AcaWiki - User contributions [en]

Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions

2012-07-21T16:19:25Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions
|authors=Suchman, L. A
|tags=artificial intelligence, ethnomethodology, human-machine interaction, planning, situated action
|pub_date=2007
|subject=Sociology
}}

Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions

2012-07-21T14:53:33Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-07-21 04:53:33

{{Summary
|title=Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions
|authors=Suchman, L. A
|pub_date=2007
}}

Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence

2012-07-19T19:42:39Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence
|authors=Forsythe, Diana E., Hess, David J.
|tags=Anthropology, Computer Science, Medical Informatics, artificial intelligence,
|summary=Diana Forsythe drowned while crossing a river on a hiking vacation in 1997. She was quite young, and a pioneer in the anthropology of science and technology. Her colleagues, led by David Hess, collected and edited her published and unpublished works into this volume.

Given the straightforward nature of the book's chapter titles, it seemed valuable to list them here:

1. Blaming the User in Medical Informatics: The Cultural Nature of Scientific Practice
2. The Construction of Work in Artificial Intelligence
3. Engineering Knowledge: The Construction of Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence
4. Knowing Engineers? A Response to Forsythe (by James Fleck)
5. STS (Re)constructs Anthropology: Reply to Fleck
6. Artificial Intelligence Invents Itself: Collective Identity and boundary Maintenance in an Emergent Scientific Discipline
7. New Bottles, Old Wine: hidden Cultural Assumptions in a Computerized Explanation System for Migraine Sufferers
8. Ethics and Politics of Studying Up in Technoscience
9. Studying Those Who Study Us: Medical Informatics Appropriates Ethnography
10. "It's Just a Matter of Common Sense": Ethnography as Invisible Work
11. Disappearing Women in the Social World of Computing
12. George and Sandra's Daughter, Robert's Girl: Doing Ethnographic Research in My Parents' Field

As Hess provides a cogent and brief summary of the book in its first few pages, I will not attempt to do so here.
|relevance=Forsythe wrote most of the material in this volume in a time of great change in the anthropological study of technoscience. It was both novel for anthropologists to study technoscience, and doing so presented unique opportunities and challenges. Some of these had (and still have) to do with the differences between the beliefs and values of AI researchers and AI anthropologists (e.g. Chs 1-5), some of them arose because anthropologists had moved from a traditionally powerful, isolated position relative to their informants to a lower-power, socially interdependent one (Ch 8).

Additionally, Forsythe problematizes the appropriation of ethnography by computer scientists and physicians in medical informatics (Ch 9, 10) and raises gender-driven/focused critiques of medical informatics as a discipline.

Her exchange with Fleck is particularly illuminating; she reveals herself as an unabashedly critical scholar, and one could be forgiven for assuming that Fleck's claims about her writing drove her to the work represented by the subsequent chapters of the book.

Those with a more sociological bent would likely find her "New Bottles" chapter most intriguing. It poses traditional research questions (e.g. "How do values and expectations come to be embedded in technology"), addresses them empirically and with theoretical models, and only then explores the implications of its findings for the practice of medical informatics.
|pub_date=2002/07
|subject=Anthropology
}}

Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence

2012-07-19T19:16:59Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-07-19 09:16:59

{{Summary
|title=Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence
|authors=Forsythe, Diana E., Hess, David J.
|pub_date=07/2002
}}

Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why

2012-07-09T15:08:10Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why
|authors=Tilly, Charles
|tags=Reasons, explanations, power, social relations, sociology
|summary=How do we explain? What do we explain? Why do we explain?

In this brief and accessible book, Tilly explores reason-giving. He does so largely via stories (one of the types of explanations he identifies, see below); aside from these his sociological points are few and clear. These questions motivated his writing: does social giving of reasons vary systematically? In particular, do relations between reason givers and reason receivers affect the types of reasons offered, and the reactions to these reasons?

Tilly begins with a 2x2 typology for reasons. The first axis distinguishes between Formula-based reasons and Cause and Effect accounts. The second axis distinguishes between Popular and Specialized reasons. He names Popular Formulaic reasons "Conventions", Popular Cause and Effect reasons "Stories", Specialized Formulaic reasons "Codes", and Specialized Cause and Effect reasons "Technical Accounts".

His definitions for these four (overlapping) types of reasons are worth quoting, as they are central to his argument:

"Conventions: conventionally accepted reasons for dereliction, deviation, distinction or good fortune: my train was late, your turn finally came, she has breeding, he's just a lucky guy, and so on.

Stories: explanatory narratives incorporating cause-effect accounts of unfamiliar phenomena or of exceptional events such as the 9/11 catastrophe, but also such as betrayal by a friend, winning a big prize, or meeting a high school classmate at Egypt's Pyramids twenty years after graduation

Codes: governing actions such as legal judgments, religious penance, or awarding of medals

Technical Accounts: of the outcomes in the first three: how a structural engineer, a dermatologist, or an orthopedic surgeon might explain what happened to Elaine Duch on the World Trade center's 88th floor after a hijacked aircraft struck the building on 9/11"

Tilly goes on to articulate how each of these reason types "work". He claims, for example, that when offered as justifications, Conventions are rarely taken to imply cause and effect reasoning, but rather as an attempt to characterize a given relationship. Acceptable (Conventional) reasons are those that offer an acceptable characterization.

