e.g. agroupware system) and ‘‘be expected to optimally use it without somecommon agreements on the means of operation’’ (p. 351). Rather, conven-tions must be formed to regulate behavior and provide a ‘‘modus vivendi formaking interactions proceed smoothly’’ (p. 351) – and if such conventions failto develop, the technology will fail too.Research by Orlikowski and others suggests that the implementation and

use of groupware technologies can be facilitated by an explicit and ongoingadaptation of those technologies to the organizational context and vice versa(Orlikowski et al., 1995). This adaptation process, which they refer to astechnology-use mediation, involves both ongoing adjustments of the tech-nology and initiatives that seek to influence the organizational context, forinstance, by training users, changing existing procedures, and promoting theestablishment of appropriate conventions for use.Despite its practical importance, the process of technology-use mediation

is not yet well understood. Little is known about how mediators, in practice,cope with the challenge of bringing new technology and existing workpractices together into a complementary whole. How do they make sense ofthe technology and discover what it can afford? How do they elicit users’needs and requirements? How do they figure out how to customize thetechnology, and how do they influence users’ behavior and attitudes? Theseare the questions that motivate and guide our inquiry. To address thesequestions, we adopt a sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1995), which focuseson how people in organizations construe the situations in which they findthemselves and how they simultaneously enact those interpretations throughtheir actions.We report on a longitudinal field study of the implementation and use of a

groupware technology (a ‘‘virtual workspace’’) in a large, multinationalcompany. Our findings confirm that mediators may exert significant influenceon the nature and effectiveness of electronic, organizational communication.At the same time, they show that technology-use mediation is a much more

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emergent, complicated and unpredictable process than prior research sug-gests. We argue that it is, in essence, a sensemaking process and that it,therefore, is complex and open-ended.In the next section, we briefly review prior research on technology adap-

tation within CSCW. Drawing on recent developments in organizationstudies, we then present a sensemaking perspective on technology-usemediation, which highlights the significance of meaning creation and enact-ment. In Section 4, we introduce the empirical setting and explain our ap-proach to data collection and analysis. The findings from the field study arepresented in Section 5. First, we identify and categorize the different practicesthat the mediators in the study performed (Section 5.1), and then we focus onthe activities of two mediators to demonstrate how they made very differentkinds of sense of the technology and, as a consequence, enacted very different‘‘technologies’’ (Section 5.2). In Section 6 we discuss our findings and explorehow technology-in-practice is constructed through interwoven processes ofmeaning creation, enactment and social interaction. Finally, we summarizeour main points and briefly consider implications for further research.

2. Tailoring and Adaptation in CSCW

For many years, CSCW researchers have explored the issue of tailoring orcustomization, and it is now widely assumed that groupware systems must beadaptive and flexible in order to effectively support communication andcooperation in different and ever changing work environments. It is alsoincreasingly recognized that users often use groupware in ways not intendedor expected by the designers of the technology and that users tend tore-invent the technology when they adapt and incorporate it into theirworking practices (see e.g. the special issue of Computer SupportedCooperative Work on ‘‘Evolving Use of Groupware,’’ vol. 12, 2003).Even so, relatively little is known about the actual process of tailoring or

adaptation, i.e. about the way in which groupware technologies are appro-priated and modified by users. In looking at tailoring in CSCW, researchershave almost exclusively focused on the question of how to design ‘‘tailorable’’or adaptive systems, i.e. systems that can be customized to the needs ofparticular users or settings. Many different approaches to this problem havebeen pursued. Some researchers have explored the opportunities for the de-sign of flexible software toolkits (e.g. Malone et al., 1995; Wasserschaff andBentley, 1997; Dourish and Keith, 2000) while others have focused onmodeling languages (Cortes, 2000; Ellis and Keddara, 2000), design patterns(Hummes and Merialdo, 2000), or the technical foundations of flexiblecomponent-based system (Koch, 1995; Teege, 2000).From this extensive body of research we now know a good deal about

design principles for adaptive groupware technologies and about the tech-

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nical foundations of flexible systems. What we know little about, however, ishow users, individually and collectively, go about tailoring these flexibletechnologies and fitting them into their working practices. A handful of casestudies of customization practices were published at HCI and CSCW con-ferences back in the early 90s (Mackay, 1990; MacLean et al., 1990; Ganttand Nardi, 1992; Okamura et al., 1994; Trigg and Bødker, 1994); but sincethen interest in how users, in practice, deal with adaptive and flexiblegroupware technologies appears to have dwindled.It is our goal to renew this interest and thereby redress the current

imbalance in CSCW research on tailoring and customization. We completelyagree with Andriessen et al. (2003) when they claim that understanding theappropriation processes of groupware has to be seen as a ‘‘key research issuein the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work’’ (p. 367), becausemutual adaptation of technology and organization is crucial to successfulgroupware use, and because a deeper understanding of the social processes ofappropriation may help us build groupware systems that ‘‘encourage unan-ticipated and innovative patterns of use’’ (p. 367).In this paper, our goal is not to explore appropriation and technology

adaptation in general, but to shed new light on technology-use mediation – asa particular, and potentially very important, kind of adaptation or custom-ization practice. Before we present our data, we would like to revisit some ofthe above-mentioned, early empirical studies of customization practices.These studies highlight the collaborative nature of customization and revealthat different types of mediators or local developers play a crucial role byintervening in and shaping (other) users’ use of technology.The first study was conducted by Wendy Mackay in the late 80s as part of

an experiment in educational computing at MIT, Project Athena (Balkovichet al., 1985). The project provided students, faculty and staff with a com-putational infrastructure that consisted of over 1000 Unix workstations.Users had a range of text editors, window managers and other applicationsoftware to choose from and they were able to customize the look and feel ofeach application. Mackay (1990) discovered that a small group of people –whom she called ‘‘translators’’ – played a critical role in the successfuldeployment of the technology by helping their colleagues customize theirsoftware environment. Translators enjoyed ‘‘talking directly to their col-leagues and [got] satisfaction from helping to make their colleagues’ liveseasier’’ (p. 219). Translators had a basic understanding of the software, butfew of them had any technical training, and they were more ‘‘interested incustomizations that solve practical problems rather than those that demon-strate technical skill’’ (p. 219). The role of translator was not officially rec-ognized and few of the managers were aware of their accomplishments.Nardi and Miller (1990), in a small exploratory study of spreadsheet use in

diverse companies, found that ‘‘nearly all of the spreadsheets used in the

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work environments studied were the result of collaborative work’’ amongusers (p. 197). Furthermore, their data showed that some users acquired amore advanced knowledge of computing and served as resources for otherusers, training them and developing code for them.Based on an ethnographic study of CAD users in seven companies, Gantt

and Nardi (1992) also highlight the importance of ‘‘local developers’’ toprovide support for other users, for instance, by writing the macros andscripts that are needed for many CAD applications. Characteristically, all thelocal developers in the study started out as end users and ‘‘grew into theposition because they started specializing on their own initiative, usually outof frustration with the existing software’’ (p. 111). In contrast to the earlierstudies, Gantt and Nardi found that in some CAD environments the supportrole had been formalized and argue that organizations are well served byrecognizing the activities of local developers and formalizing their role.Trigg and Bødker (1994) studied the work of a small group of officially

recognized local developers, consisting of one programmer and two domainexperts (labor inspectors), in a Danish governmental labor inspection agency.They were responsible for exploring, tailoring, integrating, and otherwiseadapting the technology to the local context. Their tailoring work wasapproved by management and included as part of their job description. Triggand Bødker stress that tailoring is a cooperative work process and that thelocal developers ‘‘work on the borders between technology development andeveryday work’’ (p. 47). It is their embeddedness in the local community ofpractice that enables local developers to develop solutions that actually work.Finally, in a study of the use of a computer conferencing system in a

Japanese R&D project group Orlikowski et al. (1995) found that the system’suse was significantly influenced by the activities of a small group of people,referred to as ‘‘mediators,’’ who adapted the technology to the local context ofwork. The group consisted of nine experienced computer users representingdifferent teams within the R&D project (which totaled about 150 members).The group was approved by management and given time and resources topursue its task. What is particularly interesting about this study is thatOrlikowski et al. (1995) depict the mediators’ work – which they label ‘‘tech-nology-use mediation’’ – as much broader in scope than the previous studies.In addition to customizing the technology, the mediators in the study pro-moted use of the technology, established guidelines for its use, modified theorganizational context, and engaged in efforts to reinforce and institutionalizeparticular use patterns over time. Orlikowski et al. (1995) characterize this as‘‘a process of structuring resembling that engaged in by users when theystructure their technologies. Yet, the structuring involved in technology-usemediation shapes users’ own structuring of their technologies’’ (p. 437). Forthis reason, Orlikowski et al. (1995) refer to technology-use mediation as akind of second-order or ‘‘meta’’-structuring of technologies in use.

