Technology: Understanding corporate life

[From Introduction] Perhaps it is because of the ubiquity and taken-for-grantedness of technology in corporate and everyday life that Organisation Studies (OS hereafter) has never really quite got to grips with the world of machines and technology. Whatever the reasons for this hesitancy, the historical trend in OS reveals a tendency to insist on a distinct epistemological separation of the social/cultural from the technological, and the pursuit of an understanding of how these two realms interact at the organisational and societal level. For well over 100 years, the same mantra has been chanted: culture is concerned with people, agency, and desire whilst technology is to do with all things non-human and mechanical.