Epilogue: Materiality Concept in the History of Management Studies

We have focused on the meta theories, which have been referred to using the concept of materiality in recent management studiesManagement studies. On the other hand, the doctrine of elucidating the relationship between technology and organization is not a new perspective. It was already the emergent perspective in Markus and Robey (Manage Sci 34(5):583–598, 1988 [14]). Moreover, the idea of elucidating the effect of technology on organization has been shared by management studies in general for a long time (e.g., Barley in ASQ, 31[1]: 78–108, 1986 [1]). According to Daniel Robey, recent technology researchTechnology research has lost sight of technology as a specific object of observation (Robey et al. in J Assoc Inf Syst 14(7):379–398, 2013 [15]). Technology researchTechnology research in management studies reached its peak when Eric Trist, who had been working at the Tavistock Institute, suggested socio-technical systemsSocio-technical systems and Joan Woodward, who criticized socio-technical systemsSocio-technical systems, conducted South Essex research. However, their researches were positioned as the primitive stage of contingency theoryContingency theory and were given the critical label of technological determinismTechnological determinism. Afterwards, to avoid technological determinismTechnological determinism, the concept of technology was abstracted and conceptualized by Charles Perrow’s information processing model and James D. Thompson’s technical core concept. Ironically, however, the more advanced the sophisticated abstraction, the more difficult it becomes to observe the concrete technology. In this epilogue, we revisit the classical studies executed by Trist and Woodward as meta theories within management studiesManagement studies.