Technological Grounding Enrolling Technology as Adiscursive Essay Example

study examines the strategic utilization of technological grounding by powerful actors to gain support for postmaster integration and justify Quest's cultural dominance in the US West. The results demonstrate that core technologies can be effectively used to portray one organization's cultural supremacy as natural and inevitable, disregarding empirical evidence and practical aspects of postmaster cultural integration.

Culture and Technology in Merging Organizations: Technological Grounding
Numerous studies have found that incompatible corporate cultures often lead to the failure of many mergers. This has been observed in the cases of the mergers between Connecticut General and Insurance Company of North America (Cartridge and Cooper, 1993), Daimler-Benz and Chrysler (Villas and Steers, 2000), and AOL and Time Warner (Leonard' and Jackson, 2004).

According to Weber and Maniple (2003, 56), cultural differences in merging organizations can lead to misunderstandings, emotional reactions, and increased conflict within the newly merged organizations. However, powerful actors involved in organizational mergers may be hesitant to give up on a deal despite the challenges stemming from cultural incompatibility (Cartridge and Cooper 1993; Weber, Sheehan, and Ravel 1996).

Despite the challenges posed by cultural differences, organizations still choose to merge. In the context of post-merger integration problems, culture is considered a significant factor, and it deserves more attention as a metaphor for understanding organizations. Aliveness (2002) explores two prominent perspectives in organizational literature regarding culture. The first perspective views organizational culture as a variable.

According to studies, culture in organizations can be manipulated by influential individuals to achieve strategic goals (Pettier 1979; Scheme 1992; Sorenson 2002). This approach is appealing to researchers studying mergers and acquisitions as it suggests that cultures can be altered during the merger

process if required, as noted by Walter (1985).

Viewing culture as a variable suggests that technology is also a variable (Poison and Myers 1995), shaping our understanding of the connection between technology and culture. How these variables are aligned within an organization determines whether the relationship is perceived as technology being influenced by culture (Openings and Groves 1986; Briefly and Spender 1995) or culture being influenced by technology (Barley 1986; Rollicks 1992; Full 1993).

When looking at mergers, culture is often seen as a variable that influences the integration of different organizations. However, technology is also viewed as an independent factor that impacts cultural integration. This means that when cultures clash, technologies also clash. Another perspective is to see organizations as cultures in their own right, rather than having separate cultures.

From this point of view, culture is a process that is formed by the implementation of work and communication practices. These practices define an organization and therefore, postmaster alignment refers to the need for members to make significant and structured changes throughout the entire organization in order to achieve successful integration. However, these are the exact types of changes that managers often try to minimize in order to avoid culture conflicts.

When organizations experience cultural convergence challenges, it is not just a clash of cultures, but a conflict within the practices that make up the organization itself. From a constitutive perspective, technology is not simply a variable, but a practice that integrates with other work and communication practices to form a culture. Put simply, culture is closely connected to the material aspects of the technology produced, distributed, or serviced by the organization.

The relationship

between material and social elements in science and technology has been explored in social studies. Fissure (1987) observed how multiple elements align in scientific work, while Law (1991) and Law and Hussars (1999) discussed the alignment of heterogeneous elements in technology design through actor-networks. When the material and social aspects are seen as mutually constitutive, meaning becomes sediment or embedded in the artifact (Leonard-Barton 1988; Star and Booker 2002), making it challenging to recognize alternative functions beyond its current use.

According to Leonard (2007), technologies are a contributing factor to the formation of organizational culture. When technologies have a significant impact on shaping a culture, the organization is considered technologically grounded. This implies that the organization's image, identity, and relationship with its surroundings are closely connected to the functionality of the technology it develops, offers, or promotes, rather than just incorporating technology into its culture.

The idea of technological grounding implies that technologies, which have symbolic meaning and are formed through physical and social actions, influence the way organizations are discussed and understood. This means that organizational cultures can be deeply connected to the material, social, and symbolic aspects of their primary technology as expressed through the words and actions of its members. When this happens, we can describe these cultures as being technologically grounded.

All organizational cultures are on a continuum of technological grounding, rather than being either completely in or out. The more integral a technology is to an organization's functioning, the more technologically grounded the organization will be. Early organizational contingency theorists supported this idea, stating that the more central the technology, the more crucial it was for the organizational structure to

be tailored to its characteristics (Woodward, 1958; Thompson 1967; Proper 1970).