According to Tilly, Stories have one thing in common: they almost always exclude simultaneous causation, incremental effects, environmental effects, mistakes, unintended consequences and feedback. We use them to integrate aberrations into everyday life. In particular, Stories foreground human actors' dispositions as prime causal movers, most of them follow one of a few templates (e.g. A let B down and B suffered, but A eventually suffered as well), and they usually have some kind of moral.

In contrast to Conventions and Stories, Code-based reasons cite conformity (or lack thereof) to "specialized sets of categories, procedures for ordering evidence, and rules of interpretation." Thus someone might be declared the legitimate heir to an estate in a court of law not because the deceased wished them to receive their fortune, but because the deceased's will was drawn up and executed in accordance with established probate law.

Technical Accounts, for Tilly, facilitate communication within a group of specialists. In so doing, they can reinforce perceived difference between (and often superiority of) that group of specialists and the rest of the social world. Technical Accounts and Codes are also often interdependent; a sociological explanation for increasing crime rates relies upon a set of categories, procedures for ordering evidence and rules of interpretation (categorization, in this case): what counts as a crime?

Tilly ends by resolving the sociological questions he raised in the beginning of his book (following quoted from p174-5):

*Within their own jurisdictions, professional givers promote and enforce the priority of codes and technical accounts over conventions and stories.
*In particular, professional givers generally become skilled at translating conventions and stories into their preferred idioms, and at coaching other people to collaborate in that translation.
*Hence the greater the professionalization of knowledge in any social setting, the greater the predominance of codes and technical accounts.
*To the extent that relations between giver and receiver are distant and/or giver occupies a superior rank, giver provides formulas rather than cause-effect accounts.
*Givers who offer formulas thereby claim superiority and/or distance.
*Receivers ordinarily challenge such claims, when they do, by demanding cause-effect accounts.
*Those demands typically take the forms of expressing skepticism about the proposed formula and asking for detail on how and why Y actually occurred.
*In the case of authoritatively delivered codes, however, a skilled receiver can also challenge the reasons given by deploying the code and demonstrating that the giver has misused it.
*Even in the presence of distance and/or inequality, to the extent that receiver has visible power to affect giver's subsequent welfare, giver moves from formulas towards cause-effect accounts.
|pub_date=2008/03
|subject=Sociology
}}
[[Category:Book]]

Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why

2012-07-06T21:13:59Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why
|authors=Tilly, Charles
|tags=Reasons, explanations, power, social relations, sociology
|summary=How do we explain? What do we explain? Why do we explain?

In this brief and accessible book, Tilly explores reason-giving. He does so largely via stories (one of the types of explanations he identifies, see below); aside from these his sociological points are few and clear. These questions motivated his writing: does social giving of reasons vary systematically? In particular, do relations between reason givers and reason receivers affect the types of reasons offered, and the reactions to these reasons?

Tilly begins with a 2x2 typology for reasons. The first axis distinguishes between Formula-based reasons and Cause and Effect accounts. The second axis distinguishes between Popular and Specialized reasons. He names Popular Formulaic reasons "Conventions", Popular Cause and Effect reasons "Stories", Specialized Formulaic reasons "Codes", and Specialized Cause and Effect reasons "Technical Accounts".

His definitions for these four types of reasons are worth quoting, as they are central to his argument:

"Conventions: conventionally accepted reasons for dereliction, deviation, distinction or good fortune: my train was late, your turn finally came, she has breeding, he's just a lucky guy, and so on.

Stories: explanatory narratives incorporating cause-effect accounts of unfamiliar phenomena or of exceptional events such as the 9/11 catastrophe, but also such as betrayal by a friend, winning a big prize, or meeting a high school classmate at Egypt's Pyramids twenty years after graduation

Codes: governing actions such as legal judgments, religious penance, or awarding of medals

Technical Accounts: of the outcomes in the first three: how a structural engineer, a dermatologist, or an orthopedic surgeon might explain what happened to Elaine Duch on the World Trade center's 88th floor after a hijacked aircraft struck the building on 9/11"

Tilly goes on to articulate how each of these reason types "work". He claims, for example, that when offered as justifications, Conventions are rarely taken to imply cause and effect reasoning, but rather as an attempt to characterize a given relationship. Acceptable (Conventional) reasons are those that offer an acceptable characterization.

According to Tilly, Stories have one thing in common: they almost always exclude simultaneous causation, incremental effects, environmental effects, mistakes, unintended consequences and feedback. We use them to integrate aberrations into everyday life. In particular, Stories foreground human actors' dispositions as prime causal movers, most of them follow one of a few templates (e.g. A let B down and B suffered, but A eventually suffered as well), and they usually have some kind of moral.

In contrast to Conventions and Stories, Code-based reasons cite conformity (or lack thereof) to "specialized sets of categories, procedures for ordering evidence, and rules of interpretation." Thus someone might be declared the legitimate heir to an estate in a court of law not because the deceased wished them to receive their fortune, but because the deceased's will was drawn up and executed in accordance with established probate law.

Technical Accounts, for Tilly, facilitate communication within a group of specialists. In so doing, they can reinforce perceived difference between (and often superiority of) that group of specialists and the rest of the social world. Technical Accounts and Codes are also often interdependent; a sociological explanation for increasing crime rates relies upon a set of categories, procedures for ordering evidence and rules of interpretation (categorization, in this case): what counts as a crime?

