Dual scripts and incongruent innovation: implementing social technology in homecare services

Despite continuous policy efforts, implementing technology in healthcare services remains a precarious venture. This study reports from a collaborative research and development project in Norway that aimed to implement a social technology – Komp – in community homecare services. Originally designed for social contact in the family setting, the project repurposed Komp as a solution connecting homecare services to home-dwelling older adults for service provision. Using the concept of script, we apprehend Komp as dually scripted: aiming to be different solutions to different user groups. Drawing on 68 fieldwork sessions conducted over a two-year period and 16 semi-structured interviews across four homecare teams, we trace Komp's implementation towards a split position between implemented and not implemented. We unpack this position using the dual script concept, first by highlighting how Komp's original family script primed homecare professionals' de-inscription of its new service script. Second, we emphasise the project's failure to collaboratively construct the service script, which impeded implementation. Third, we showcase how opposition to Komp as a service solution arose during implementation because of the coexistence – and superimposition – of the two scripts. While these thematic emphases remain specific to this implementation process, our study offers empirical and theoretical insights on the movement of multi-purpose technologies into service contexts and co-creation projects as vehicles for service innovation.