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Taken together, these studies demonstrate that local developers andmediators can play a very valuable role in organizations, but at the same timethey leave many unanswered questions about the processes through whichmediators, in practice, intervene in and shape technology use in organiza-tions. In this paper, we are especially concerned with how mediators makesense of the technology, how they enact or ‘‘real-ize’’ (Weick, 2001c) theirinterpretations through their actions, and how they define their own role asmediators. Underlying this interest is the premise that understanding howpeople make sense of a technology is critical to understanding how theyinteract with it.To explore these issues, we draw on insights and concepts from organi-

zational studies of sensemaking and use these to analyze the data from ourfield study.

3. A Sensemaking Perspective

Organizational researchers have for some time been interested in under-standing processes of sensemaking, i.e. how people, individually and collec-tively, produce meanings and how their beliefs and understandings affect theirbehavior and performance (e.g. Winograd and Flores, 1986; Barley, 1986;Porac et al., 1989; Ring and Van de Ven, 1989; Weick 1995). Our approach isbroadly inspired by this body of work, but draws primarily on the theoreticalframework of Karl Weick who is one of its most influential exponents.

3.1. SENSEMAKING, ENACTMENT AND IDENTITY

According to Weick (1993), the ‘‘basic idea of sensemaking is that realityis an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create orderand make retrospective sense of what occurs’’ (p. 635). The point is thatpeople try to make things rationally accountable to themselves and at-tempt to produce some kind of stability and order amidst continuingchange.Sensemaking is ‘‘focused on equivocality’’ (Weick et al., 2005). It is the

search for meaning as a way to deal with uncertain and problematic situa-tions. How people ‘‘make sense’’ of the situations in which they find them-selves, why, and with what consequences are the central questions forresearchers interested in sensemaking (Weick, 1995, p. 4).However, sensemaking should not be confused with interpretation per se

(although the latter is sometimes used as a synonym for sensemaking).Interpretation focuses on understanding or ‘‘reading’’ some kind of ‘‘text.’’Sensemaking, on the other hand, deals not only with how the text is read, butalso how it is created. The key distinction, in other words, is that sensemakingis about ‘‘authoring as well as reading:’’

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To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accom-plishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of thesituations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is astrong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things byseeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. Peoplediscover their own inventions, which is why sensemaking understood asinvention, and interpretation understood as discovery, can be comple-mentary ideas. (Weick, 1995, p. 15)

The central idea is that sensemaking is about action – as well as interpreta-tion – and that people ‘‘receive stimuli as a result of their own activity’’(Weick 1995, p. 32). They act, and in doing so participate in the creation ofthe environment they face, and this environment in turn constrains (andenables) their future actions. Weick refers to this process as enactment:

Enactment is the stubborn insistence that people act in order to develop asense of what they should do next. Enactment is about two questions:What’s the story? Now what? When people act in order to answer thesequestions, their acting typically codetermines the answer (Weick, 2003).

Weick gives numerous examples of enactment, such as iatrogenic illness, i.e.physician-induced disease that occurs when diagnostic tests, lines of ques-tioning, or faulty procedures create sickness that was not present when thepatient first consulted with a physician. Or rumors that a stock trader has anunusually high hit rate, which draws attention to that person’s trading andleads others to duplicate his or her pattern of buying. This increases theaction around the stock, which often raises its value and seems to confirmthat the trader is ‘‘hot.’’ The point of these examples is that people externalizetheir interpretations and in doing so create situations and challenges, whichthey – as well as other people and other systems – then have to cope with(Weick, 2003).There are several additional properties of sensemaking that are worth

mentioning, because they are important for our subsequent analysis oftechnology-use mediation. First, sensemaking is grounded in identity con-struction. Individuals attempt to make sense of ambiguous stimuli in waysthat respond to their own identity needs. From the perspective of sense-making, ‘‘who we think we are (identity) as organizational actors shapeswhat we enact and how we interpret, which affects what outsiders think weare (image) and how they treat us, which stabilizes or destabilizes our iden-tity’’ (Weick et al., 2005, p. 416).Second, sensemaking is driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. It is not

about certainty or justified, true beliefs. ‘‘Instead, it is about continuedredrafting of an emerging story so that it becomes more comprehensive,incorporates more of the observed data, and is more resilient in the face of

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criticism’’ (Weick et al., 2005, p. 415). Sensemaking is not an occasion forobjective, detached analysis. Quite the opposite, it is usually an experience ofbeing ‘‘in the middle of things’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 43), trying to figure out whatis happening while simultaneously being forced to act.Third, the unfolding of sense is not just located inside peoples’ head, nor is

it confined to the level of the individual. On the contrary, sensemaking is asocial process, as already indicated in the discussion of identity. Sensemakingis influenced by a variety of social factors, such as discussions among col-leagues, power relations, public discourse and institutionalized patterns ofbehavior and thinking.

3.2. MEDIATION, SENSEMAKING AND TECHNOLOGY AFFORDANCES

Now, let us consider again the work of the mediator. The mediator’s job is toadapt the technology to the local context of use by modifying features of thetechnology, promoting use, establishing appropriate communication norms,etc. To accomplish this, the mediator has to make sense of the technologyin relation to the specific, local context. It does not suffice to have a general orabstract understanding of the technology. It is essential that the mediator’sunderstanding of the technology is connected to the specific needs andcircumstances generated by the local use situation. This, however, is certainlyno simple or straightforward task. As already mentioned, advanced CSCWtechnologies are generic, general-purpose media, which may be configuredand used in a number of different ways depending on the situation. Theproblem of adaptation, thus, does not have a single, more or less obvious,solution, but rather a number of possible solutions, all of which may befeasible.Weick (2001a) has referred to such flexible and customizable technologies

as ‘‘equivoques’’ to indicate that ‘‘they admit of several possible or plausibleinterpretations’’ (p. 148). That CSCW technologies are equivocal and open tomany different interpretations does not, however, mean that they are a‘‘tabula rasa,’’ on which actors can freely inscribe their own meanings andvalues (Hutchby, 2001a). On the contrary, despite their interpretive flexibil-ity, technological artifacts have a constraining as well as enabling materiality– in other words different technologies do not lend themselves to the same setof interpretations.The reason is that different technologies possess different affordances1

(Hutchby, 2001a, p. 444), i.e. they offer different possibilities for action, andthese affordances ‘‘constrain both the possible meanings and the possible usesof the technologies:’’

... affordances are functional and relational aspects which frame, while notdetermining, the possibilities for agentic action in relation to an object. In

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this way technologies can be understood as artefacts which may be bothshaped by and shaping of the practices of human use in interaction with,around and through them (Hutchby, 2001a, p. 444).

As Hutchby points out, the affordances of a technological artifact are not justfunctional but also relational aspects of its materiality. Affordances arefunctional in the sense that they facilitate certain actions: for instancecalculating a number or communicating across distance. However,affordances may differ from person to person and from context to context,and in that sense they are relational. For instance, a PC with a compiler hasthe affordance of programmability, but only if you are a skilled programmerand know the appropriate programming language. Likewise, an advanced,digital camera has different affordances for a novice and a professionalphotographer.The full range of affordances of any artifact is generally not available to

immediate perception. When people interact with (and sometimes through)technologies, it is necessary for them to learn about the affordances that thetechnologies offer to them, in their specific context of use. The affordances, ofcourse, exist whether or not people exploit them, but they only becomemanifest when people act in terms of those affordances. ‘‘Sometimes, quitenovel ways of accomplishing (...) actions arise at the interface of the actor’saims and the technology’s affordances’’ – often to the surprise of thedesigners of the technology (Hutchby, 2001b, p. 30).In other words, it is the job of the mediator to convert an abstract,

generic technology into an intelligible ‘‘technology-in-practice’’ (Orlikowski,2000) by exploring its affordances and figuring out how to exploit them in aspecific situation. An important point is that the mediator seldom has theluxury of being able to step back and think carefully about what to do. Onthe contrary, there is an imperative to act. The mediator is responsible forsetting up and maintaining the operations of the technology, providingongoing user support, responding to user requests and breakdowns, etc. Sheis literally ‘‘thrown’’ into situations where she is forced to act without thebenefit of a clear, stable understanding of what is going on (Winograd andFlores, 1986, pp. 33–36; Weick, 2001b). She constantly finds herself in themiddle of things, taking stock of events as they unfold, trying to under-stand what is happening while she simultaneously intervene in the situation,responding to perceived problems and opportunities. The mediator’sexperience, in other words, is not an occasion for passive diagnosis ordetached reflection. Instead, it is an ‘‘attempt to grasp a developing situa-tion in which [s]he as an observer affects the trajectory of that develop-ment’’ (Weick, 2001d, p. 460). This point will be developed further, after wepresent our empirical findings.