Tilly ends by resolving the sociological questions he raised in the beginning of his book (following quoted from p174-5):

*Within their own jurisdictions, professional givers promote and enforce the priority of codes and technical accounts over conventions and stories.
*In particular, professional givers generally become skilled at translating conventions and stories into their preferred idioms, and at coaching other people to collaborate in that translation.
*Hence the greater the professionalization of knowledge in any social setting, the greater the predominance of codes and technical accounts.
*To the extent that relations between giver and receiver are distant and/or giver occupies a superior rank, giver provides formulas rather than cause-effect accounts.
*Givers who offer formulas thereby claim superiority and/or distance.
*Receivers ordinarily challenge such claims, when they do, by demanding cause-effect accounts.
*Those demands typically take the forms of expressing skepticism about the proposed formula and asking for detail on how and why Y actually occurred.
*In the case of authoritatively delivered codes, however, a skilled receiver can also challenge the reasons given by deploying the code and demonstrating that the giver has misused it.
*Even in the presence of distance and/or inequality, to the extent that receiver has visible power to affect giver's subsequent welfare, giver moves from formulas towards cause-effect accounts.

|pub_date=2008/03
|subject=Sociology
}}

Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why

2012-07-06T20:14:57Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Why?
|authors=Tilly, Charles
|tags=Reasons, explanations, power, social relations, sociology
|pub_date=2008/03
|subject=Sociology
}}

Why? What happens when people give reasons... and why

2012-07-06T20:13:26Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-07-06 10:13:25

{{Summary
|title=Why?
|authors=Tilly, Charles
|pub_date=mar/2008
}}

Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade: Jurisdictional Disputes in the US Commerce in Cadavers

2012-06-21T14:41:30Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Markets, Morals, and Practices of Trade: Jurisdictional Disputes in the US Commerce in Cadavers
|authors=Anteby, M.
|url=http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/606.short
|tags=Occupations, Morals, markets, market legitimacy, trading, micro-foundations of markets, professional jurisdictions
|summary=Via an examination of the New York State commerce in human cadavers, Anteby expands upon and problematizes current conceptions of legitimacy and morality in markets.

Where previous accounts rely upon the nature of the good exchanged as an explanatory factor for market legitimacy, Anteby focuses on the methods of exchange (he labels these "practices") as key explanatory factors. To this point: Anteby describes two important sellers in the market for cadavers in New York State: academics and private enterprises. These sellers attempted to legitimize their approach to this market via narratives; this is to be expected, given previous scholarship on moral markets.

These sellers also engaged in markedly different sets of practices, however, and these practices also served to legitimize each seller's moral standing in the market. Anteby summarizes these practices in a table (p624). While Anteby doesn't articulate it explicitly, he essentially relies upon a structurational perspective: these practices and related moral frames exist in a relation of mutual constitution; the enactment of the practices (e.g. cutting up cadavers to sell the parts vs. keeping cadavers whole, earning a profit vs. covering costs) modifies, informs and reinforces relevant moralities (e.g. add maximum value vs. sanctity of the body, reasonable return vs. dirty money), and relevant moralities in turn modify, inform and reinforce enacted practices.
|relevance=Anteby encourages scholars to:

*Examine situated practices as a source of legitimacy, especially in novel, morally-fraught or contested markets.

*Consider the possibility that "markets traditionally seen as uniformly moral or immoral" may "include spheres or suubmarkets, each with its own morality, that are distinguished along lines of practices."

*Consider that practice avoidance might be as powerful - if not more powerful - a tactic in sustaining legitimacy as engaging in a given practice.
|journal=Administrative Science Quarterly
|pub_date=2010
|doi=10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.606
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=55
}}

Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals

2012-06-13T23:18:08Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals
|authors=Edmondson, A. C, Bohmer, Richard M., Pisano, Gary P.
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3094828
|tags=routines, Organizational Change, surgery, matched case, technology implementation
|summary=To begin their piece about successful change in routines, Edmondson and her colleagues offer an unsurprising opener: most change fails in organizations. The literature is overwhelming in its support of this point (e.g. March & Simon 1958 through Orlikowski 2000).

Why, then, in their interviews at 16 well-matched hospitals, did six out of sixteen hospitals succeed in implementing a new technology that had radical implications for current cardiac surgical practice? This is Edmondson et. al.'s central question.

Their next move in the paper is to indicate the apparent strong link between change in organizational routines and successful implementation of new technologies: you can't have one without the other. In particular, they claim, technologies that most threaten the status quo in this way are those with interdependent users. They cite the teams-focused literature, which indicates that coordination and learning are central to successful implementation, and these, in turn, rely upon (at least) three organizational factors: authority structures, psychological safety (popularized by Edmondson in her 1999 paper) and team stability.

Edmondson and her colleagues' data concerns the implementation of minimally-invasive cardiac surgery (MICS). Where previous technologies and procedures associated with cardiac surgery required the breaking of the breastbone, this new procedure allowed for surgeons to operate through small incisions between the ribs, thus greatly improving patient outcomes.

In the "old" procedure, the surgeon could essentially "run the show"; they saw the heart at all times, and called on specialists for help in very circumscribed ways and at more-or-less predetermined times. The MICS procedure all but required the surgeon to cede this control, and for the team to communicate much more frequently.

