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but I just can’t see what type of business that needs such an urgent attention. I do my banking business at home by my PC.” (user 4)

Another intention with the design, as expressed by the project leader at the bank, was that it could be a good complement for customers on vacation where the customer might not have access to the Internet so easily.

One of the users commented on this possibility:

“In all honesty, I try to put these types of things out of my head while on vacation. I just don’t want to bother with it, and it is no problem whatsoever to deal with transactions before going on vacation. “ (user 7)

In sum, there were mixed feelings about MBT as a new channel that would complement the other existing channels. While some users were positive about it, others felt no benefits from MBT.

Perceived Limitations with MBT

According to one of the users the effect was “a few sessions fewer with the Internet bank and the bank-on-the-phone” (user 7). For those who used MBT, the benefits of using it were seen as moderate. There were also many users who never got around to actually using it. The key reason for this lay in the feeling that it was simply not well designed to be used while on the run:

“This handheld thing they gave us, I actually never brought it with me. It was still a bit big to carry around… “ (user 4)

Among those who actually used it, a main concern was that it contained too few features and thus enabled a limited set of activities. Moreover, the MBT does not work as a channel in and of itself; in fact it is a presupposition that the user is also a user of the Internet bank. A general concern among the users was that MBT was perceived as a complement to the Internet bank. In fact, one of the users referred to the MBT as a “light version” of the Internet bank.

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A general concern among the users was that the functions were seen as somewhat limited.To becomereally usefulfutureversionshadtocontainmore functions.

“Seeing as there are so few features in MBT I just can’t see the need to bring it with me. I can use the bank-on-the-phone to transfer money. Had it only contained more features I probably would have used it.” (user 5)

The users were also a bit uncomfortable with the offline concept. In fact, the ideaofbeingabletoworkofflineisafundamentalideabehindthewholeproject and this idea did not go down well among all users. People raised concerns abouttheofflinestatusandtherealstatus.Theusersfeltthatapotentialproblem for them could be the difference between the real status on their accounts and the status that they are given by the PDA. Of course, this only happens if the user does not log on and update the status on the account, but it was still a concern among the users.

The overall distrust towards the service was also reflected in the ways in which the users felt it necessary to double-check the figures on the Internet bank:

“I like to have a total control over my transactions (…) I can have that on the Internet bank. I use that to go through all the figures to make sure everything is alright.” (user 11)

There were several practical concerns raised in the interviews with the users dealing with the problems in using the MBT while moving around. It was perceived as somewhat problematic to log on, and many users had experienced problems to log on at all at times. One of the users also pointed out that the log on process, where two different passwords were needed, also hampered any ad-hoc use of MBT.

Supporting Action Across Time and Space

The primacy of place as is apparent in studies of formal organization. While there are many problems in mobile work, such as getting the support one might

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need while on the move, the potential of reducing the ties to a certain place is certainly interesting. In this process we can witness the transformation of locations, such as public and private transport sites, into locations where we perform our business transactions. The same can be said about time: since the mobile IT user brings with her the artifact, aspects such as the plans of the user can potentially be changed over time more easily.

The users involved in the MBT pilot study were not overly enthusiastic overthe new possibilities for transcending time and space:

“In my mind this is not a very good item. I mean, if I am to bother about using it I also need to see the benefits. I guess I am a bit critical about the whole idea here, but the whole thing needs some serious thought before this item can be presented to the customers on a large scale. I can see a scenario where the technology is more easy to use and where the services are a bit more interesting. Then I would use it. Now I just don’t bother.” (user 8)

A key idea behind the project was that of enabling the users to perform improvised and ad-hoc activities. None of the persons interviewed could give a good example of this. Even though several users did use the MBT and found it useful to some extent, their use was planned beforehand:

“I take it [the MBT] with me when I travel. I make a lot of transactions on the plane and on the bus. I find it really convenient and it is really a practical thing for me. I always try to prepare my flights so that they won’t be just time wasted. I take care of the transactions on the MBT and then quickly log on when at home to ship it all out. I know I can use the mobile phone for this but there’s no rush really. But I wouldn’t say that this is an example of me improvising. I do what I plan to do and that’s it.” (user 2)

The whole idea of banking business being something that you plan well in advance and not a domain that is open for improvisation was expressed by all the users we interviewed. It was apparent that the users felt that banking business was a serious undertaking and that they were careful in planning transactions. To this end, it seemed as if the ad-hoc possibilities were not interesting for the users:

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“While this is all very interesting, I guess that at the end of the day I don’t feel that people will be interested in improvising with one’s money. I guess most of us have a different stance towards money, I know I do anyway. You never know, this may turn out great in the end. But for now I just can’t see myself making transactions the way they [the project management] seem to picture me doing” (user 7)

The project manager felt that there were more possibilities related to MBT than meets the eye and expressed a view that had to do with improvements not only in the MBT but also in finding the right target group.