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4. Research Setting and Methods

4.1. SETTING

BioCorp (a pseudonym) is a multinational biotech company, which manu-factures a range of pharmaceutical products and services. BioCorp’s head-quarters are situated in Northern Europe, but the corporation hasproduction facilities, research centers, and sales offices in 68 countries aroundthe world. In 2001, BioCorp employed more than 16,000 people and the netturnover was $ 2.8 billion.The groupware system, ProjectWeb, which we studied, is a web-based

application of the ‘‘virtual workspace’’ type, offering facilities for sharingdocuments, exchanging files, publishing information, event notifications,group management, etc. ProjectWeb is developed in-house, as a collaborativeeffort between people in BioCorp’s R&D division and the corporate ITdepartment, but it has close resemblance to commercial systems like LOTUSTEAM WORKPLACE from IBM (http://www.lotus.com) and BSCW fromGMD in Germany (bscw.gmd.de). ProjectWeb is considered a highly suc-cessful system within BioCorp and the corporate IT department regularlyproduces updates and new versions of the system.ProjectWeb is a generic system and must be set up and configured before it

can be used (Henriksen et al., 2002). This includes designing a home page forthe virtual workspace, creating a folder hierarchy (to store documents andfiles), registering users, allocating access rights to different user groups(administrators, authors with ‘‘uploading’’ rights, and readers), etc.The purpose of the system is to support communication and collaboration

among participants in the company’s drug development projects. Theseprojects are complex, large-scale, long-term endeavors. A typical project lasts9–10 years and involves up to 500 people from many different functionalareas within the company (e.g. clinical research, engineering, marketing, andregulatory affairs). Most of the activities are carried out at sites in NorthernEurope, but clinical trials are conducted in the US, Singapore, Japan and anumber of other countries worldwide. The fact that a growing number ofBioCorp’s new drugs are developed in close collaboration with externalpartners in Japan, the U.S. and Europe further adds to the distributed andcomplex nature of these projects.Projects are organized in the following way: Work is carried out by a

number of interdependent teams responsible for different parts of thedevelopment process such as clinical testing and registration. Together, themanagers of these teams form the so-called ‘‘core group’’ of the project. Afull-time project director, responsible for meeting pre-established goals ofcost, schedule and functionality imposed by senior management, heads thecore group. Each project director has a project assistant who acts as his or

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her ‘‘right hand.’’ The project director (and his or her assistant) usuallyfollow a project from beginning to end, while most other participants onlywork on the project for shorter periods of time and, in most cases, they workon several projects simultaneously. All project directors and project assistantsare located at company headquarters, in the Project Management Unit(PMU).Although formal as well as informal face-to-face meetings are central to

communication within the projects, the dispersed nature of the organizationmeans that project members must also rely heavily on a variety of commu-nication technologies to facilitate various modes of work. At the time of ourstudy, these included familiar technologies like mail, telephone and fax, butalso more advanced technologies like ftp, shared LAN drives, e-mail, videoconferencing, and electronic calendars.In addition, the project assistants are responsible for setting up, designing

and maintaining a common project web site (a ‘‘virtual workspace’’) for eachproject. They use the ProjectWeb application to create and maintain theseweb sites. A so-called IT-supporter, a technology-savvy person who is alsolocated in PMU, aids the project assistants with all kinds of IT-related tasks,including the configuration and use of ProjectWeb. In other words, theproject assistants and the IT-supporter together function as ‘‘mediators’’responsible for the contextualization of ProjectWeb.

4.2. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Consistent with the focus of our research, we followed an interpretive casestudy approach (Myers, 1997; Walsham, 1993). Interpretive field research isparticularly appropriate for understanding human thought and action innatural organizational settings (Klein and Myers, 1999). This approachallowed us to gain insights into the processes related to the adaptation anduse of the groupware system and, in particular, to examine how differentmediators made sense of and enacted the technology. Moreover, this ap-proach is also useful for discovering new insights when little is known about aphenomenon. It allows for casting a new light on complex processes whosestructure, dimensions, and character are yet to be completely understood(Myers, 1997).Our field data collection lasted for more than three years and we used

several data sources and modes of inquiry (for triangulation). The two pri-mary data collection methods used were interviews and examination ofarchival data, but we also participated in a number of formal and informalmeetings with developers and users. Finally, we examined different versionsof the software.Interviews. We began interviewing managers and employees of BioCorp in

august 1998 and concluded the last interview 3 years later, in September

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2001. During this period, we conducted 34 semi-structured interviews of60–120 min in length. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Parti-cipants represented a diverse array of occupations and organizational posi-tions, and included project directors and project assistants from PMU as wellas members of several development projects. The goal of these ongoinginterviews was to gather information about important events as theyunfolded and to track changes in the way people experienced the technologyand perceived the new communicative affordances provided by it. We alsowished to avoid such problems as poor recall, hindsight bias and rational-izations.Archival data. We reviewed public materials such as annual reports and

company brochures as well as internal documents such as the companynewsletter, organization charts, the ‘‘project manual’’ concerning the dis-covery and development of new medicinal drugs, the guidelines for organi-zation and management of development projects, and the set of user manualsfor the groupware system. This provided general information on companyhistory, structure, core competencies, and culture as well as more specificdata on the organization and management of the medicinal drug develop-ment projects (including formal planning and project management models),and the groupware system itself.Meetings and informal conversations. We held two meetings with the

director of PMU and several meetings with the manager in the IT-depart-ment responsible for ProjectWeb. We also participated in a one-day work-shop with users and developers in spring 2001. The purpose of the workshopwas to discuss user requirements to the next version of the system. In addi-tion to the formal meetings, we had many informal conversations withproject assistants and users during our visits to the company and on thephone in connection with meetings or interviews.Examination of the application. We had the opportunity to inspect the

different versions of the groupware system on several occasions. In addition,when interviewing users we often asked them to demonstrate how they usedthe system and show us the content of the document base. In this way, wegained first-hand knowledge about the system and its salient features.We used qualitative techniques to analyze the data, informed by the overall

focus on mediation and sensemaking. We analyzed all data sources in aprocess of recursive scrutiny to get as complete a picture as possible of thedesign, implementation and use of the system. This process was ‘‘not unlikeputting the pieces of a puzzle together, except that the pieces are not all givenbut have to be partially fashioned and adjusted to each other’’ (Klein andMyers 1999, p. 79). We endeavored to place our findings in the context ofrelevant literature and in interpreting our data we constantly referred torelevant bodies of research on technology adaptation, sensemaking, and

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CSCW. Thus, the processes of reporting the findings and conducting theanalysis were highly connected and interwoven.We shared our preliminary findings with key informants in PMU and

the IT department, and they provided helpful comments that confirmedand elaborated the identified issues and conclusions drawn. By discussingour findings with the key informants, we explicitly recognize that theparticipants in the study – just as much as the researchers – are inter-preters and analysts and that the story we tell is a result of our interactionwith the participants (Klein and Myers, 1999).

5. Case Study Findings

The project assistants and the IT-supporter have, individually and col-lectively, played an essential role in making the introduction of Project-Web a ‘‘success story.’’ This does not mean that ProjectWeb is used to anequal extent in all projects. On the contrary, the use of ProjectWeb variessignificantly from one project to another. From our point of view, how-ever, the important point is that the extent of use in each project is closelyconnected with the project assistant’s effort (or lack thereof) to adapt thetechnology to the local situation and motivate project members to use thesystem. Some project assistants have been wholehearted supporters ofthe new technology from the very beginning and enjoyed ‘‘playingaround’’ and experimenting with it. Others have been more indifferent,and a small minority has been a bit scared by the technology and quitereluctant to use it. As the IT-supporter told us, ‘‘two thirds [of the projectassistants] have been enthusiastic about it, but the last third did not ‘seethe light’ at once.’’ She emphasized that the commitment of the projectassistants is crucial to the adoption and use of ProjectWeb by projectmembers:

How much it is used depends on how enthralled the project assistant is. Ifshe is very enthusiastic, then it will be more widely used.

Many project members we talked to within BioCorp confirmed that themotivation and skills of the project assistants varied significantly and thatthis had a strong impact on the use of the technology. For instance, amanager from Scientific Marketing, noted:

The greatest difference [among the different projects’ web sites] is in theway the project assistants upload the material. Some are better thanothers in creating these things. That is the greatest difference; some arereally good at it. For those that are really good at it, they of coursedevelop a web site that has many visitors. Their bosses also complainthat they use all their time on it – ya, those kind of things take time.

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5.1. WORKING AS A MEDIATOR

We can begin to understand the role of the mediators in making ProjectWeba ‘‘success’’ by examining the everyday practices of the project assistants andthe IT-supporter as they deal with the challenge of adapting the technologyand the local context to each other. We begin by analyzing the work of theproject assistants.

