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collaborative software. While being presumptively strongly in favour of this new
software, this user viewed it from the perspective of what was creating problems for
her in her work. The fact that the software had not been designed to solve this type of
problem played no part in her logic: she evaluated the software’s usefulness or
uselessness simply in terms of the use to which she wanted to put it.
4.3 The Purchase Initiator: A Singular User
Since it occupies a unique position, it seems to us important to analyse one final type
of use, namely the one represented to himself by the ‘purchase initiator’ of this
software.
We use the term ‘purchase initiator’ to denote the person who takes the decision to
purchase this software and hence to implement it within the organisation. In general,
he or she is not an end user (such as those described above). In the case we studied,
the person in question was the company’s managing director. Like the company’s
other employees, he too has the ‘right’ to initiate discussions in ‘think together®’
(which he has done, incidentally). His discourse is interesting, however, because
unlike the previous users he does not seem solely interested in the instrument’s
technical effectiveness. Whereas the other users judged ‘think together®’ in terms of
its capacity to solve problems arising out of FAQs or to unblock a jammed decision-
making process, the purchase initiator judges it in terms of its ability to change the
organisation of which he is the head.
After all, when asked: ‘Could you tell us why you decided to implement [‘think
together®’] in your company?’, he replied: ‘it’s a rather complicated story… The
Electronic Data Interchange team, which is where I wanted to use it, had not had a
manager for a long time.. We had a person, who was supposed to be the manager, but
in fact he concerned himself only with the technical side of things, he wasn’t the one
who did everything that was pure management… When he left for health reasons, we
replaced him but things turned out very badly… In terms of interpersonal relations,
the new manager was a complete failure… We had to let him go and since then I’ve
been in charge of this team… But I’ve got too many things to do and I can’t devote
enough time to them. What’s more, on the technical level, I’m not knowledgeable
enough about what they’re doing. Everything changes too quickly. There’s someone
in the team, X, who you’re going to meet, that I would like to promote to manager. I
think he has the strength of character and the abilities, but he has to mature
gradually… To my way of thinking, the use of [‘think together®’] could help him take
on this new role’.
The statements of this ‘purchase initiator’ recall a situation already encountered in
other organisations [2]. Like other users, purchase initiators position their uses of an
instrument relative to the problems they encounter in their work. For this MD, the aim
is to identify a manager for his Electronic Data Interchange software group and to get
him accepted by the team. This manager’s principal role is to foster professional
cooperation within the team (its community of practice aspect) and functional
coordination with the other departments when decisions have to be taken collectively.
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