Getting back up! Managing the Relationship between Technology and Organizational Identity

Abstract

What is the relationship between technology and identity, especially when that technology singularly defines the organization’s identity? What happens if that technology fails, and how is the organization’s identity managed? To address this theoretical puzzle, we use a longitudinal qualitative case study to address the 2008 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) breakdown at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, CERN. The LHC is arguably the most complex technology ever built, which took 20 years to build with a scientific collaboration of 10,000 scientists from all around the world. Therefore, CERN’s successful recovery from this breakdown offers important insights into the dynamic relationship between organizational identity and technology. Our work contributes to the literature on identity work and structuration view of technology, which will benefit not only the academic community but also practioners that are working in high technology companies.