In this article I pursue Blumer's argument in Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change that social changes are the consequence of people's interpretation of technology. By examining oral history interviews with managers and other staff of the British supermarket chain Tesco I explore the relationship between “digitalization” and the organization of the business. The analysis reveals how the interviewees interpreted emerging computing technologies, and how the deployment of these technologies in the business impacted the material and ecological arrangement and the distribution of knowledge in the company. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Blumer's framework for contemporary studies of “digitalization” and social change.

中文翻译：

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数字化作为超市链中“社会变革的推动者”：将布鲁默的工业化理论应用于当代社会

在本文中，我将继续探讨布鲁默在工业化中作为社会变革的推动者的观点，即社会变革是人们对技术的解释的结果。通过检查对英国连锁超市Tesco的经理和其他员工的口述历史访谈，我探索了“数字化”与企业组织之间的关系。分析揭示了受访者如何解释新兴的计算技术，以及这些技术在企业中的部署如何影响公司的物质和生态布局以及知识的分布。本文最后讨论了Blumer的框架与当代“数字化”和社会变革研究的相关性。