5.1.1. The Project AssistantsThrough the data analysis we identified a repertoire of practices, which theproject assistants engage in as part of their job as mediators. These practicescan be characterized according to their overall focus. The first group includespractices seeking to promote use and offering ongoing assistance, encour-agement and support to the users. The second group includes practices aimedat adapting and maintaining the technology itself (see Figure 1). This cate-gorization provides a useful provisional classification of essential practicesinvolved in technology-use mediation, although we acknowledge that thespecific form of some of the practices (e.g. creating an interesting web site)obviously depends on the particular type of technology employed (e.g. webtechnology) and that technology-use mediation can comprise other practicesas well.

Human-Centered Mediation Practices. As Ciborra (1996) notes, new elec-tronic communication media are an ‘‘extremely fragile class’’ of technologybecause ‘‘very often they are threatened by substitute media’’ (p. 6). Pro-jectWeb, for instance, have to compete with the already widespread use ofemail in the company. Thus, the project assistants continuously have tomotivate people to use ProjectWeb and to assist them in learning how to useand integrate it in their daily work. As one of the project assistants put it, ‘‘wehave to go out and sell the system,’’ people are not waiting to ‘‘throw

Project Assistants’ Technology-Use Mediation

Activities

Human-Centered Practices:

• Promoting Use• Helping and supporting users • Establishing conventions of use

Technology-Centered Practices:

• Creating an interesting web site • Improving usability • Inventing work-arounds• Collecting requests for changes

Figure 1. The Project Assistants’ technology-use mediation practices.

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn68

themselves into it.’’ The project assistants address this challenge in severalways.First, they actively promote use of the system. For instance, when a new

project is started, they introduce the core group members to the system at thefirst project meeting and explain how it can improve communication withinthe project. They also regularly send out emails to prompt people to visit theweb site, e.g. when important documents or interesting news have beenposted. In addition, when newcomers join a project, they introduce them tothe system by sending them a ‘‘welcome mail’’ with a link to the project’s website. One project assistant explained:

But every time there is a new employee – be it out in the subsidiaries orhere at home – I’m informed about it and include them in the mail group,give them access to the web and send them a mail introducing myself. (...) Iwrite: ‘‘Dear and then the name, welcome to the alfa project. You arehereby included in the mail group alfa info for regular project updatingand have access to the project web – with a link. In case of any questionsyou are always welcome to contact me. Best regards Jean.’’

Second, the project assistants help users to incorporate the new technologyinto their work practices by providing advice, technical assistance, supportand handholding. The project assistants are always available for the usersand the users often call them when they encounter problems using the system.Third, the project assistants attempt to establish appropriate conventions of

use by monitoring and regulating user behavior. For instance, they told usthat sometimes they have to ‘‘discipline’’ users in order to foster appropriateusage and discourage ineffective or inappropriate behavior. They have, forexample, tried to establish the norm that it is the project members who areresponsible for seeking the information they need by regularly visiting theproject’s web site. One way the project assistants have tried to reinforce thisnorm is by refusing to distribute minutes from meetings and other importantdocuments as email attachments (as they used to do before ProjectWeb). Thisforces people to visit the project web site on a regular basis. We have, how-ever, also come across examples of project assistants, who directly monitorthe behavior of users and reprove them if they have not visited the project website for a while. One project assistant, for instance, told us that she uses the log(containing data on the use of the system) to check whether project membersgo in and fetch the information and documents they are supposed to:

Yes, I mostly use the statistics to see who has been there [visited the website]. If I need input from someone, I can go in and see when he or she wason last. So, I use it more that way.

Q: How do you, then, proceed?

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Then I have to say to them that if you haven’t been there for a while and Iwas expecting to hear from you about this and that, then it’s right there.That way I sort of hit them on the head with it.

It should, however, be noted that the project assistants do not necessarilyagree on what constitutes as ‘‘appropriate’’ usage. On the contrary, as will beshown later in the paper.The project assistants’ human-centered technology-use mediation practices

are summarized in Table I below.

Technology-Centered Mediation Practices. ProjectWeb is a relatively open-ended and flexible technology that must be adapted to the specific context ofuse. It is the project assistants who, on a day-to-day basis, are responsible forcustomizing and maintaining the technology to ensure that it reflects localneeds and conditions as well as possible. As one of the project assistants said,‘‘It is an important part of my job that it [the project web site] is always fit forfight, updated and with something new.’’ The adaptation of the technologymay be seen to involve at least four types of activities:First, the project assistants strive to make their project web sites attractive,

interesting and dynamic with the explicit purpose of enticing people to visitthe site. They do so by playing around with colors and graphics, putting uppictures of people and events, and frequently publishing news of interest tomembers of the project.Second, they continually adjust and enhance the structure and layout of

the project web sites to make them easier to navigate and use. They pay closeattention to user feedback and try to identify and remedy problems asquickly as possible. For example, they constantly adjust and extend the

Table I. The Project Assistants’ repertoire of human-centered practices and activities

Practice Activities comprising the practice (examples)

Promoting use – Present ProjectWeb at meetings and workshops– Prompt people to visit the project web site by sending

them emails with links to interesting news or impor-tant new documents

– Introduce new project members to the project web site

by sending them a ‘‘welcome’’ mail with a linkHelping and supporting users – Provide technical assistance and explain how to use the

system

– Solve problems when they arise– Answer ad hoc questions by email or phone

Establishing conventions of use – Refuse to distribute documents as email attachments

– Monitor the behavior of users– Point out inappropriate behavior

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn70

hierarchy of document folders on the web site to support the easy storing andretrieval of the project’s documents. One of the project assistants emphasizedthat it is impossible at the beginning of a project to design the folder hier-archy once and for all. It is necessary to continually adapt it as new types ofdocuments turn up:

The more and varied documents you upload, the more files, the more youalso need a clear classification. So, it is also very, very difficult to say,beforehand, what you’ll need. Actually you can’t do it until you have thedocument.

Third, if a project assistant is unable tomake the ITdepartment correct a designflaw or a programming error quickly enough, she sometimes tries to solve theproblem by inventing a ‘‘work-around’’ solution. For instance, there have beenrepeated problems with downloading PowerPoint files from the web sites:

It [the ProjectWeb application] is built up so that PowerPoint files open upas slide shows, which means that you can’t download them. And this issomething that many people need to do. They need to download them,print them, use parts of them, copy something, and what not. So, I’vemade a deal – people can just contact me, because I have all the files or canat least get them. [And then she will forward them as email attachments.]

By inventing such work-arounds the project assistants are able to compensatefor some of the built-in shortcomings of the system.Fourth, because user demands change over time, the project assistants

actively collect proposals for changes and modifications to the software.However, not being able to modify the code themselves, they have to pass thesuggestions on to the IT department either by contacting the responsibleprogrammer directly or by talking to the IT-supporter (more on this later).Generally, the project assistants have a strong sense of commitment to theirusers and seek to comply with their wishes quickly and effectively. As aconsequence, the project assistants sometimes find it particularly frustratinghaving to depend on the willingness of the IT-department to carry out thenecessary software modifications:

That means that you really have a responsibility for these people, foralways keeping it updated and for optimizing it. And especially if theycome to us with some ideas and suggestions on how to improve things. (...)This, sometimes, puts me on the spot, because ... I’m not web master in thesense that I can go in and change things ... and when I go to the IT-department and say: ‘‘Couldn’t you make it so and so?’’ No, they can’t justmake it like that. It’s not that it’s technically impossible, but because it issomething that they pick up and then prioritize before they [at some pointin time] make a new version. I find it deeply frustrating.

SENSEMAKING IN TECHNOLOGY-USE MEDIATION 71

The most enthusiastic project assistants actively attempt to influence thedesign of new versions of the software by, whenever they have the oppor-tunity, lobbying for their proposals at e.g., department meetings and designworkshops, or in more informal ways.The project assistants’ technology-centered mediation practices are sum-

marized in Table II below.

5.1.2. The IT-SupporterThe IT-supporter also plays a central role in the implementation and use ofProjectWeb, although she does not have any direct contact with the users ofthe system. Her role is to support the project assistants in their technology-related activities and to act as a link or a ‘‘translator’’ between the projectassistants and the IT department. One might best characterize her as a ‘‘meta-mediator,’’ because she intervenes in and shapes the project assistants’ tech-nology-use mediation. The IT-supporter’s repertoire of practices (related toProjectWeb) can also be divided into two groups. The first group of practicesfocuses on helping and supporting the project assistants while the secondgroup focuses on adapting and developing the technology (see Figure 2).

