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This chapter deals with IT design in an organizational setting – be it a medium sized service company, a large industrial company, a small entrepreneurial knowledge company, or a public company or institution. In such work settings we often find a complex organizational structure, including several management levels, diverse professional groups, workplace cultures, and established working relations where new IT projects challenge the established ways-of-working. This is also the domain of ‘classic’ information systems development (ISD) approaches. This chapter presents the principles, key ideas, and experiences from using the participatory design method known as the ‘MUST method’, developed by the authors (Bodker et al. 2004).

This chapter presents results elicited from empirical studies of the implementation and use of an open-ended, configurable, and context specific information technology supporting networked communication in a large distributed organization. Our findings are based on a longitudinal case study of the implementation and use of the technology that spread rapidly throughout the organization. We demonstrate the kind of expectations and conditions for change, that management face, when implementing such technologies for computer-mediated communication. Our synthesis from the empirical findings is related to two recent models, the improvisational change management model suggested by Orlikowski and Hofman (1997), and Gallivan’s model for organizational adoption and assimilation (Gallivan, 2001). We operationalize the change management models by identifying and characterizing four different and general implementation contexts and propose strategies for the organizational implementation of such technologies.

We address computer support for work and its coordination in one of the radio channels of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Based upon ethnographically inspired analysis and participatory design techniques, we propose design solutions now implemented or under implementation. We focus on cooperative aspects within and among the radio channel's editorial units, and between editorial units and the editorial board. Finally, we discuss technical and organisational aspects of the design, seen in light of recent CSCW concepts.