“I know that the users are not wild and crazy over it, but I must say that this says a lot about them too. I must say that some of them are difficult to please and you need to be interested in technology if you are to overcome the barriers here. We will consider their feedback naturally, but I am still certain that we must be better at finding the correct target group for MBT if we are to make a hit out of this.” (project manager)

Insum,thepotentialoftranscendingtimeandspacewasnotrealizedinthispilot test.Therewassomepotentialofdoingthis,butthebarrierswereseeminglytoo difficult to overcome.

Discussion

The results provide empirical indication that while there is a huge potential in mobile IT in banking, the poor design of MBT hampered the effects of the prototype. Moreover, the results also demonstrate how use of mobile IT provides only partial support for banking activities because of the distrust people have against ad-hoc activities in relation to what they perceive as very serious business.

The study makes a contribution into the barriers involved in mobile IT support for improvisation and situated action. This contribution is well in line with the insights provided to us by Suchman, who argues that plans can only be

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understood as vague resources for situated actions (Suchman, 1987). Drawing fromtheinitialfindingsfromtheMBTcase,wesharethisviewandourattention should be drawn towards the situated actions where humans and non-humans interact. The fact that MBT did not support the user with possibilities to act on an ad-hoc basis was related to two aspects of the MBT use. First, the poor design hampered the possibilities for ad-hoc activities. Second, the users felt that ad-hoc activities could be seem as somewhat irresponsible in the context of banking business. To this end, the problems related to the MBT use were both social and technical. Thus the study satisfies a need for a balanced debate where both social and technical elements related to mobile IT use are considered. In particular, we do not reduce socio-technical matters to merely a social matter. Clearly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish betweenthesocialandthetechnicalinmobileITuse–bothdimensionsmobilize each other and they are interrelated in a fundamental way. From an analytical point of view this may prove to be a dilemma that is hard to resolve. Looking at the intertwined socio-technical elements from an ANT point of view, however, does not embrace the ambition to treat social and technical elements as separated elements, but rather to see them as profoundly inter-related. The complex, network-dependent nature of artifacts is captured by ANT’s conception of them as actants or hybrids. The development of MBT reminds us how the enrollment or inclusion of elements into actor networks involves an ongoingnegotiation,astheseelementsmayprovetobedifficulttoholdinplace. As noted by Law, “…there is almost always some degree of divergence between what the elements of a network would do if left to their own devices and what they are obliged, encouraged, or forced to do when they are enrolled within the network” (Law, 1990, p. 114). Even though it is far from obvious at thispointtosayanythingaboutwhoenrollswhom(willthemobileITuserenroll the technology to better reach her agenda, or will she comply to the inscribed behavior?), it is safe to say that technology does matter for social issues, and vice versa.

To better grasp the character of today’s mobile IT use, we can explore this notion in some detail by looking at the ways in which mobility relates to the notions of temporality and spatiality.

MBT makes it possible to take action (e.g., transfer money between different accounts) while being mobile independently of any infrastructure other than your iPAQ. Such relative freedom from the “home base” makes it possible to plan for some actions (i.e., transactions) at home and then make changes to these plans according to new and unforeseen circumstances. Hence the

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Figure 2. Temporal and spatial aspects of mobile IT use

distinction in the relation between user and home base in terms of co-located and separated. Home base, in this context, refers to the infrastructure needed to perform banking activities, such as the PC and Internet connection for using the Internet bank. The bank aimed at a separation between user and home base by means of the MBT. They also aimed at enabling the user to act on an ad-hoc basis, meaning that her plans could be easily changed when the MBT is carried around everywhere. It is always handy and any idea for a transaction can soon be realized. The possibilities for improvised action, then, lie in the ability to change plans over time and to act in a context separated from the home base. Thisstandsinsharpcontrastwithplannedaction,wheretheuserandhomebase is co-located and the plans are generally continuous over time. It should be noted that in practice, of course, these ad-hoc actions are only about preparing some transactions while being mobile and then finishing them when back at the home base (i.e., in front of any computer with Internet access).

One key aspect of mobility is how it represents a transcending of space in the way that plans and actions no longer are separated in space. As we move from space to space, we no longer need to plan ahead to make sure that when we

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reach a new space we will have planned beforehand about possible alternatives. Instead, enabled by mobile IT, plans can continuously be reconsidered and re-adapted in the light of new circumstances. Moreover, for the mobile IT user, plans about activities in a given context are not presupposed before the user enters that particular context. That is, the actor contemplating his alternatives in a given context has, by means of mobile IT use, become enabled to access information of importance to the context at hand, and also enabled to continuously re-evaluate the situation based on new information.