It is crucial to take into account the significance of an organization's "core technology" in design efforts, as stated by Scheme (1992, 36). The more vital a technology is for the organization's survival, the more it contributes to the development and continuity of the organization's culture. Scheme (1992, 36) explains that "An organization that is successful because of its mastery of a given technology develops its self-image around that technology." Telecommunications and "high-technology" organizations offer some of the most evident examples of technological foundation.

Telecommunications companies, with their roots in AT (whose core technologies are often seen as outdated by today's standards), are renowned for their steadfast cultures that prioritize stability, standardization, and service, even amidst growing competition (Deal and Kennedy 982; Peters and Waterman 1982; Canter 1983). Conversely, high-technology companies that manufacture constantly evolving technologies are distinguished by their dynamic cultures, which foster change and innovation (Kidder 1981; Sundae 1992; Downey 1998).

There is a potential issue in organizational mergers or acquisitions when different organizations are grounded in different technologies. This can lead to technological incompatibility, which in turn implies incompatible organizational cultures and practices. According to Robed and Bothered (1999), resistance to cultural integration may arise when a new technology is introduced into an organizational culture that is already accustomed to significantly different technologies.

According to the authors, it is possible for the same artifact to have different social meanings within the same culture, leading to contradictory consequences with the use of information technology (176). Weidman, Jacks, and Pilot (1988) argue that technology does not inherently align with different cultural contexts (90).

As a result, merging two organizations with different core technologies may cause problems with cultural integration due to technical convergence.

This article aims to examine the process in which one organization's culture prevails over another after a merger of two technologically focused organizations. Scholars in the field of sociology of science and technology consistently argue that no technology is inherently superior or inferior to another, as its effectiveness is determined by the social context in which it is developed and used.

In light of this perspective, we explore the strategies employed by influential organizational actors to merge the cultures of two technologically-oriented organizations. We start by examining the case studies of US West and Quest, both of which had distinct cultures rooted in their core technologies. Subsequently, we address the challenges arising from the merger of these technological foundations and its impact on cultural integration.

In the study, we investigate how influential actors at Quest were successful in incorporating key features of their core technology into public discussions, leading to the domination of Quest's ultra over that of US West. The methodology employed in this study involved a single case design, which enabled the development of a revelatory case. This type of case allows researchers to examine and analyze a phenomenon that has received limited attention or is new, while also addressing "how" questions (Yin 1984).

The insufficient examination of the relationship between an organization's core technology and culture in studies of postmaster integration prompted us to utilize an embedded design methodology. Embedded case designs involve conducting analyses at various levels to provide comprehensive and credible accounts of organizational processes (Eisenhower 1989). Thus, this study

concentrates on the merger of US West and Quest, examining three levels of analysis: (1) public discourse by company officials regarding the merger, (2) changes in organizational practices and policies before and after the merger, and (3) worker responses during the phase of postmaster integration.

To ensure a comprehensive analysis of the merger's significant technological and cultural aspects, we employed various data collection techniques, namely archives, textual analysis, and interviews (Eisenhower 1989). Our three primary sources of data were: (1) published materials concerning the merger, (2) original documents generated by US West and Quest describing their respective technologies and cultures, and (3) interviews conducted with public relations officials from the recently merged company, which provided us with the official narrative of the merger.

Published materials about the merger were plentiful. We gathered articles and reports from daily newspapers using two archival databases, Lexis-Nexis and Firsthand. The collection spanned from June 1998 to June 2002, covering two years before and after the merger in June 2000. We considered major national US newspapers as well as major newspapers from the western region.

The database collected articles that comprised public discourse about the company and merger from public officials, industry analysts, as well as reflections on the merger by workers at US West and Quest before and after it. The collection consisted of approximately 150 news articles that met the criteria of mentioning either of the companies and discussing the merger or its possibility in the years leading up to it.

The Postmaster articles needed to discuss the organization's future or vision. We examined primary documents, industry reports, and internal documents that were accessible. We also gathered more

primary material about the companies and the mergers from Quest's website and from documents that were previously found on US West's website and saved on the Internet Archive (http://web. Archive. Org/web/*/ http://www. Sweet. Com). Within the collected primary documents, we focused on descriptions of each company's core technologies.

