Wanda Orlikowski facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Wanda J. Orlikowski
Alma mater	New York University
Known for	Practice lens Sociomateriality
Scientific career
Fields	Information systems Organization Studies

Wanda J. Orlikowski is an American expert who studies how technology and organizations work together. She is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She helps us understand how people use computers and other tech in their jobs and how this changes the way companies operate.

Education

Wanda Orlikowski studied at the University of the Witwatersrand. She earned her Bachelor of Commerce degree there in 1977. She also received her Master of Commerce degree from the same university in 1982.

Later, she went to New York University's Stern School of Business. There, she earned both her Master of Philosophy and her Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) in 1989.

Career and Research

Professor Orlikowski has taught at many famous universities. She was a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She also taught at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.

Currently, she is a special professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. She focuses on how information technology and organizations connect.

She has also helped guide important academic journals. She was a senior editor for Organization Science. She still serves on the editorial boards of Information and Organization and Organization Science. This means she helps decide which research papers get published.

She is part of several important groups. These include the Academy of Management and the Association for Computing Machinery. These groups bring together experts in business, technology, and learning.

Awards and Honors

Wanda Orlikowski has received many awards for her work. In 2015, she won the Distinguished Scholar Award. This award came from a division of the Academy of Management.

Also in 2015, she won the Lasting Impact Award. This was for her paper about how people learn from using groupware. Groupware is software that helps groups work together.

In 2019, she became a Fellow of the Academy of Management. This is a high honor for experts in management. In 2021, she was elected a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2022, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the Copenhagen Business School. Most recently, in 2023, she was given the CTO Lifetime Service Award.

Her Research Ideas

Professor Orlikowski's research looks at how technology and organizations change over time. She studies how they affect each other. She focuses on how companies are set up, their rules, how people talk to each other, and how they do their work.

She is well-known for studying how new technologies are used in companies. She uses ideas from a theory called Structuration. This theory helps explain how people's actions and the rules of a group shape each other.

One of her papers from 1992, "The duality of technology," has been cited over 6,200 times. This means many other researchers have used her ideas. Another paper from 2000, "Using technology and constituting structures," has been cited over 5,600 times.

She has written a lot about how people use electronic communication. She often works with JoAnne Yates, another professor at MIT. She also writes about how to do research. Her paper from 1991 with Jack Baroudi is very popular among researchers.

Her newest work looks at how social media affects how people work and interact. She also explores how digital tools and social life are connected.

How Technology Changes Work

Wanda Orlikowski's studies show how technology and people interact. She explains that when people use technology, they don't just follow rules. Instead, they actively create how the technology is used. This is called "enactment."

She found that how people use technology can lead to different outcomes:

• Staying the Same: Sometimes, using technology just makes things stay the way they are. People use the new tools to keep doing their old work practices. For example, if a company has strict rules, people might use new software in a very limited way.
• Making Small Changes: Other times, people start using technology in slightly new ways. This can lead to small changes in how work is done. They might adapt the tools to fit their needs better.
• Creating Big Changes: In some cases, people use technology in ways that lead to big shifts in how work is done. Over time, these changes can completely transform how a company operates.

Technology and People Working Together

In her more recent work, Orlikowski talks about "sociomateriality." This idea means that social things (like people and their interactions) and material things (like technology) are always connected. They cannot be separated.

She and Susan Scott argue that all practices in organizations are "sociomaterial." This means that how we organize and work every day is shaped by both our social interactions and the physical tools we use.