Given the strictures associated with MICS (as compared to current practice), Edmondson et. al.'s main finding is perhaps unsurprising: successful implementations involved greater intentionality in MICS team formation, greater intentionality and psychological safety in team preparation, greater team openness and flexibility during trial implementation, and regular, sincere team-based reflection after each MICS procedure (at least initially). The authors focus primarily on the team leader's role in these processes.

Towards the end of their piece, the authors also raise the importance of technological frames (c.f. Orlikowski & Gash, 1994) for successful implementations: successful teams saw MICS as implying a fundamental shift in the nature of the cardiac surgery practice, while unsuccessful teams saw MICS as a "plug and play" technology/procedure.
|journal=Administrative Science Quarterly
|pub_date=2001/12
|subject=Business
|journal_volume=46
}}

Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals

2012-06-13T22:34:50Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-14 12:34:48

{{Summary
|title=Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals
|authors=Edmondson, A. C, Bohmer, Richard M., Pisano, Gary P.
|pub_date=dec/2001
|journal=Administrative Science Quarterly
|journal_volume=46
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3094828
|summary=ArticleType: research-article / Full publication date: Dec., 2001 / Copyright Â© 2001 Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University
}}

Beyond the productivity paradox

2012-06-13T18:04:16Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Beyond the productivity paradox
|authors=Brynjolfsson, E., Hitt, L. M
|url=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.195.1657&rep=rep1&type=pdf
|tags=Information Technology, productivity, Economics,
|summary=In this brief piece, Brynjolfsson and Hitt summarize the history of scholarly dialogue on the relationship between corporate Information Technology investment and productivity. They then offer their latest research on the topic.

They remind us that measuring inputs and outputs (the two components of productivity) have always been difficult to measure, and that this task has become increasingly difficult in a knowledge-based, digital economy. Despite this, they remind us that scholars generally agree that the lion's share of productivity increases have been associated with general purpose technologies (e.g. the steam engine, electricity).

In 1987, Steven Roach published an account that indicated that IT investment had grown dramatically in the 70s and 80s while productivity remained flat. The productivity paradox was born. In the early 90s (e.g. '94), Brynjolfsson, Hitt and others were able to secure firm-level data. Analysis of this data indicated the opposite - namely that firms that invested more in IT were more productive. Their data also indicated wide variation at given investment levels, however. Their more recent work investigates this question: how is it that two apparently-similar firms that make similar investments in IT could garner wildly different productivity results?

Their initial hypothesis: firms' readiness to adopt complementary (and necessary) organizational changes (e.g. flatter hierarchies) could reap the benefits of IT. Those that weren't, couldn't.

Their first investigation here yielded a striking finding: "...while short-term benefits were about what would be expected if they [firms] had "normal" returns, long-term benefits were substantially larger: from 2 to 8 times as much as short-term benefits."

Their second study indicated that "...firms that couple IT investments with decentralized work practices are about 5% more productive than firms that do neither. However, firms can actually be worse off if they invest in computers without the new work systems."

Given the ever-widening IT productivity gap between firms, Brynjolfsson & Hitt ask: Why do firms continue to make poor IT/Org Design investment choices? At the end of the day their answer is an indirect appeal to institutional theory: "...workers maintained the old ways of doing things, not in a conscious effort to sabotage the new manufacturing system, but simply because they had too many ingrained habits." As David (1990) indicates, workers in "old school" organizations try to use "new" technologies to replicate old ways of doing things.

In a final study, Brynjolfsson & Hitt show that $1 of computer hardware appears to be associated with about $10 of market value (in most other areas, $1 of investment is valued by the market at about $1). Based on their other recent work, they hypothesize that the bulk of this additional value lies in "hidden" complementary organizational assets (e.g. new processes).
|journal=Communications of the ACM
|pub_date=1998
|subject=Economics
|journal_volume=41
}}

Beyond the productivity paradox

2012-06-13T17:43:32Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-13 07:43:31

{{Summary
|title=Beyond the productivity paradox
|authors=Brynjolfsson, E., Hitt, L. M
|pub_date=1998
|journal=Communications of the ACM
|journal_volume=41
}}

The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work

2012-06-12T16:30:21Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work
|authors=Barley, S. R.
|url=http://jce.sagepub.com.libproxy.mit.edu/content/12/1/3.full.pdf+html
|tags=Funeral directorship, death, semiotics, opposition, commensurability, metaphor, metonymy, codes, Occupations,
|summary=Via a single funeral director's perspectives on their work, Barley explores the ways in which funeral directors arrange the realities associated with a funeral to manage the impressions conveyed. Barley's larger agenda (if he can be said to have had one) is to explore how performance (a la Goffman) oriented professions foster/create commensurability through the use of metaphor and metonymy.

Previous Semiotic work focused primarily on linguistic acts as signs, or vehicles for meaning. Barley offers an expanded scope for semiotics, suggesting that the arrangement of the physical realm (e.g. posing a body, applying makeup, hiding embalming scars) has as much if not more effect on interpretations as the language used (or not used).

