Implementing assisted living technologies under resource constraints: Which frameworks help?

Abstract

We survey organizational practices in a drive to implement assisted living technologies in the form of multidose dispensers in a mid-sized progressive municipality and contrast actual organizational practices with an established framework for the implementation of innovations. Where the encompassing framework presupposes a rational planning and forecasting process as well as an encompassing and cumulative data collection, practices resemble a muddling through with incremental trial-and-error processes, multiple disjoints in the lifetime of the project, and a garbage can decisionmaking style, heavily influenced by legitimacy concerns. While neglected by the implementation framework, findings are well explained by extant organizational theory. We suggest that established implementation frameworks may be out of touch with organizational realities faced by municipalities facing resource scarcity which – ironically – is the main driver for innovation efforts, and end by discussing scrum methods as a more relevant template for implementation and project management frameworks in such cases.