C. O. Scharmer: Wanda, what underlying question does your work address?

Wanda Orlikowski: If you want to understand how I think about my work, you need to understand structuration theory. It profoundly influenced me, it really touched a chord. I think it helped me understand how it is that we create the systems and the structures that then shape us, that in some way get away from us. But in understanding how we create and recreate our structures there’s the possibility for changing them… What are the conditions, the triggers, the motivators that allow people to really change the way they work?

COS: So what is it that you encountered with that question?

Wanda Orlikowski: A lot of disappointment.

COS: A lot of disappointment, how come?

Wanda Orlikowski: Because most people don’t do things very differently. Most of my studies, if you look at them, are more about people doing more of the same… …for ‘we accept the reality with which we are presented.’

If there are people with vision and courage who are willing to see an alternative and then create conditions that make a space for people to act differently, then perhaps others may begin to see that it is possible to act differently, that there are alternative ways of acting…

This for me is a fundamental insight -- that the social systems and the structural properties of these social systems are not "out there," independent of us, but that they are created every day through our thinking and through our actions. So, we literally bring structures to life…

Everybody gets into their cars and they drive along the road. If you observe the behavior of the system, people stay in lanes, stop at traffic lights, follow the rules of the road, etc. If you step back from the system you begin to see there’s a pattern, a structural arrangement that is constituted through people individually, and collectively, enacting particular rules and resources of the road...

By looking at practice you are also looking at the social context and the institutions that get created through the practice. So it’s not that you’re just looking at practice... When I look at practice I look at what people actually do. How they act in the world. As a result, I am very interested in their social constructions, their mental models of the world, and what interests they have...

Technologies aren’t neutral tools with neutral objectives. We know that when people appropriate technologies into the work places, they end up using them in all sorts of ways that go way beyond what the designers ever anticipated. We know that there is an evolution, an emergence of different and new uses of technology that change how people work, and that this in turn changes the technology and its uses. It’s recursive… Technologies are evolving, changing, emerging — they are not stable. Likewise, our practices of use are constantly evolving, constantly changing as we change…

But coming back to the blind spot, there is this idea in society in general, and certainly in the organizations field, that the truth is out there. There is this idea with respect to social reality that there is a truth, the truth to be found, and it’s out there, and it’s external, and universal, and stable, and fixed, and independent. And that what we need to do is find it, and all will be saved, explained, etc. I think that idea been a big blind spot...

A lot of the limits to my own work are practical. I don’t have enough time to study situated practice...

For me, the purpose of science is to deepen understanding. To deepen understanding so as to allow people to make a difference in the world…

I would like to be a little more actively involved with helping people interpret and help implement some possible changes that come out of the insights I’ve gotten through doing the research. I have shifted my position over time on this. I would not have said that earlier in my career…

For some people there is a big identity crisis where they are struggling to figure out who they are now — that is, "who am I, if I’m not vice-president at Corporation XYZ?" What I’ve been looking for across these studies is a set of common practices that these virtual workers engage in that helps them deal with this new way of working…

I’m really interested in how we can enact things differently, how we can use technology in innovative ways to do things differently. So perhaps I could be a little more strategic about looking for situations where there are real possibilities for enacting fundamentally different ways of working… Then by watching, helping, studying, and observing over time, we might be able to see the emergence and evolution of different ways of working.

Awareness is the first and critical thing. But you also have to have people act on their awareness. Unless people act, things won’t change. Because it’s what people do that makes the difference… it’s always awareness and action, the willingness to act on that awareness...