As he so often does, Barley presents a model of the above in compelling visual form, indicating how funeral directors attempt to create commensurability between apparently incommensurable items (e.g. a dead body and a living body) by managing the realm of the denotative. By closing eyes, hiding scars, applying makeup, turning a corpse's head just so, funeral directors are (according to Barley) trying to create the appearance of a sleeping person so as to invoke notions associated with the living (e.g. naturalness, comfortability) in the realm of the connotative.
|relevance=Aside from the contributions above, Barley shows us that professional performance (and thus occupational credibility) has as much to do with the concealment or elimination of semiotic signs as it does with the manipulation and re-presentation of them. Barley simultaneously published a theory/method piece based on this work in ASQ.
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=1983/04
|doi=10.1177/0098303983012001001
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=12
}}

The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work

2012-06-12T16:25:06Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work
|authors=Barley, S. R.
|url=http://jce.sagepub.com.libproxy.mit.edu/content/12/1/3.full.pdf+html
|tags=Funeral directorship, death, semiotics, opposition, commensurability, metaphor, metonymy, codes, Occupations,
|summary=Via a single funeral director's perspectives on their work, Barley explores the ways in which funeral directors arrange the realities associated with a funeral to manage the impressions conveyed. Barley's larger agenda (if he can be said to have had one) is to explore how performance (a la Goffman) oriented professions foster/create commensurability through the use of metaphor and metonymy.

Previous Semiotic work focused primarily on linguistic acts as signs, or vehicles for meaning. Barley offers an expanded scope for semiotics, suggesting that the arrangement of the physical realm (e.g. posing a body, applying makeup, hiding embalming scars) has as much if not more effect on interpretations as the language used (or not used).

As he so often does, Barley presents a model of the above in compelling visual form, indicating how funeral directors attempt to create commensurability between apparently incommensurable items (e.g. a dead body and a living body) by managing the realm of the denotative. By closing eyes, hiding scars, applying makeup, turning a corpse's head just so, funeral directors are (according to Barley) trying to create the appearance of a sleeping person so as to invoke notions associated with the living (e.g. naturalness, comfortability) in the realm of the connotative.
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=1983/04
|doi=10.1177/0098303983012001001
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=12
}}

The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work

2012-06-11T23:14:08Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work
|authors=Barley, S. R.
|url=http://jce.sagepub.com.libproxy.mit.edu/content/12/1/3.full.pdf+html
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|pub_date=1983/04
|doi=10.1177/0098303983012001001
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=12
}}

The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work

2012-06-11T23:13:25Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-12 01:13:25

{{Summary
|title=The Codes of the Dead: The Semiotics of Funeral Work
|authors=Barley, S. R.
|pub_date=apr/1983
|journal=Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
|journal_volume=12
|url=http://jce.sagepub.com.libproxy.mit.edu/content/12/1/3.full.pdf+html
|doi=10.1177/0098303983012001001
}}

Sorting things out: classification and its consequences

2012-06-11T20:06:32Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
|authors=Bowker, G. C, Star, S. L
|tags=classification, categories, apartheid, medical classification
|summary=Bowker & Star derive their broad-based investigation of classification from three empirical examples: the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), a large-scale classification infrastructure, Apartheid, the intersection of classification and biography, and the NIC (Nursing Interventions Classificaton), a story of the intersection of classification and work practice(s).

Classification systems, the authors hold, are designed to be invisible and powerful; they are designed to both enable and constrain human thinking and action, and we notice them only when they “break down or become objects of contention”. For all our consideration of their power (e.g. Foucault), Bowker & Star remind us that we have little formal understanding of the “social and moral order” that they both create and draw upon for their creation.

Bowker & Star explore the invisibility of classification systems, their role in the larger information environment and the moral/ethical implications of these systems (in that they highlight one set of voices and silence others). They concern themselves with four broad questions:
• What work do classifications and standards do?
• Who does that work? How do they do it?
• What happens to the cases that do not fit?

The authors identify three characteristics of classification: it is Ubiquitous, it is Material (i.e. "built into and embedded in every feature of the built environment"), and it secures the "Indeterminacy of the Past" (i.e. we revise the past in response to our revisions of classification systems in the present).

In their quest to articulate classification, they explore a distinction between Aristotelian classification (according to pure types not found in nature) and Practical classification (how people classify their everyday situations). Previous perspectives emphasized one or the other, thereby reinforcing a dualistic view. The authors take an almost structurational perspective on the matter, indicating that they "detect rather a conconstruction of nature and society than a projection of the social onto the natural." This perspective of mutual constitution and dynamic intra-relation pervades the entire book, and is one of the key ways in which the authors generate and substantiate novel perspectives on matters of classification.

|relevance=This book is clearly a masterwork of two mature scholars with complementary interests. By and in large, its main contribution is additional theoretical insights and perspectives for scholars interested in matters of classification, though many of the perspectives they offer can be gainfully deployed in other sociological domains.
|journal=Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
|pub_date=1999
|subject=Sociology
}}

Sorting things out: classification and its consequences

2012-06-11T19:43:22Z

Mattbeane:

Sorting things out: classification and its consequences

2012-06-11T17:31:35Z

Mattbeane:

Sorting things out: classification and its consequences

2012-06-11T17:20:14Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-11 07:20:13

{{Summary
|title=Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
|authors=Bowker, G. C, Star, S. L
|pub_date=2000
}}

Doing new things in old ways

2012-06-07T13:52:58Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Doing new things in old ways
|authors=Van Maanen, J.
|url=http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA130450
|tags=socialization, culture, police
|summary=Van Maanen considers - via three cultural vignettes - the role of socialization into organizations that ignore or seek to retain the uniqueness of their recruits. In 1983, the vast preponderance of socialization accounts were of the "total institution" type; these were stories of the elimination of idiosyncrasy and variance.

