Abstract
What can an organization do when it is faced with demands to improve, but lacks the capabilities necessary to conduct improvement work? This chapter suggests that – under these circumstances – technology-related organizational change can be conducted not as an orderly and balanced process but rather as a re-balancing act. Such a re-balancing act focuses one organizational resource or capability at a time and shifts focus to the next area when visible improvements are achieved.
Based on a case study of digital radiology implementation, we also find that with such an approach, pushing organizational change by implementing technology ahead of changes in processes, structures and resources might work.
With this re-balancing approach, technology-related change becomes emergent rather than pre-planned, pragmatic rather than principled and improvisational rather than structured. The process also does become somewhat precarious; prerequisites for and consequences of this change approach are therefore discussed.