In addition to analyzing speeches, press releases, and website text for cultural indicators such as themes, vocabulary, metaphors, and stories (Bantu 1993), we also conducted interviews with public relations officials at Quest after the merger. The reason for selecting public relations officials for the interviews was our curiosity about the "official story" surrounding the merger. Cheney and Christensen (2001) noted that examining external communication regarding internal organizational processes can provide insights into cultural ideologies pertaining to planned changes.

Initially, respondents were recruited through cold calls and the snowball method to join the organization. The interview protocol contained 10 open-ended questions. As per ethnographic interviewing methods (Sprawled 1979), we asked additional questions based on the respondents' answers during the interview. Each interview started with asking about an overview of the merger's "pillar messages" and a description of why the two companies decided to merge.

Next, the participants were requested to outline the progress of the merger starting from the strengths and weaknesses of both companies and continuing to the strengths and weaknesses of the company during postmaster integration. Lastly, the participants were questioned about the past, present, and future utilization of the core technologies of the company, along with providing a depiction of the corporate culture. As advised by Yin (1981), constructing a persuasive narrative based on a well-defined conceptual framework is crucial in effectively describing the separate

factors in a specific case.

Our framework proposes that an organization's culture and core technology are closely intertwined. To examine this connection, we developed case studies that documented the culture and technology of each company before the merger, during the transition period of the newly formed company, and after integration. These case studies were used for both within-case analysis, which focused on studying the events and factors within each individual case, and cross-case analysis, which involved comparing different cases.

The insights from each case emerged independently through the use of an inductive approach. In order to organize these findings, we created a timeline that highlights the connection between core technology and culture at three significant stages of the merger: reemerge, during transition, and postmaster integration (Dopers and Stranger 2001). Through our analysis within each case, we examined how changes in core technology and culture influenced each other during these three stages.

In order to understand the similarities and differences in the cultures and core technologies of US West and Quest, we conducted a cross-case analysis. We did not have any predetermined hypotheses about the cultural foundations of each organization, so we relied on comparing the cases to develop initial propositions. Through repeated replication logic, revisiting data, and analyzing narratives, we refined our understanding of the relationships and attempted to identify patterns.

After comprehending the technological foundation within each organization, the impact it had on their identity and image throughout the merger, and the result of the relationship between core technologies and cultures post-merger, our aim was to investigate how Quest's culture prevailed over US West's culture. To achieve this objective, we revisited our original

data and extracted all instances where officials made public remarks including discussions pertaining to both organizations.

In our study (Frey et al 2000), we created categories that included rationales, justifications, and results provided by public officials on the desired characteristics of the "new organization". Using a taxonomic analysis, we connected these categories to understand how actors framed the merger in technological terms instead of cultural terms. This process led us to develop the concept of "discursive enrollment" as a heuristic tool in our analysis. We explore the role of core technology in cultural domination.

In this section, we demonstrate the concept of technological grounding by examining the connection between the core technologies and cultures of US West. We also address the cultural integration challenges that emerged during the merger. Additionally, we delve into how Quest utilized technological grounding to assert cultural dominance over US West after the merger. The preservation of organizational culture and the development of core technologies were central to US West, which had a long and intricate history in the telephone industry spanning over 120 years.

In the early twentieth century, the American Telephone ND Telegraph Company (AT) extended its Bell System of telephone service and established a Western Territory that included Denver, Cool, Portland, Ore, and Deadwood, SD. These locations later became the central hubs for Mountain Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell, and Northwest Bell. AT enjoyed a monopoly on telephone service for a significant part of its history, primarily concentrating on voice data transmission within the United States.

In 1974, the US government filed an antitrust suit against AT, leading to the company's divestment of the Bell operating companies in

1984. This resulted in the merging of the Baby Bells in the Western United States to form US West, which offered voice data transfer across the region. At the time of divestiture, US West had 25 million customers in all fourteen western states, with 73,000 employees and revenues of IIS$7 billion. Over the next fifteen years, employee count decreased to around 60,000, but revenues nearly doubled to over US $13 billion. The initial consolidation of the Baby Bells faced challenges in integrating disparate technological systems and managing a bureaucratic hierarchy. Reliable information transfer had been the primary focus of telephone companies like US West for a century.

US West's solution was to construct circuit switching of calls, which involves each call traveling on a separate copper wire and switching to a new one when needed to change direction. This system has the benefit of utilizing the existing copper wiring in most people's homes. However, technicians have long been grappling with the challenge of developing reliable switches that ensure accurate transmission of information between wires, as analog data undergoes a less seamless transition.