Ignoring and collective passivity in relation to information systems : How actors avoided engagement with data about wait times in Swedish healthcare

• Although digital technology (DT) is often introduced with the aim of enhancing organizational knowledge transfer and learning, these aims often fail to materialize. The information systems (IS) literature attributes such unexpected outcomes to inappropriate technology design and implementation, as well as to overuse, misuse, and non-use of technology. However, we know little about how actors misuse or fail to use technology and data, thereby failing to acquire and act upon the knowledge necessary to achieve organizational learning. Leveraging the literature on strategic ignorance, we explore how actors expected to use technology for learning purposes justify their non-engagement with it. Studying an implementation of a DT with the purpose of facilitating organizational learning on basis of provided data in health care, we identify seven ignoring justifications through which the target users of the DT avoided key knowledge acquisition and knowledge-based action activities. These sensemaking behaviors accumulated to a state of collective passivity in relation to the DT. Our conceptualization contributes to and connects theories of organizational learning in the IS literature and strategic ignoring.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Data

Health care

Ignoring

Knowledge transfer

Non-learning

Organizational learning

Performance measurement

Silence

Publikations- och innehållstyp

art (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)