The role of ICT in Swedish popular adult education settings The relationship between ICT and organization has been paid attention to by researchers during the last decade. ICT’s organizational consequences, economic and social, have been regarded as an emergent process rather than deterministic outcomes. Furthermore ICT applications become more complex and more tightly integrated in a more efficient organization (Kling, 1980). Monteiro (2000) claims that ICT is a, perhaps the, crucial factor as it simultaneously enables and amplifies the currently dominating trends for organizational restructuring or change. However, so far, there does not seem to be any prior research focusing the use of ICT at an organizational level in Swedish liberal or popular adult education. The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of ICT in four folk high schools and study associations as organizational settings and places of work. It concerns results from a research project about introducing and implementing information and communication technology (ICT) in these value based organizations (Landström, et al, 2007). In 1996 these educational institutions was offered special subsidies with the aim to develop the use of ICT (Landström, 2004). What is unique in this kind of organizations called ‘folkbildning’ (in Swedish ‘folk’ means ‘people’ and ‘bildning’ means ‘enlightenment’) compared to other working places, are the non-profit character of work and the organizational independence. Explicit reasons for the Swedish state to support liberal adult education are a mission to educate democratic citizens and to promote ‘democratic development in society’. Crucial issues in our society related to the debate about the ‘digital divide’. Empirical results are analysed in relation to the actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 1993, 1998). Human and non-human actors are linked together in a web of relationships referred to as an actor network. Interaction between people and technology is in ANT seen as a socio-technological whole, in which the human and the non-human are assigned equal value in terms of negotiations, delegation and control. In this approach, the role of technology, ICT, is treated in the same way as human actors, which means that even non-human actors can be assigned power. The theory describes how actors mutually create and assign each other roles in constructing and working with networks. (Grint & Woolgar, 1997; Bigum, 1998). Hence, terms as technological frames, negotiations, allies, power and inscriptions are useful in trying to comprehend what happens in networks/organizations. People’s technological frames, formed by underlying assumptions, expectations and knowledge, are useful to interpret the technological development, use and change in organizations (Orlikowski and Gash, 1994).

Methodologically the study is inspired by an ethnographic approach. Our research has mainly been conducted through interviews with people engaged on different organizational levels, as well as observations and analysis of documents. The interviews have been focused on the role of ICT in the daily life of work according to the educational mission (folkbildningsuppdraget).

Our study has shown interaction in the organizations to be influenced by the non-human actor ICT. In that sense ICT demonstrates eight contradictory roles in organizations: Distributor, Stress factor, Promoter, Distance maker, Controller, Doorkeeper, Authority, and ‘A nobody’. Furthermore ICT demonstrates power contributing to other actors’ exclusion from the network, but ICT can also be excluded itself, for example when deciding not to pay attention to incoming e-mails. One conclusion from our research project is that ICT can be understood as an actor of its own. ICT might be regarded both as an allied and as an alien actor depending on the interviewees’ perspectives and experiences.