Having said this, we must consider how technologies have the potential both to enable us to transcend our current modus operandi as well as to reproduce it. In the MBT case, the modus operandi from the Internet bank use was reproduced in the MBT use. There were little or no differences between the uses of these two technologies. The two problems identified – the poor design that hampered the possibilities for ad-hoc activities, and the users feeling that ad-hoc activities could be seem as somewhat irresponsible in the context of banking business – presents us with a major challenge for future versions of MBT. Some problems can be dealt with by better design. To this end, this study also makes a contribution into issues related to customization and personalization. The challenge related to enable the mobile IT user to act in an improvised manner could, to some degree, be dealt with by customization. But the fact that the users felt a discomfort in using MBT in an improvisational mode suggests that the mobile IT application maybe cannot be put to use in such a manner that the project manager had pictured. From an ANT perspective it can be said that the translation process came to a halt. It did not end up with a morphed version of MBT due to the translation process, nor did it pass through time and space unchanged (or recombined with other elements) like an immutable mobile. Rather, it just failed to make an impact on the mobile scene for the user. To this end, it is important to reflect over the project in terms of its underlying visions and see if these visions can be changed for future versions of MBT. As it stands today, it needs to be revised and redesigned in a fashion that considers both the problems the users had with the design of the first version of MBT, and the context in which it will be situated. In the ANT vocabulary, the scripts need to be revised.

We believe our research is a demonstration that the theoretical lens offered by the ANT literature provides a rich conceptual framework for understanding how mobile IT can enable some activities while other activities are not enabled (or enable in a poor fashion). Using the ANT vocabulary, we can see how interpretations and re-interpretations are often revised collectively in a process

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of conversation and retrospection among actors in the network. The result is often a level of convergence between understanding, knowledge and values among the actors involved. However, as new actors are enrolled to the growing actor-network their interpretation does not always converge with the inscribed behavior. Inscriptions can always be disputed and to a certain extent converted. Technologies generate actions and chains of consequences that in turn can provoke new actions, but while technologies are only meaningful inside a network of associations, the inscribed behavior can at times resist reinterpretation.

Conclusions

While many studies have drawn attention to the interplay between technology and social practices in the context of mobile IT use, few studies have ventured deeply into the social consequences of mobile IT. To date, very little relevant and theory-informed research has been conducted on the social consequences of mobile IT use, and most of the research that has been conducted has focused ononlylimitedandfragmentedaspectsofmobility.Wemustdobetterthanthat in order to explore mobility and its consequences in full. To this end, this paper echoes the call for theories of mobility expressed by Dahlbom & Ljungberg (1999).

Bringing in social theories as tools to think with helps us to better understand not only mobile IT applications but also their social contexts. It should be clear that our minds are extended in space and time through the use of IT, once such technologieshavebeendigitized,anditseemsasifhumanbodiestosomeextent merge with these technologies (Haraway, 1989). Mobile IT use illustrates this well, as the mobile IT user equipped with mobile IT application can be seen as a “socio-technical hybrid” (Latour, 1993).

The fundamental challenge at hand is to explore in detail the nomadic nature of mobile IT use – they move with us and should thus be understood as part and parcel of the social. To this end, we suggest that ANT can play a role in better making sense of the new socio-technical hybrids we are facing. Looking at the problems identified in the MBT case, we can see how deeply intertwined the social and the technical aspects are. First, the poor design hampered the possibilities for ad-hoc activities. Second, the users felt that ad-hoc activities

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could be seen as somewhat irresponsible in the context of banking business. To this end, the problems related to the MBT use were both social and technical.

It is our hope that exploring these problems related to mobile IT use we also shed new light on the possibilities and challenges that mobile IT use conveys. If there is one thing that the discussion shows, it is that there were and still are other ways to square the circle as long as some of the initial assumptions are questioned. Mobile IT use includes local interpretations of the technology as well as the values inscribed in the technology. Inscriptions in the technology do not prescribe its use or how any particular use is to be promoted. Rather, they are only a part of the whole package, and approaching mobile IT use from an analytical position we should see to conduct an analysis in the light of situated knowledge and partial perspectives in line with the ANT approach, and ask what these inscriptions are and what their effects might be.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful for the help I got from Maria Ny and Monica Rytterlöv during the first data collection period. My deepest thanks also goes to Fredrik Lundberg and Roger Ståhl at Föreningssparbanken for their help throughout this project.

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