Human-Centered Mediation Practices. The project assistants’ knowledge ofinformation and communication technologies is quite limited. As noted,some of them have a lively interest in the technologies and like to ‘‘playaround’’ with them, but none of them have any formal technical training. Asa consequence, they depend on the IT-supporter in carrying out theirmediator role. The IT-supporter’s assistance involves the following practices.First, the IT-supporter helps and supports the project assistants with setting

up, customizing, and using ProjectWeb. For example, when the IT department

Table II. The Project Assistants’ repertoire of technology-centered practices and activities

Practice Activities comprising the practice (examples)

Creating an interesting web site – Play around with colors and graphics– Post pictures of people and events in the project

– Regularly publish news of interest to project membersImproving usability – Pay close attention to feedback from users

– Quickly identify and remedy problems with the layout

– Adjust the folder hierarchy to account for new types ofdocuments

Inventing work-arounds – Invent a ‘‘work-around’’ if a technical solution is

impossible in the short runCollecting requests for change – Collect user requests for change

– Ask the IT-supporter to make changes

– Pass requests on to the IT department– Lobby for their proposals

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn72

releases a new version of the system, she writes a user manual for the projectassistants and offers to teach them about the system’s new facilities on anindividual basis:

I’ve made a deal with them [the project assistants] that they get half a dayeach where I go in and coach them through. We don’t have any teachingfacilities. One would have to borrow a room where I could be with themten at a time, and that ... First of all, it’s difficult to pull ten out in one go.Furthermore, when there is something as personal as your own project website then you’re so focused on what can I use it for, that it is difficult toteach a group. That’s why I go around teaching each individually. I’vewritten a manual for them, which they don’t use very much, after all. It’seasier to walk down the hall and ask [me].

As the quote indicates, the offices of the IT-supporter and the project assis-tants are closely located, and this gives the project assistants easy access tothe IT-supporter.Second, she promotes knowledge sharing among the project assistants. She

does so by arranging a monthly meeting to discuss the use of ProjectWeb (aswell as other IT-related issues), and by encouraging the project assistants tolearn from each other:

It’s the same if I discover that one of the assistants has come up with abright idea [then I make sure of telling the others about it]. If someonecomes up and says ‘‘I want to make this,’’ then I say: ‘‘Go in and talk withLoretta, she has made something that is quite like what you want to do.’’That way they exchange ideas, right?

Third, she tries to establish appropriate conventions of design by monitoringand systematizing the project assistants’ work. For instance, she has for-mulated a set of guidelines for the ‘‘appropriate’’ administering of accessrights to the projects’ web sites. She also monitors how the project assistantsdesign their web sites and tries to promote ‘‘good’’ design principles. For

The IT-Supporter’s Technology-Use Mediation

Activities

Human-Centered Activities:

• Helping and supporting project as-sistants

• Promoting knowledge sharing • Establishing conventions of design

Technology-CenteredActivities:

• Performing difficult adaptations • Collecting requests for changes • Participating in systems design

Figure 2. The IT-supporter’s technology-use mediation practices.

SENSEMAKING IN TECHNOLOGY-USE MEDIATION 73

instance, in one case she criticized the way in which a project assistant haddesigned the menus on her web site:

For example, Ann, who had a huge number of sub-menus, so when her sitecame up, you had to draw the arrow this way [across], and it’s not naturalfor people to move that way across the screen. They don’t do it. When Idiscover this – that she does this kind of thing where she doesn’t thinkabout it – then I go over to her and tell her that perhaps it’s better to turnthe menu the other way around, so that it fits with the template.

The IT-supporter’s human-centered mediation practices are summarized inTable III.

Technology-Centered Mediation Practices. The IT-supporter also plays a keyrole in the customization and development of the technology itself, becauseshe is technically more proficient than the project assistants.First, she often helps out the project assistants by setting up new web sites

and performing some of the more difficult or complex adaptations. In addi-tion, she assists with identifying and fixing various technical problems.Second, as mentioned in the previous section, the project assistants and

their users generate a constant stream of ideas on how to improve the Pro-jectWeb software. The IT-supporter systematically collects these proposals,rates them, and passes them on to the IT department, so that they have thisinformation when they begin to develop a new version:

Every time someone [the project assistants] writes me making suggestions,it’s put in a folder [on her PC] called ‘‘wishes.’’ I made a presentation at aworkshop with the IT department, titled ‘‘Wishes from our side,’’ and itwas based on what suggestions I had received.

Table III. The IT-supporter’s repertoire of human-centered practices and activities

Practice Activities comprising the practice (examples)

Helping and supportingthe project assistants

– Instruct the assistants in how to set up ProjectWeb– Write user manuals

– Coach individual assistants– Answer technical questions on an ad hoc basis

Promoting knowledge sharing – Arrange monthly meetings to discuss IT-relatedissues

– Encourage assistants to share tips and ideas witheach other

Establishing conventions of design – Lay down guidelines for allocating access rights to

users– Keep an eye on how assistants design their web sites– Point out ‘‘design flaws’’ and suggest better solu-

tions

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn74

Q: Do you sort in them?

Yes, I prioritize them, at least

Third, she participates in the design of new versions of ProjectWeb, acting asa representative of the project assistants and as a sparring partner to theprogrammers and analysts.As Trigg and Bødker (1994) have argued mediators are inevitably ‘‘border

persons’’ and the reason for the IT-supporter’s critical role is her ability toact as a boundary spanner between the group of project assistants in PMUand the programmers and analysts in the IT department. She has, so tospeak, a foot in both camps. Her office is situated in PMU, she is familiarwith the work of the project assistants, and she knows their needs and wishes,their frustrations and their technical abilities; but at the same time, she is ableto understand and interact with the programmers and analysts, owing to herformal training and long experience with IT. Thus, we believe that withoutthe help of the IT-supporter, the project assistants would not have succeededas well in adapting the technology.The IT-supporter’s technology-centered mediation practices are summa-

rized in Table IV.

5.2. MAKING SENSE OF PROJECTWEB

So far our account is in agreement with the existing, but limited, literature ontechnology-use mediation and supports the claim that ‘‘mediators add valueby keeping technology usage aligned with user conditions and organizationalcircumstances’’ (Orlikowski et al. 1995, p. 442). This is, however, not thewhole story. By characterizing the mediators’ job as facilitating use,Orlikowski and others overlook the fact that mediators are not passive orneutral facilitators, but, on the contrary, actively involved in defining whatthe technology is, how it should be used, for what purposes, and by whom. Itis the essence of the mediator’s job to make sense of the technology – and thissensemaking is an active process where the mediator simultaneously enactsthe technology and an environment in which it fits.Our case shows that even when the ‘‘same’’ technology is implemented in

similar projects in the same organization, it may be interpreted and used verydifferently by different people. Thus, the project assistants have very differentconceptions of ProjectWeb and how it should be used. This is clearly reflectedin the way they talk about it, the layout and content of their web sites, theway they choose to allocate access- and uploading rights, etc. And all this, ofcourse, has important consequences for the usage of the system in the dif-ferent projects (Henriksen et al., 2002).

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In the following, we present two contrasting examples as a way of illus-tration. The first project assistant, Jean (a pseudonym), basically viewsProjectWeb as a broadcast medium and this notion pervades her thinkingabout how to design, manage and use the project web sites, which she isresponsible for. To the other project assistant, Maria (a pseudonym), Pro-jectWeb is rather a type of groupware system, which may support coopera-tion and interaction in her projects.We have selected these cases because they represent two typical ways of

conceptualizing and using ProjectWeb, and because Jean and Maria are bothfull of initiative and quite reflective persons.

5.2.1. Enacting ProjectWeb as a Broadcast MediumOf all the project assistants, Jean is probably the one who is most articulatewith regard to ProjectWeb. At a very early point in time, she had her own,relatively precise ideas about the nature of the technology and how she wouldadapt it. Later in the process, although she had refined and elaborated herideas, they had not changed substantially. Jean’s notion of ProjectWeb as abroadcast medium is bound up with her understanding of project manage-ment in BioCorp and her own role as project assistant.According to Jean, project management’s biggest challenge is to motivate

people and create a common sense of identity among project members, whobelong to different organizational units, have several other projects to takecare of, and are often distributed over five continents:

It is a question of people management rather than project management,because once you get people on board, you can motivate them, and getthem to all pull in the same direction, well, ya, then work becomes the leastof it.

Table IV. The IT-supporter’s repertoire of technology-centered practices and activities

Practice Activities comprising the practice (examples)

Performing difficult adaptations – Set up new web sites– Carry out complex tailoring tasks

– Identify and fix technical problemsCollecting requests for changes – Collect proposals from the project assistants

– Systematize and save the proposals– Rate the proposals and pass them on to the IT

departmentParticipating in systems design – Participate in meetings and workshops with IT

developers

– Act as a ‘‘representative’’ of the project assistants

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn76

She believes that the best way to motivate people is by keeping them wellinformed about what happens in the project. ‘‘Because information equalsmotivation, as we say.’’ As a result, she attaches great importance to broadlydisseminating information about important results, events and decisionswithin her projects. She sees herself as the person responsible for projectcommunication and she loves to be the center of attention:

So, they [the project members] are used to that information comes fromme. They always contact me and ask about almost anything. I’m the onlyone who can answer or otherwise I know who can answer. This is the partof the job that is most fun.

