RE-PRESENTING TECHNOLOGY - IT CONSULTANCY REPORTS AS TEXTUAL REALITY CONSTRUCTIONS

This paper examines the reports produced by management consultants as exercises in textual reality construction. Concentrating on a particul ar variant of this genre - namely, the information technology (IT) str ategy report - its focus is on the ways in which 'reality' and the for ms of knowledge appropriate to it are constituted in the course of cer tain communicative practices. More specifically, we look at the practi ces that aim to control technology for organisational purposes; and we illustrate our case with a discussion on the textual practices throug h which the boundary between the 'technical' and the 'social' is const ructed and sustained. In this connection it ig worth noting that consu ltancy reports on IT reflect a concern central to social scientific in quiry - namely, the analytical relationship between the 'social' and ' technical' domains. Our starting point is to situate such reports with in the broader category of textual and graphical constructs - inscript ions - which in various fields of enquiry and application, discipline and practice, are used to represent reality in order to act on it, con trol or dominate it, as well as to secure the compliance of others in that domination.