Van Maanen rightly points out that many (perhaps even most) organizations select new members based on their unique gifts and perspectives, and that sociologists have therefore been focused on the minority case.

His three cultural vignettes are MBA students at Harvard and MIT, police sergeants and windsurfers. In each case, he offers accounts of individuals who, when left to their own devices in a new context, draw upon the cultural resources (e.g. values, norms) that they brought with them to the new context: "given a degree of similarity between an old and a new activity, the new will be approached in much the same way as the old. Lessons learned in the past(the culture of orientation) are sure to have value in the future if the recruit is conscious of similarity between the two and no concentrated efforts are made by others to destroy or make irrelevant such cognitive ties."
|journal=Produced for the Department of Naval Affairs
|pub_date=1983
}}

Doing new things in old ways

2012-06-07T01:06:22Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Doing new things in old ways
|authors=Van Maanen, J.
|url=http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA130450
|tags=socialization, culture, police
|summary=Van Maanen considers - via three cultural vignettes - the role of socialization into organizations that ignore or seek to retain the uniqueness of their recruits. In 1983, the vast preponderance of socialization accounts were of the "total institution" type; these were stories of the elimination of idiosyncrasy and variance.

Van Maanen rightly points out that many (perhaps even most) organizations select new members based on their unique gifts and perspectives, and that sociologists have therefore been focused on the minority case.

His three cultural vignettes are MBA students at Harvard and MIT, police sergeants and windsurfers. In each case, he offers accounts of individuals who, when left to their own devices in a new context, draw upon the cultural resources (e.g. values, norms) that they brought with them to the new context.
|journal=Produced for the Department of Naval Affairs
|pub_date=1983
}}

Doing new things in old ways

2012-06-07T00:58:16Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-07 02:58:15

{{Summary
|title=Doing new things in old ways
|authors=Van Maanen, J.
|pub_date=1983
}}

Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence

2012-06-01T17:53:02Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence
|authors=Takayama, Leila, Go, Janet
|url=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2145204.2145281
|tags=robotic telepresence, metaphor, Frames, source orientation, robotics, Ethnography,
|summary=Takayama and Go utilize observational data from 8-week alpha tests of a robotic telepresence platform at four organizations, interviewing employees along the way. They had variation in user role/status, number of remote users, distance from the "hub" site, available systems and history of previous experience with digital communication tools.

Their key finding was that problematic patterns of use emerged when users applied different (generally contradictory) metaphors to make sense of the system. They advise designers to induce a coherent set of interpretations with each implementation to reduce associated problems.
|relevance=As of this writing (2012), mobile, robotic telepresence is quite a novel technology, and is therefore poorly understood. The authors offer preliminary findings and a variety of testable hypotheses for future research.
|journal=Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
|pub_date=2012
|doi=10.1145/2145204.2145281
}}

Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence

2012-06-01T15:59:37Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence
|authors=Takayama, Leila, Go, Janet
|url=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2145204.2145281
|tags=robotic telepresence, metaphor, Frames, source orientation, robotics, Ethnography,
|summary=Takayama and Go observed alpha 8-week tests of a robotic telepresence platform at four organizations, interviewing employees along the way. They had variation in user role/status, number of remote users, distance from the "hub" site, available systems and history of previous experience with digital communication tools.

Their key finding was that problematic patterns of use emerged when users applied different (generally contradictory) metaphors to make sense of the system. They advise designers to induce a coherent set of interpretations with each implementation to reduce associated problems.
|relevance=Mobile, robotic telepresence is, as of this writing (2012) quite a novel technology, and is therefore poorly understood. The authors offer preliminary findings and a variety of testable hypotheses for future research.
|journal=Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
|pub_date=2012
|doi=10.1145/2145204.2145281
}}

Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence

2012-06-01T15:48:28Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-06-01 05:48:27

{{Summary
|title=Mixing metaphors in mobile remote presence
|authors=Takayama, Leila, Go, Janet
|pub_date=2012
|url=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2145204.2145281
|doi=10.1145/2145204.2145281
}}

Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing

2012-05-30T12:05:07Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing
|authors=Orlikowski, W. J
|url=http://ifipwg213.org/system/files/orlikowski.pdf
|tags=Knowledge, Practices, Structuration Theory, Enactment, Knowledge-in-Action
|summary=Orlikowski here forwards the notion that while organizational knowledge can usefully be conceived of as a thing or a disposition, such (traditional) moves can obscure another perspective: knowledge/knowing is an ongoing social accomplishment, and therefore both a product and antecedent of the ongoing practice of work. Knowledge and practice, therefore, are "reciprocally constitutive, so that it does not make sense to talk about either knowledge or practice without the other."

Orlikowski's empirical context is Kappa, a geographically dispersed high-tech organization; she specifically focuses on groups involved in product development. A central feature of successful product development at Kappa was boundary spanning. Orlikowski noted seven categories of such boundaries (e.g. political, cultural, social, temporal, technological), and operationalized knowledgeability/knowledge as that which enabled successful action across these boundaries. As in many of her recent papers, Orlikowski adopts a practice lens; this allows her to address individual action and social structure without accepting them as a dualism.