Given Jean’s self-concept and her notion of project management, it is hardlysurprising that she conceptualizes ProjectWeb as a broadcast medium, whichcan be used to facilitate a steady stream of information from the core groupin corporate headquarters to all project members, irrespective of their geo-graphical location or position in the organizational hierarchy. For instance,she makes a point of keeping not just managers, but also secretaries, labo-ratory technicians, etc. in the loop. To Jean, ProjectWeb is simply ‘‘theultimate project communication tool,’’ more efficient than traditional com-munication media and much more effective and interesting than other elec-tronic media like email (which is limited to text):

It has simply got something to do with the underlying philosophy aboutproject communication. And ProjectWeb has clearly demonstrated that itis an ideal communication tool, because you have the possibility of usinggraphics to make things a bit more lively – and this can include, what shallI say, the hard facts such as decisions made by top management, or it canbe a picture from a seminar that we’ve just had. So, it is very mixed, but theinformation goes out to everyone.

In a later interview, she directly compared ProjectWeb to mass media like TVand newspapers:

Imagine, eh, what newspaper do you prefer, Information or Jyllandsposten[two Danish newspapers]? Something loaded with text or something withpictures? It’s obvious, you can better relate to things with pictures. Themore, the better. (...) You can also see, all that happened last week in theU.S. What did people do? Did they read the papers or sit glued in front ofCNN and BBC World? Pictures say more than a thousand words.

Jean thinks of herself as a ‘‘webmaster.’’ She provides virtually all the contenton her project web sites, she decides how to edit and present it, and she evenwrites significant portions of it herself. She strives to make her web sitesdynamic, lively and interesting places to visit, for instance by regularlypublishing news about the project:

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We really want it to be a living forum, so people know that we regularlyupdate the site and that it’s worthwhile visiting it. They should have it as a‘‘favorite’’ [bookmark], which they check every day to see if ‘‘there issomething new.’’ (...) News, it could be case stories. They’re very good. Acase is when a doctor contacts BioCorp and says, ‘‘we’ve used this productand it really helped.’’ We send it out in the organization, and everyonecheers.

She has also thought a great deal about the notion of ‘‘organizational sto-rytelling’’ and how stories can be used to motivate people and create sharedfeelings of identity:

I recently got a hold of this book. It’s called ‘‘Organizational Storytelling.’’Exactly. How one goes about building the employees’ sense of identity.

As a consequence of these deliberations, she has asked key persons towrite stories about important events, hardships and victories in theirprojects’ histories. As an example, she refers to the story about theproduct Gamma (a pseudonym): how a single, heroic researcher – despitethe skepticism of her colleagues and the reluctance of her superiors –believed so much in her idea that she succeeded in overcoming allobstacles and creating a new miraculous drug, which turned out to be avery lucrative business:

Because there is a history behind this here gamma-product, and it isactually a researcher that has fought it through. (...) Because it wasactually her, her alone – that is the interesting part, when you have aproduct that can be associated with one person. One thing is, you have acompany that develops and introduces a product, but when there is onlyone person behind it all. It’s such a unique story that isn’t, so that ya, weshouldn’t miss a chance at..., at focusing on it.

By publishing such moving stories, Jean hopes to raise the spirit of theproject members and motivate them to work extra hard to achieve theircommon goals.In short, Jean’s interest in ProjectWeb lies in its affordances as a broadcast

medium, which may facilitate communication from the center (projectmanagement) to the periphery (project members). In practice, this means thatJean positions herself as the central gatekeeper who controls the access topublishing information on the project web sites.Consistently, Jean categorically dismisses the idea that ProjectWeb could

function as a platform for the exchange of documents and working papersamong members of the many work teams, which make up a project. Askeddirectly, Jean answers:

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn78

It goes out by mail. It goes out by mail. It goes out by mail. You shouldn’tuse the web for this. There is no reason to put drafts or working papers onthe web. People have to go out there and download it, instead of justopening their mail. (...) I know, I’ve heard it before all that about the flowof documents. But I think – I won’t use the word foolish – but I think it isextremely cumbersome. Really, I can’t see why it [the web] should be usedfor this, but it’s probably only me who hasn’t seen the light [and then shelaughs heartily].

With this answer, Jean clearly confirms that she defines ProjectWeb as abroadcast medium – and nothing else.

5.2.2. Enacting ProjectWeb as a Groupware SystemThe second project assistant, Maria, is more tentative and explorative in herapproach to ProjectWeb and it is more difficult for her to describe exactly whatProjectWeb means to her. Although she recognizes the advantages of usingProjectWeb to broadcast information, she is primarily interested in exploringhow ProjectWeb can be used to support collaboration within distributed workgroups, for instance by facilitating document sharing and co-authoring:

It’s mostly documents we use it for – for exchanging information in theform of documents that go back and forth [between the project partici-pants].

She further explained that she regards the project web site as a ‘‘commonplace’’ and that it is a shared responsibility to ensure that the content iscorrect and up to date:

But at the same time it [ProjectWeb] gives us a place where we can shareinformation – something which wouldn’t have been possible, if we didn’thave it. When something is put there, then it is no longer theirs buteveryone’s. So, we all have responsibility for making sure that the rightthings are there.

Undoubtedly, the reason for Maria’s interest in using ProjectWeb to supportdocument sharing has (at least partly) to do with the fact that her projects arejoint ventures involving close collaboration with partners in the U.S. as well asseveral European countries. BioCorp demands that all emails, which are sentoutside the company’s intranet, must be encrypted if they contain confidentialinformation. This rule makes it very cumbersome to exchange documents bymeans of mail attachments (which is otherwise a common practice in Bio-Corp). Therefore, Maria sees ProjectWeb as a good alternative to email:

But it is also because we at BioCorp have had it beaten into our brains howdangerous it is to send documents by mail. It [the project web site] is a much

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safer place to exchange documents than by throwing them in a fax or sendingthem around bymail. Andwe don’t fill ourmailboxes either, or get the nastymessages about taking up too much space, because we’ve put it on the webinstead.We’re very happywith it. I think it is really well suited. Andwe don’thave to cryptograph and pack it and send passwords all over the place, so itworks really well.

The result is that ProjectWeb is widely used to share information and docu-ments within the projects’ work teams (which in most cases encompass peoplefrom several organizations). One of the teammanagers explained, for instance,how they use it to share drafts of documents they are working on:

We have just, in connection with the pulmonary project, gotten a new web,which means that we have a web [site] with those we cooperate with in theU.S. And we use it to upload documents that are draft versions, and forreview,where everyone can go in and see the samedocument. (...) In that casewe simply use it to download documents and say ‘‘nowwe can all look at thesame thing at the same time,’’ instead of having to attach it to an email and ofhaving the document cryptographed and of having to remember the codeand what not. We have simply created a web where only key people haveaccess.

This practice is, of course, only possible, because Maria (unlike Jean) haschosen to distribute uploading rights to projectmembers with the need to sharedocuments. Another important factor is that version 3 of ProjectWeb includesa new facility, which allows authors to restrict read (and write) access to thedocuments they upload to the project web site. Without this affordance, Pro-jectWeb would not be a feasible alternative to email attachments. A projectmember explained why work group members would not want ‘‘outsiders’’ toread their drafts and working papers:

I too think that there is something psychological in uploading somethingthat isn’t quite finished, or if there is to be a discussion among somepeople. It has to be a little bit private. That’s one aspect of it, you don’twant to embarrass yourself in front of a large audience by sendingsomething out that is only half-finished – nor do you want to risk thatsomeone visits the site and reads documents that may not even be correct.One could go in and quote some data that turn out to be wrong because it[the document] isn’t completely finished. That was the second risk, and thethird risk is that it gets real messy if there are hundreds of small, half-completed documents lying around. (...) They have to be taken away andonly be accessible to an inner circle. But it is also because information canbe misused, not on purpose, but simply because people think that it iscorrect, if they can access it.

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The problem for Maria and her co-workers is that ProjectWeb is not reallydesigned to support collaboration. There are, for instance, no facilities forversion control or for locking documents (to prevent the ‘‘lost updateproblem,’’ which occurs when two people collaborating on a single documentoverwrite each other’s work (Fielding et al., 1998)). Such issues must besolved via agreements and rules regulating the use of the system. For in-stance, Maria told us that she and her ‘‘counterpart’’ in one of the partnercompanies had negotiated a set of rules for updating the project plan (a veryimportant document used to coordinate activities across the entire project):

But then we agreed that it was only me and my counterpart in theAmerican company that could do it [correct the project plan]. Also, be-cause it would not be practical if more downloaded a document andworked on it at the same time. So the way that we do it is that when youdownload a document you also delete it from the web site. You make yourcorrections and upload it again. (...) Then we know, if it is gone, thensomeone is in the process of updating it.

