The play of information systems development: Drama and ritual in the development of a nursing information system

Seeks to show the ritual and dramatic elements in an ostensibly rational and technocratic process; that is, the formulation of nurses’ information requirements prior to the introduction of a computerized nursing information system in a large hospital. Suggests that ritual is an important social process in times of change within organizations and that there are close affinities between ritual and theatrical performance. What is interesting is that a process of intensifying the measurement of performance and the monitoring of work, apparently attributes of rational managerial practice, appear to be enacted in conditions which are redolent of ritual and of theatre. It is this somewhat paradoxical juxtaposition of the introduction of new technologies, replete with scientific allusions and the decidedly non‐rational social practices that accompany them, which lead to a questioning of the efficacy of notions of efficient and rational management and the role of new technologies in supporting these ideals.