Orlikowski then articulates a repertoire of five practices associated with successful action across these boundaries (sharing identity, interacting face to face, aligning effort, learning by doing and supporting participation). She further links these practices to five distinct types of knowing (knowing the organization, knowing the players in the game, knowing how to coordinate across time, knowing how to develop capabilities and knowing how to innovate), suggesting that it is most useful (at least in this case) to conceive of these practices and types of knowing as mutually constitutive.
|relevance=By bringing a practice lens to organizational knowledge and product development, Orlikowski reframes the conversation. Perhaps it is more important to focus on the ongoing maintenance and construction of processes associated with knowledge than to focus on the knowledge itself. Perhaps "best" practices and knowledge resist transfer across organizational boundaries because actors must learn to enact associated practices.
|journal=Organization science
|pub_date=2002
}}

Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing

2012-05-29T22:50:25Z

Mattbeane:

Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing

2012-05-24T15:03:55Z

Mattbeane:

Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing

2012-05-24T14:41:59Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-05-24 04:41:59

{{Summary
|title=Knowing in practice: Enacting a collective capability in distributed organizing
|authors=Orlikowski, W. J
|pub_date=2002
|journal=Organization science
}}

Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations

2012-05-23T14:54:52Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations
|authors=Wanda J. Orlikowski, Debra C. Gash
|tags=frames, organizational theory, Lotus Notes, socio-technical systems,
|summary=This work builds heavily on [[Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation|Orlkikowski's (1992)]] on ''Learning from Notes'' but focuses on one key finding and provides a longer and more theoretically rigorous treatment. A ''technological frame'', as defined in this paper, identifies "that subset of members' organizational frames that concern the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge they use to understand technology in organizations."

One of the key findings in ''Learning from Notes'' is that organizational use of technology is directed by technological frames which, borrowing from Goffman's work on frames, plays and important role in setting the cognitive context through which users of technology understand the tools they are using.

This paper uses the same dataset as the earlier work and focuses on the rollout of Lotus Notes in a large consulting company. Building from that earlier finding (but going into ''much'' more ethnographic depth), Orlikowski and Gash show that the way that users conceive of their technology frames, and therefore limits, what they can do with it.

This paper goes further than earlier work in a series of ways. First, it break users within an organization explicitly into different groups and demonstrates that they have different frames and goals through which they are approaching the technology. In particular, it shows the managers, the consultants, and the information technology staff.

They talk about the way that congruence in technical frames, or a lack thereof, can be connected to conflicts around developing, implementing, and using technologies.

In their implications section, the authors suggest that studying technological frames could allow researchers to "trace the often unacknowledge structural influences of shared interpretations", therefore allowing for a theoretical bridge between institutional theory and perspectives that focus on micro-organizational dynamics. This is essentially the point made by Barley and Tolbert in their 1997 piece on Institutionalist and Structuration theory.

The data presented in ethnographic and from extensive interviews (~90), rich in detail, and provided at length.
|relevance=This paper is highly cited in the CSCW literature and provides a core link between the sociological and social science literature on organizations and the literature on technology. This provides the "go to" literature on technological frames which continues to be a useful concept in the broader CSCW community.
|journal=ACM Transactions of Information Systems
|pub_date=1994
|doi=10.1145/196734.196745
|journal_vol=12
|pub_open_access=
}}

Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective

2012-05-22T15:14:25Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective
|authors=Orlikowski, W. J
|tags=Organizational Change, Improvisation, Practice Lens, Groupware, Ethnography,
|summary=Orlikowski responds here to previous accounts for organizational change associated with information technologies. These accounts tended towards the deterministic (e.g. technological imperative) and/or a punctuated equilibrium perspective.

Using data from a 2-year interview and observation-based study of a groupware implementation in a tech services firm, Orlikowski argues for an emergent change perspective, one in which change arises as a natural and ongoing consequence of everyday work practices (coupled with new possibilities associated with the new technology). Orlikowski reminds us that March had proposed this possibility 15 years earlier.

She reveals five phases of groupware-associated change over this 2 year span, and divides adaptations and work practices into planned and unplanned domains. At any given point in time, much of the observed work practice novelty was not anticipated in previous time periods. Orlikowski says that the specifics of the adaptation in the firm under observation are likely highly contingent. She also claims that the process of ongoing, situated, emergent adaptation driven by the interplay between agency and structure (technological and social structure in this case) is likely generalizable.
|relevance=In her words: "a practice lens can avoid the strong assumptions of rationality, determinism, or discontinuity characterizing existing change perspectives. A situated change perspective may offer a particularly useful strategy for analyzing change in organizations turning increasingly away from patterns of stability, bureaucracy, and control to those of flexibility, selforganizing,
and learning."
|journal=Information systems research
|pub_date=1996
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=7
}}

Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective

2012-05-22T14:34:17Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective
|authors=Orlikowski, W. J
|tags=Organizational Change, Improvisation, Practice Lens, Groupware, Ethnography,
|summary=Orlikowski responds here to previous accounts for organizational change associated with information technologies. These accounts tended towards the deterministic (e.g. technological imperative) and/or a punctuated equilibrium perspective.

Using data from a 2-year interview and observation-based study of a groupware implementation in a tech services firm, Orlikowski argues for an emergent change perspective, one in which change arises as a natural and ongoing consequence of everyday work practices (coupled with new possibilities associated with the new technology). Orlikowski reminds us that March had proposed this possibility 15 years earlier.

