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Integrating technology with work practices in primary care: challenges to sustainable organizing “from within”

Isabel Alexandra Brandenberger (Department of Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway)
Mervi Anneli Hasu (Department of Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway)
Monika Nerland (Department of Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway)

The Learning Organization

ISSN: 0969-6474

Article publication date: 5 October 2023

Issue publication date: 9 May 2024

293

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to generate a better understanding of how challenges and opportunities for sustainable change during digitalization relate to the organizing work of change agents mandated to facilitate technology adoption from within local work organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

This study examines the work of welfare technology coordinators, health-care professionals who are mandated to facilitate the use of technologies in home-based services in a Norwegian city. Data comprise ethnographic observations of meetings and work practices, interviews and documents collected over one year. A practice-based approach was applied to analyze how the welfare technology coordinators go about integrating technologies with the work practices, and the forms of negotiations this work implies in their work community.

Findings

The analysis identified four sets of practices in the coordinators’ work: exploring and integrating new technologies into work practices, legitimizing aims and values, formalizing routines and responsibilities and critically considering existing and envisioned service practices. Through these practices, emerging problems and disconnections in the service organization were attended to in a continuous manner.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the literature by examining the work of internal change agents mandated to facilitate multiple and simultaneous technology adoption and demonstrates the importance of recognizing the continuous efforts and negotiations of these agents as significant to sustainable organizing.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway under Grant number 296019. The authors would like to thank the participants in the study for their contributions, and the anonymous reviewers as well as our colleagues in the CORPUS team for their helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of the paper.

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Citation

Brandenberger, I.A., Hasu, M.A. and Nerland, M. (2024), "Integrating technology with work practices in primary care: challenges to sustainable organizing “from within”", The Learning Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 317-336. https://doi.org/10.1108/TLO-01-2023-0009

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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