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Using the case study of a nursing information system, this paper demonstrates the applicability of a social shaping approach to software development for deconstructing the success/failure divide and providing a means to understand how failures occur within their social and organizational context. In contrast to many previous approaches to failure, we suspend disbelief concerning the inherent superiority of the dominant artifacts and challenge the "survival of the fittest" theory of production favored by technological determinists. Hence in this paper, we view success and failure as social constructions, the result of hindsight, and the victory of one version of the technology over contending accounts.Two areas considered to be of central relevance to the case study are gender and nursing practice, which are posited as mutually defining. Presenting an argument for the substantial influence of gender on computer usage in organizations, and associating this to a gender perspective on nursing, the scene is set for the empirical research into how these complex and sometimes contradictory issues are played out in the local setting. In so doing, the dwindling struggle by sponsors of the case study to persuade the users to make the technology a success is witnessed. The role of gender in furnishing many nurses with a hostility to computers and the belief in the incompatibility of their roles as care givers and computer users are examined. Also attested is their ability to resist convincingly the implementation of undesirable technologies.

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35505-4_26

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