Of course, the missing mechanisms to support coordination make it difficultto use ProjectWeb for collaboration, but, nevertheless, Maria and her co-workers are satisfied with it and find it very useful.In summary, Maria has a strikingly different conception of ProjectWeb

than Jean. According to Maria ProjectWeb is a kind of ‘‘groupware system’’and its prime importance lies in its ability to support collaboration amongproject members, across distance and organizational boundaries. This alsomeans that Maria and Jean focus on different affordances of ProjectWeb andthis appears to be linked to how they ‘‘see’’ themselves and their role in theorganization. While Jean primarily pays attention to the facilities, whichenable her to create visually attractive web content and disseminate it on abroad scale, Maria focuses more on the facilities, which make it possible forproject members to share information and documents in a secure, private andrelatively easy way.

6. Discussion: Technology Adaptation and Sensemaking

This study supports some earlier research findings regarding technology-usemediation (Gantt and Nardi, 1992; Trigg and Bødker, 1994; Orlikowski et al.1995). First, mediators play a significant role in organizations by facilitatingthe ongoing, mutual adaptation between particular technologies and thespecific organizational context. Second, to facilitate this adaptation process,mediators employ a broad repertoire of different practices, some of whichaim at modifying the technology (see Tables II and IV), while others aim athelping users and forming appropriate conventions of use (see Tables I andIII). Third, mediation is usually a collective process, involving people with

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different backgrounds and skills. Fourth, mediators (as a group) act asboundary spanners, connecting the communities of users and IT people.They work on the borders between technology development and use and it istheir proximity to the context of use that enables them to ‘‘develop solutionsthat actually work’’ (Trigg and Bødker, 1994, p. 52).More importantly, however, the study also provides some new insights into

technology-use mediation. The findings highlight the fact that advancedCSCW technologies are equivocal and open-ended, i.e. they allow for severalpossible (and plausible) interpretations and they can be used for many dif-ferent purposes. These technologies are equivocal, not just because they makelimited sense, but also, and maybe more importantly, because they make‘‘many different kinds of sense’’ (Weick, 2001a, p. 148). For instance, whenProjectWeb was first introduced to the development projects in BioCorp,common interpretations of the technology included the following: ‘‘a graphicversion of email,’’ ‘‘an alternative to the LAN drives,’’ ‘‘an electronic doc-ument management system,’’ ‘‘some kind of library or archive,’’ ‘‘a fantasticcommunication tool’’ for widely disseminating information, and ‘‘a commonspace where we can share information.’’ Thus, the problem is that there are‘‘too many meanings, not too few’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 27). The problem isconfusion created by multiple meanings, not unawareness per se.Because new CSCW technologies are equivocal and open-ended, they

require ongoing sensemaking if they are to be managed, contextualizedand adapted to changing conditions of use. In other words, to carry outtheir project, mediators must construct a plausible and meaningful visionof how the technology should be used in their local context. This involvestwo distinct, but intimately related tasks. They must, on the one hand,explore the affordances of the technology to determine its potential usesand limitations. On the other hand, they must clarify the values, priorities,preferences and needs of the local use context. Clearly, this is not just amatter of discovery or interpretation (of the technological artifact), butalso of invention and social construction (of the technology-in-practice),and related to the mediator’s own situation. For instance, one of theissues Jean and Maria had to address was how ProjectWeb should fit inwith the existing communication media in the company, including tele-phones, email, LAN drives, ftp and video conferencing. Was ProjectWebessentially a one-way, broadcast technology or should it rather be viewedas an interactive medium, supporting two-way communication? Should itreplace file sharing via email or the existing LAN drives or should it onlybe used to disseminate news, information and official documents fromproject management? As we know, Jean and Maria reached very differentconclusions with regard to these and other questions.The case study draws attention to the fact that technology-use mediation is

a sensemaking process that unfolds gradually over time as mediators learn

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn82

how to match the affordances of the technology with the users’ (evolving)needs. In the beginning neither Jean nor Maria had a clear idea about thenature of ProjectWeb, what affordances the new technology had, or how toadapt and use it in their projects. It was only by working with the technologythat they gradually came to make sense of it and figure out how to contex-tualize and manage it. Jean stated it succinctly in one of her interviews:

We’ve learned over time what it can be used for, both seen from our andthe users’ perspective. So, it is a question of how things influence eachother so that requirements, needs and technology all mesh and it developsalong the way in the course of things.

It was an action-driven process, a kind of ‘‘learning by doing,’’ in whichexperimentation and retrospective sensemaking continually interacted andconditioned each other. Jean and Maria acted in order to think. They did notstart by analyzing the technology, specifying the requirements of the usesituation and making a plan. Instead, they simply began setting up thetechnology, defining roles and promoting its adoption. In the beginning, theiractions were informed by hunches and intuition rather than knowledge andwell-developed visions. They had, of course, some initial images of thetechnology and ideas of how it might be used, but these images and ideaswere highly ambiguous, underdeveloped and unclear. For instance, in ourfirst interview with Jean, she fluctuated between characterizing ProjectWeb asa ‘‘communication tool’’ (in the sense of a broadcast medium used to dis-seminate information from project management) and as an ‘‘informationtool’’ or electronic library, open 24 h a day, 7 days a week. It was not untilthey looked behind at what they had created and saw how people reacted toit and used it that they began to develop more precise and complete images ofwhat ProjectWeb meant and what it could be used to accomplish:

It is therefore important to get some user feedback. What is it that theyreally need? Because the longer you use it, and luckily we’ve used it fromthe beginning, you find out just what it is that people need. And of course,there are different needs and different uses, but one thing for sure is thatthe better we are at accommodating those who use it [ProjectWeb], themore [people] will end up using it.

An essential ingredient of successful technology-use mediation must neces-sarily be open-minded experimentation, probing, and trial and error, becausethe full range of a technology’s affordances does not become manifest untilpeople begin to exploit them (Hutchby, 2001a) and because it is never clearwhat the local needs and requirements are (or how they will evolve once thenew technology is introduced). In this situation, action is a precondition for

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sensemaking. By acting, that is, by setting up the technology in a certain wayand trying to shape how people use it, the mediators create an emergingtechnology-in-practice that they can then try to grasp and manage. This is anexample of what Weick (1995) calls ‘‘sensemaking as manipulation:’’

Manipulation is an operationalization of the advice, ‘‘leap before youlook’’ or the advice, ‘‘ready, fire, aim.’’ Manipulation is about makingthings happen, so that a person can then pounce on those created thingsand try to explain them as a way to get a better sense of what is happening.(Weick, 1995, p. 168)

Here, the focus is on the meaningful consequences of the action and thecreation of an environment in which the new technology becomes appro-priate, sensible and useful.The notion of sensemaking as manipulation emphasizes that technology-

use mediation is a process of enactment, i.e. a process where the mediators‘‘act out and real-ize their ideas’’ (Weick 2001c, p. 195). The mediators in thecase were not passive observers or interpreters of a self-evident technologicalartifact that presented itself to them as given and fixed. On the contrary, themediators actually took part in creating the technology by defining what itmeant and how it should be used. For instance, Jean defined ProjectWeb as abroadcast medium while Maria considered it to be a groupware system. Inboth cases they simultaneously constructed and interpreted their own tech-nology-in-practice. Weick refer to this interplay of construction and inter-pretation as enactment to stress the fact that, in organizational life, ‘‘peopleoften produce part of the environment they face’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 30). Theytake some action or get involved in something in order to change what ishappening, and the consequences of their actions – unintended as well asintended – becomes part of the ‘‘reality’’ they have to deal with later.A good example of this is the way in which Jean established ProjectWeb in

her projects. Because she considered ProjectWeb to be a broadcast medium,Jean restricted the number of people with uploading rights to a minimum,namely to herself and members of the core group2 (a total of 22 people out of413 with access to the web site). She also defined herself as ‘‘webmaster’’ andorganized the publishing process so that virtually all material would passthrough her hands before it was published. In this way, she created a situ-ation where ProjectWeb was used for one-way, top-down communicationonly. The effect was that ordinary project members perceived ProjectWeb tobe a broadcast medium controlled by project management and consequentlyadopted a rather passive role, as receivers of information. Jean, in turn,interpreted their passivity as a general lack of need for or interest in usingProjectWeb to support more distributed and interactive communicationpatterns:

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn84

Q: Who can upload things?

Uh, potentially everyone can. We haven’t though... I will do it, if someonetells me ‘I would also like to upload news.’ Then they will get access, but upuntil now no one has asked. But core group members are able to uploaddocuments. And in principle, everyone can. But the need for it hasn’t comeup yet.

Q: They haven’t asked for it?

They haven’t asked for it, no. That’s correct.

Q: But you haven’t just given it automatically?

Absolutely not. This is the way we manage, keeping tabs on it, with how itis actually used. But anyway, I mean, if we get a request, then they’ll beallowed. Simply because it is not that everyone comes up to us saying thatthey want to upload this and that. That’s not the way it works. It is moreof a question of us having to sell the system than it is a question of peoplestanding ready to pounce on it, right.

