Re-Presenting Technology: It Consultancy Reports as Textual Reality Constructions

Abstract

This paper examines the reports produced by management consultants as exercises in textual reality construction. Concentrating on a particular variant of this genre - namely, the information technology (IT) strategy report - its focus is on the ways in which `reality' and the forms of knowledge appropriate to it are constituted in the course of certain communicative practices. More specifically, we look at the practices that aim to control technology for organisational purposes; and we illustrate our case with a discussion on the textual practices through which the boundary between the `technical' and the `social' is constructed and sustained. In this connection it is worth noting that consultancy reports on IT reflect a concern central to social scientific inquiry - namely, the analytical relationship between the `social' and `technical' domains. Our starting point is to situate such reports within the broader category of textual and graphical constructs - inscriptions - which in various fields of enquiry and application, discipline and practice, are used to represent reality in order to act on it, control or dominate it, as well as to secure the compliance of others in that domination.