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Work, organisations, and society have been transformed by digital technologies. Information and communication technologies are increasingly important to the management and delivery of human services. Significant sums are invested with the expectation that new technology will drive positive changes such as improving service user experience, efficiency, and outcomes. Sometimes the promises of technology are not fully realised. As researchers and practitioners in organisational and social dynamics it is important to understand how these technologies are affecting the ways in which we organise, communicate, and relate.
In this article I explore one aspect of this dynamic, which is that technologies are entangled with the anxieties of human service organisations where the task is caring for people who are ill or in distress. This may lead to structures and processes that are not requisite to the primary task of these services and the technology implementation may fail to meet its aims.
I draw on the work of Kurt Lewin, Isabel Menzies Lyth, sociotechnical systems theory, and my own research to explore the entangled nature of contemporary organisations. I suggest ways in which we might develop our concepts and practices to fully account for the role of technologies in organisational process and therefore our ability to consult to those processes.