In this way, Jean enacted a self-fulfilling prophecy (see Figure 3). Her initialideas about ProjectWeb led her to centralize the process of publishing infor-mation; the result was that project members considered ProjectWeb to be aone-way, top-down communication medium; consequently they remainedpassive; and their reaction, in turn, confirmed Jean’s original expectations.

Project members adopt a passive role vis-à-vis ProjectWeb

Project members perceive ProjectWeb as a broadcasttechnology ‘owned’ by project management

ProjectWeb is used as a top-down, one-way communi-cation medium

Jean defines herself as “webmaster” and is very reluc-tant to give uploading rights to others

Jean perceives ProjectWeb as a broadcast technology

Figure 3. Technology-use mediation and self-fulfilling prophecies.

SENSEMAKING IN TECHNOLOGY-USE MEDIATION 85

Her expectations were confirmed, not only because she filtered informationand saw what she expected to see, but also – and more importantly – becauseshe had created an environment, which conformed to her initial ideas (how-ever vague and unclear they were). Weick (1995) summarizes the process thisway: When people ‘‘act on their expectations, they may enact what theypredict will be there. And when they see what they have enacted, using theirpredictions as a lens, they often confirm their prediction’’ (p. 152).Our point is not that self-fulfilling prophecies are inevitable or that the

cycle of expectation and confirmation shown in Figure 3 will keep repeatingitself indefinitely. Obviously, that will rarely be the case. There are severalpoints where the cycle can be broken, for instance if project members learnabout how ProjectWeb is used in other projects and start questioning the‘‘broadcasting’’ frame. Our point is simply that expectations play a crucialrole in the practice of the mediators, because they guide not only theirinterpretations of what is happening but also their ‘‘experiments’’ andinterventions in the situation. Mediators of a new, open-ended technologylike ProjectWeb do not have much firm knowledge to start with when theirgoal is to ‘‘figure out’’ what kind of technology they are dealing with and howto use it. This means that ‘‘their expectations cannot help but be a force thatshapes the world they try to size up’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 148). This reliance onanticipations and hypotheses – no matter how unfounded, speculative ortentative they may be – is reinforced by the fact that there is an imperative toact. Sensemaking, in this situation, is not a ‘‘scientific’’ process, in which adetached observer seeks to arrive at an ‘‘accurate’’ or ‘‘correct’’ description ofthe technology. Rather, the mediators must be pragmatic and simply seek toestablish a plausible image of the technology that will allow them to get onwith their project. The problem is, of course, that once a plausible image ofthe technology begins to develop, that image can be ‘‘terribly seductive’’ andtherefore resist change and revision (Weick, 2001d, p. 460).It is also important to understand that sensemaking is ‘‘grounded in

identity construction’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 18). The sensemaker’s awareness ofwho he or she is, what threatens his or her identity and what is available toenhance and confirm this concept of self all ‘‘provide a center from whichjudgments of relevance and sense fan out’’ (Weick, 2001d, p. 461).3 Forinstance, Jean’s enactment of ProjectWeb as a broadcast medium was clearlylinked to her identity as ‘‘the person responsible for communication’’ in herprojects. She was very fond of this self-concept and when she becameresponsible for managing ProjectWeb, she created a new role for herself as‘‘webmaster,’’ which maintained and confirmed her sense of identity. And astime went, this new role became a more and more integral part of heridentity. An important consequence of this process of identification was thatshe became so connected with her image of ProjectWeb as a broadcastmedium that she eventually refused alternative viewpoints:

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn86

By definition we don’t discuss the ProjectWeb. Did that a long time ago.You can see web sites where the last news is from 1999, and you can get theopposite extreme, where things are put up on an almost daily basis. So, wecan’t discuss it. It is given much different priority among the managers andthe [project] assistants. There are, all in all, many things that can’t bediscussed, because of the differences in opinion as to what project man-agement is all about.

Seen from the perspective of the organization, this situation is, of coursehighly problematic, but it helps explain how two markedly different versionof ProjectWeb (as technology-in-practice) could co-exist over a sustainedperiod of time within the same organization. It illustrates how the interplaybetween the dual processes of identification and enactment may, in somecases, reduce learning and work against the exploration of new ideas andalternative solutions.

7. Conclusion

The reported research has confirmed that technology-use mediation can playan important role in organizations by facilitating the implementation and useof new CSCW technologies. The ongoing user support and contextualizationof the technology performed by mediators can promote effective electroniccommunication and collaboration as user needs, preferences, and conditionschange over time.At the same time, however, this study indicates that the practice of tech-

nology-use mediation is much more complex than prior research suggests.Because advanced CSCW technologies are equivocal and open-ended,ongoing sensemaking is an essential, but usually overlooked, aspect of themediation process. The notion of sensemaking draws attention to the fact thatthe practice of technology-use mediation is highly situated, contingent, andconditioned by the knowledge, experience, and identity of the mediators. It isa process of learning, exploration and construction, which is essentially open-ended and indeterminate. For example, this study demonstrates how differentmediators – dependent on their identity, previous experience, and local cir-cumstances – may develop very different interpretations of the ‘‘same’’ tech-nology and, in effect, enact strikingly different technologies-in-practice.In other words, there is no guarantee that the process of technology-use

mediation will lead to consensus about the ‘‘nature’’ of the technology, orthat it will necessarily result in an ‘‘optimal’’ use of the technology. On thecontrary, one should not ignore the risk that the process may lead to theestablishment and institutionalization of use patterns that – seen from anorganizational or management point of view – are sub-optimal or evencounterproductive.

SENSEMAKING IN TECHNOLOGY-USE MEDIATION 87

Our study shows that mediators can exert considerable influence on theadoption and use of a particular technology. Little is known, however, abouthow power and politics influence the mediation process (and vice versa), orabout how best to organize and manage the process so that organizationalgoals and priorities are met. Undoubtedly, this will to a large degree dependon the characteristics of the technology (e.g. how novel and how flexible it is)and the specifics of the organizational setting (e.g. the size and structure ofthe unit, previous experience with similar technologies, management style,and organizational culture). Thus, further research should pay more atten-tion to power and aim at understanding how to support, organize andmanage the work of technology-use mediation under different technological,organizational and cultural circumstances to make it as innovative andeffective as possible.In this paper, we have tried to provide a fresh theoretical perspective on

technology adaptation by combining Weick’s notion of sensemaking with theconcept of affordances developed by Hutchby. We believe that our exami-nation of the ProjectWeb experience highlights the investigative value of thisperspective. It allowed us to develop an understanding of how mediatorscope with the inherent ambiguities and uncertainties associated with theintroduction of new technologies. The notion of sensemaking provides aparticularly powerful analytic lens because it keeps together thinking andaction. The sensemaking perspective foregrounds meaning, but it also re-minds us that while expectations and beliefs guide and inform action, theyare themselves the products of action. When people enact their ideas, theymake things happen and set events in motion, which in turn generate newcontextual cues, create new opportunities for constructing meaning, and leadto new actions.

Notes

1. The term affordance is widely used within the fields of industrial design, human-

computer interaction and CSCW and ‘‘has taken on a life far beyond the originalmeaning’’ (Norman, 2005). However, our use of the term is based on the work of theBritish sociologist Ian Hutchby (Hutchby, 2001a, b, 2003; Rappert, 2003) and differsfrom the common use in HCI and CSCW in that it is much closer to the original defini-

tion. The concept of affordance was first introduced by the American psychologist JamesJ. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the possibilities for action, which objects in the worldoffer to different species (humans or animals). ‘‘The affordances of the environment are

what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill’’ (Gibson,1979, p. 127). According to Gibson, these affordances are objectively measurable andexist independently of the individual’s ability to recognize them. Within HCI and other

design-oriented fields the term has taken on a new meaning and denotes perceived affor-dance as opposed to real or objective affordance. For instance, Donald Norman (1988),in his influential book The Design of Everyday Things, uses the term to describe the

jØrgen p. bansler & erling havn88

properties of a designed object (e.g. a door handle) which indicate how that object can

be used.2. It was a general request from PMU management that core group members should have

uploading rights, but few core group members in Jean’s projects uploaded anything.3. At the same time, it should be stressed that sensemaking is basically a social process.

Identity is constituted out of the process of interaction and sensemaking is always influ-enced by the actual, implied or imagined presence of others. Sensible meanings tend tobe those for which there is social support (Weick, 1995).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of BioCorp who participatedin this research, as well as the editor and anonymous reviewers for theirvaluable suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. Special thanks alsoto Hanne W. Nicolajsen, Dixi L. Henriksen and Jens K. Pors for theirassistance in the fieldwork. This study was supported in part by a grant fromthe Danish Research Councils (grant no. 99-00-092).

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