Abstract
Information technology transforms work in all its variety into uniform inscriptions that are combinable across time and space. Its digitized codings and classifications are immutable mobiles which claim to represent the true form of work to management and workers alike. Activity based costing is an accounting technology that produces such immutable mobiles. It promises to capture the essence of work and transport it unchanged from the factory floor to the manager’s suite. We use this accounting technology as an exemplar to trace the rhetoric of how new worlds and new logics of work are created with the inspiration of information technology. We do so by analyzing a central story with which activity based costing justifies itself and makes its truth claims, and by identifying the kind of world, organization and work it creates. By expanding and extending the plot of the story told by the principal proponents of activity based costing, we expose some contradictions of this powerful system of representation and locate it within a larger narrative that promises progress through information technology.
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© 1996 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Boland, R.J., Schultze, U. (1996). From Work to Activity: Technology and the Narrative of Progress. In: Orlikowski, W.J., Walsham, G., Jones, M.R., Degross, J.I. (eds) Information Technology and Changes in Organizational Work. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34872-8_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34872-8_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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