Towards Technology Domestication in a Care Organization? Facilitating and Hindering Factors in Care Robot Use

Abstract

Abstract Despite the growing interest in using robots in elderly care, there is still little experience with these robots in real care settings—particularly how technologies are integrated into services in a long-term perspective. This study analyses the use of the care robot Zora in public elderly care services in Finland. We use domestication theory as our conceptual framework for analyzing the processes when a care robot is used in a care organization. Our research is based on an empirical case study conducted in two phases: the introduction phase, which occurred in two care homes and in one geriatric rehabilitation hospital, and the follow-up phase, which took place after three years. The first dataset consists of the observations of 27 sessions where the robot was used and 49 semi-structured interviews. The second dataset consists of seven follow-up interviews. We identify the facilitating and hindering factors in the implementation process, and categorize whether they belong to the practical, symbolic, or cognitive dimension of domestication. This study reveals both facilitating and hindering aspects of technology domestication, which help to understand technology domestication processes in organizations. This study contributes to revealing the details in the complicated discourse between use and non-use of technology. The lesson learned is that successful domestication requires strengthening the promoting factors while also tackling the hindering factors. If the hindering factors are overlooked, technology implementation is likely to remain at the level of unsystematic pilot projects that do not develop further.