When Flexible Routines Meet Flexible Technologies: Affordance, Constraint, and the Imbrication of Human and Material Agencies1

Employees in many contemporary organizations work with flexible routines and flexible technologies. When those employees find that they are unable to achieve their goals in the current environment, how do they decide whether they should change the composition of their routines or the materiality of the technologies with which they work? The perspective advanced in this paper suggests that the answer to this question depends on how human and material agencies—the basic building blocks common to both routines and technologies—are imbricated. Imbrication of human and material agencies creates infrastructure in the form of routines and technologies that people use to carry out their work. Routine or technological…