Abstract
The prevailing view regarding working practices mediated by Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) is that companies introduce a new activity when its merits outweigh the disadvantages. However, such a functionalistic view ignores most aspects of organizational life. The aim of the present study is to analyze the generating mechanism of ICT-mediated working practices in a spatially distributed organization. Improving the imbrication model of Leonardi (2011) based on critical realists’ analytical dualism, we focus on the contribution of the interplay between human agency and technical objects to the mechanism. The case study of a satellite office illustrates that an agency’s relation to the two types of material properties, intransitive materiality and transitive materiality, generates ICT-mediated working practices in the satellite office.
