Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory

Where my earlier work (Orlikowski, 1992, 1996) used practice theory to inform my understanding of phenomena (highlighting the recursive duality of technology in use), my later work (Orlikowski 2000, 2002; Schultze and Orlikowski 2004) used practice theory more explicitly to reconceptualize the nature of the phenomenon (articulating how technologies-in-practice are constituted in recurrent practices; proposing an enacted view of knowing in practice; and articulating a practice perspective on network relations). In my most recent work (Orlikowski 2007; Orlikowski and Scott 2008; Scott and Orlikowski 2009), I have been particularly influenced by Latour (1992, 2005), Schatzki (2002, 2005), and Suchman (2007) to use practice theory to revisit and reconfigure the ontological status of the phenomenon in question — in this case, technology at work (Orlikowski, 2007). This conceptual turn shifts away from studying the design and/or use of technology in the workplace (a framing that still posits a separate artifact situated in some social context, thus inscribing an ontological distinction between the social and the technical) towards studying sociomaterial practices that perform social and material relations together.

Such a reconfiguration entails, as Suchman (2007, p. 257) notes, a move beyond “an ontology of separate things that need to be joined together,” and towards a starting place that “comprises configurations of always already interrelated, reiterated sociomaterial practices.” How to do this is quite challenging empirically, as my co-author, Susan Scott, and I have come to appreciate in our recent research project on social media (Scott and Orlikowski, 2009). We have begun by examining the sociomaterial conditions of user-generated content in various travel reviewing websites, and how this dynamic materiality configures and reconfigures the practices and possibilities of different modes of engagement by multiple users. Emerging from our analysis are some insights into how social media are far from being neutral channels or passive mediators of user content, and how the distributed and collective sociomaterial practices that constitute them are integrally and actively part of the knowledge produced, the relations enacted, and the accountabilities that are rendered consequential.

A number of challenges accompany the use of practice theory to conceptualize organizational phenomena. These have to do with the move intrinsic to practice theory of focusing attention on the consequentiality of everyday action and the relationality of phenomena. One such challenge is to problematize and then theorize the constitutive processes of enactment, rather than taking for granted the existence of discrete entities. Another is to find language and logic that adequately express the recurrent and relational nature of everyday practices.

While organization scholars have been increasingly examining action and process — ever since Karl Weick urged us to attend to organizing rather than organization (Weick 1969) — much of organization theory remains largely focused on entities (Chia and Holt 2006; Østerlund and Carlile 2005; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). In the boxes and arrows figures so prevalent in organization theory, the boxes are always labeled while the arrows are often unadorned by any text, as if they speak for themselves. Moreover, entities are often reified, considered sufficiently meaningful independent of their use or performance. In practice theory, by contrast, the emphasis is on the arrows, on the relationships and performances that produce outcomes in the world. To put it another way, practice theory theorizes the arrows so as to understand how actions produce outcomes. Thus, when viewing routines or technology use through a practice lens, the specific outcomes of stability or change are seen as consequential only in the context of the dynamic relations and performances through which such (provisional) stability and change are achieved in practice in particular instances.

Readers and reviewers at times find this focus confusing. They want to know what knowledge has been acquired or what resources are being used rather than how knowing is achieved or action is resourced. Many expectations rest on the understanding that, for instance, a resource is a thing or quality that either is, by nature, a resource or has become a resource. Given such expectations, it is unsettling to take on the notion that a resource is defined not by what it is but by the practices through which it is enacted as a resource, and that such enactment as a resource is an ongoing and thus necessarily temporary accomplishment (Feldman, 2004; Feldman & Worline, 2010). Similarly, for many, technologies are objects in the world with definite and independent material features and functions. The premise that characteristics and capabilities of technologies are relational and enacted in practice is a challenging one to absorb when confronted with the manifest physicality of assembly lines, CT scanners, and computers. Consequently, the idea of sociomateriality, which signals that technologies do not stand alone with certain inherent properties but that their material characteristics and capabilities become salient only in relation with specific social practices can be hard to grasp (Scott and Orlikowski, 2009).

Practice theorists often use entities analytically (e.g., performative and ostensive aspects of routines, or technological artifacts and genres of communication) and, thus contribute to the confusion. Practice scholars can feel caught between a rock and a hard place. The bracketing of entities is typically done for analytical convenience, but the move may be misunderstood by scholars not working in a practice tradition. As a result, attention can become riveted on the entities at the expense of attending to and understanding the dynamic and relational practices that constitute such entities.

