Supporting and Studying Organizational Change for Introducing Welfare Technologies as a Sociomaterial Process

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Sociology of Technology
• Organizational Studies

Background:

• Welfare technologies (WT) offer solutions for aging populations but face limited adoption.
• Implementation challenges stem from required changes in work practices and actor coordination.
• Existing methods often fail to capture the emergent nature of WT adoption.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an alternative support method for introducing WT through organizational change.
• To frame change as a collaborative process between practitioners and researchers.
• To analyze the sociomaterial process of co-creating a new working method.

Main Methods:

• Intervention research principles inspired the learning process.
• Focused on the sociomaterial interactions among practitioners, researchers, and objects.
• Co-creation of a checklist as a novel working method.

Main Results:

• The study highlights the emergent nature of WT implementation.
• A collaborative, sociomaterial process reconfigured power dynamics and work objectives.
• The co-created checklist emerged from iterative interactions.

Conclusions:

• A sociomaterial approach, emphasizing practitioner involvement, is crucial for WT implementation.
• New working methods should be developed through collaborative, iterative processes.
• This approach fosters genuine organizational change and effective WT adoption.