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Pilot projects are increasingly used as a mechanism to enact organisational change, particularly government policy. Information technology's centrality to organisations often makes it key to the introduction of new processes. However, it can give rise to workarounds as employees circumvent impediments it presents by rejecting its prescribed use. Workarounds tend to be conceptualised dichotomously, as either 'good' problem solving, or 'bad' subversion of the technology. In pilot projects, workarounds are more ambiguous because those that support projects' successful completion in the short‐term may undermine day to day operations longer term. We draw on interview data from a policy pilot in general practice in the National Health Service in England aimed at extending access to care. We problematise the dichotomous conceptualisation of workarounds, finding they can be simultaneously supportive and undermining of policy pilots. Workarounds thereby become political, as employees are required to trade‐off consequences for themselves and the wider organisation.

Common sense views of the construction industry tend to characterise its labour market processes as haphazard, if not anarchic, and requiring reform through formalisation. In contrast, a sociological perspective might point to the possibility of an underlying rationality beneath the apparent confusion. Industry data suggest a growing degree of casualism in construction, in the sense that employers and self-employed have become a significantly larger proportion of the overall workforce. These changes form the background to a discussion of labour recruitment practices on large construction sites, using data drawn from empirical investigation. In addition, the question of the relationship between recruitment practices and strategies of managerial control will also be confronted. Such an analysis would have to take into account the possibility that construction firms face distinctive problems in relation to the recruitment and subsequent control of their workforce that stem from, for example, the fact that the product is immobile, and the firm must form a series of temporary organisations at the point of consumption. This implies that the firm may not be able to draw upon the full range of control and recruitment devices available to `static' firms in a conventional and familiar labour market.