We note that practice theorists have tended to deal with these challenges in multiple ways. One strategy is to create new words: habitus and structuration come immediately to mind. The other is to write sentences that seem to go in circles: “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (Bourdieu, 1990: 53) or “structure as the medium and outcome of the conduct it recursively organizes” (Giddens, 1984: 374). While neologisms and recursive logic may be challenging to parse, they serve the purpose of allowing the explicit theorizing of consequential, nondualistic and mutually constitutive relations that enact the world through everyday practice. These strategies thus afford access to the analytic power and distinctive value of practice theory.

Taking practice seriously in organizational research also requires a tolerance for complexity and ambiguity as it requires engaging with the everyday realities of organizational life that are rich with contingency, multiplicity, and emergence. A commitment to a practice lens requires deep engagement in the field, observing or working with practitioners as they go about their work. Collecting and analyzing such data is time-consuming and intellectually challenging, while the writing and publishing of practice theoretic accounts is complicated because practice accounts do not always conform to some readers’ and reviewers’ expectations of conventional management science.

Given these challenges, it is reasonable to ask why bother? What is the payoff for all of this effort and difficulty? Our experience with practice theory suggests at least two reasons why it is worth the trouble. First, practice theory provides the basis for powerful theoretical generalizations, and second, practice theory has the capacity to offer important practical implications for practitioners.

The theoretical generalizations produced through the use of practice theory are not predictions in the conventional sense, but may be better understood as principles that can explain and guide action. They articulate particular relationships or enactments (e.g., technologies-in-practice, performative and ostensive routines) that offer insights for understanding other situations while being historically and contextually grounded. Theoretical generalizations are different from statistical generalizations in that they explain situated dynamics not universal variation. While each context of study is different, the dynamics and relations that have been identified and theorized can be useful in understanding other contexts. In this way, theoretical generalizations are powerful because they travel.

Lave’s (1988) development of “cognition in practice” is a good example of how a theoretical generalization based on practice theory can travel. By studying people who are highly skilled in using mathematics in their daily practices, even though they may score poorly on standardized math tests, her scholarship allowed us to see the mutually constitutive nature of cognition and action. This deep theoretical insight has travelled considerably, promoting new insights into communities of practice (Orr, 1996; Brown and Duguid, 1998; Østerlund and Carlile, 2005), boundary objects (Bechky, 2003a, 2003b, Carlile, 2002, 2004) and knowing in practice (Orlikowski, 2002; Nicolini, forthcoming, Nicolini et al. 2003; Gherardi, 2006), while also providing scholars with ways of helping organizations address problems associated with knowledge production and sharing.

Consequently, practice theory is practical. The findings and insights of practice scholarship can identify organizational levers for enabling change in practices, while supporting and reinforcing those practices that are working. These levers identified by practice theory are neither exogenous to nor independent of the organization — but are grounded in the micro-dynamics of everyday interactions and highlight the importance of all participants’ actions in producing organizational outcomes. Organizational interventions that are informed by such grounded micro-dynamics can be more directly relevant to the particular sites and particular practitioners involved.
Conclusion

The interest in a practice lens within organization studies is an important development in the range of ideas and approaches that scholars use to study organizational phenomena. In focusing on the empirics of practice, we understand organizational phenomena as dynamic and accomplished in ongoing, everyday actions. In focusing on practice theory, we understand the mutually constitutive ways in which agency is shaped by but also produces, reinforces, and changes its structural conditions. In focusing on practice ontology, we understand that it is practices that produce organizational reality, or to paraphrase William James, “it is practices all the way down” (1898/1956:104).

The entailments of taking on a practice lens within organization studies allow us to see that theorizing practice is itself a practice, one that produces particular kinds of consequences in the world, for which we as theoretical producers are responsible. Academia plays an important role in training scholars and practitioners to see and value the complexity and dynamics of the sociomaterial world. Theories that rely on linearity and independence of discrete entities are ill-equipped to deal with such contemporary realities as multiplicity, transience, and dispersion (Law and Urry, 2004). Practice theory with its emphasis on explaining the emergent constitution of the sociomaterial world through the micro-dynamics of everyday life in organizations is an approach that can allow us to make this contribution.

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