She reveals five phases of groupware-associated change over this 2 year span, and divides adaptations and work practices into planned and unplanned domains. At any given point in time, much of the observed work practice novelty was not anticipated in previous time periods. Orlikowski says that the specifics of the adaptation in the firm under observation are likely highly contingent. She also claims that the process of ongoing, situated, emergent adaptation driven by the interplay between agency and structure (technological and social structure in this case) is likely generalizable.
|journal=Information systems research
|pub_date=1996
|subject=Sociology
|journal_volume=7
}}

Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective

2012-05-22T12:22:34Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-05-22 02:22:34

{{Summary
|title=Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective
|authors=Orlikowski, W. J
|pub_date=1996
|journal=Information systems research
|journal_volume=7
}}

The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox

2012-05-19T17:25:57Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox
|authors=David, P. A
|url=http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e124/David90_dynamo.pdf
|tags=Economics, innovation, functional fixity, general purpose technology, productivity paradox
|summary=David explores a puzzle: how could we see so little productivity gain given such a massive investment in information technology in recent years? While others (e.g. Brynjolfsson, 96) have since explored this using more traditional economic methods, David takes a historical perspective.

Specifically, he investigates the introduction of the dynamo (a general purpose technology) in factories that previously relied upon steam powered engines for their power. Davis essentially holds that managers' initial decisions regarding dynamos were driven by functional fixity: they installed a single massive dynamo in the center of their factories, merely replacing the massive steam engines. The new dynamo drove a massive camshaft which in turn rotated a number of belts which distributed power to the machines of production. Efficiency gains were minimal. New factories were built with this basic presumption of a single centralized mechanical power source. Davis claims that modern-day managers were likely doing the same thing vis à vis computers.

It was only once managers/organizations decided to attach a smaller dynamo to each piece of equipment that productivity gains skyrocketed. Factories were redesigned to take advantage of this flexibility, machines were rearranged so that production tasks were more streamlined. Again, Davis posits that managers have been and/or will soon find freedom from their computer-related functional fixity, and it will be then that we will more clearly "see" a return on our IT investment.
|journal=The American Economic Review
|pub_date=1990
|subject=Economics
|journal_volume=80
}}

The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox

2012-05-19T17:23:24Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox
|authors=David, P. A
|url=http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e124/David90_dynamo.pdf
|summary=David explores a puzzle: how could we see so little productivity gain given such a massive investment in information technology in recent years? While others (e.g. Brynjolfsson, 96) have since explored this using more traditional economic methods, David takes a historical perspective.

Specifically, he investigates the introduction of the dynamo (a general purpose technology) in factories that previously relied upon steam powered engines for their power. Davis essentially holds that managers' initial decisions regarding dynamos were driven by functional fixity: they installed a single massive dynamo in the center of their factories, merely replacing the massive steam engines. The new dynamo drove a massive camshaft which in turn rotated a number of belts which distributed power to the machines of production. Efficiency gains were minimal. New factories were built with this basic presumption of a single centralized mechanical power source. Davis claims that modern-day managers were likely doing the same thing vis à vis computers.

It was only once managers/organizations decided to attach a smaller dynamo to each piece of equipment that productivity gains skyrocketed. Factories were redesigned to take advantage of this flexibility, machines were rearranged so that production tasks were more streamlined. Again, Davis posits that managers have been and/or will soon find freedom from their computer-related functional fixity, and it will be then that we will more clearly "see" a return on our IT investment.
|journal=The American Economic Review
|pub_date=1990
|subject=Economics
|journal_volume=80
}}

The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox

2012-05-19T17:22:08Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox
|authors=David, P. A
|url=http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e124/David90_dynamo.pdf
|summary=David explores a puzzle: how could we see so little productivity gain given such a massive investment in information technology in recent years? While others (e.g. Brynjolfsson) have since explored this using more traditional economic methods, David takes a historical perspective.

Specifically, he investigates the introduction of the dynamo (a general purpose technology) in factories that previously relied upon steam powered engines for their power. Davis essentially holds that managers' initial decisions regarding dynamos were driven by functional fixity: they installed a single massive dynamo in the center of their factories, merely replacing the massive steam engines. The new dynamo drove a massive camshaft which in turn rotated a number of belts which distributed power to the machines of production. Efficiency gains were minimal. New factories were built with this basic presumption of a single centralized mechanical power source. Davis claims that modern-day managers were likely doing the same thing vis à vis computers.

It was only once managers/organizations decided to attach a smaller dynamo to each piece of equipment that productivity gains skyrocketed. Factories were redesigned to take advantage of this flexibility, machines were rearranged so that production tasks were more streamlined. Again, Davis posits that managers have been and/or will soon find freedom from their computer-related functional fixity, and it will be then that we will more clearly "see" a return on our IT investment.
|journal=The American Economic Review
|pub_date=1990
|subject=Economics
|journal_volume=80
}}

The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox

2012-05-19T17:20:51Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox
|authors=David, P. A
|url=http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e124/David90_dynamo.pdf
|tags=productivity paradox, Information Technology, history of technology, functional fixity, innovation,
|summary=David explores a puzzle: how could we see so little productivity gain given such a massive investment in information technology in recent years? While others (e.g. Brynjolfsson) have since explored this using more traditional economic methods, David takes a historical perspective.

Specifically, he investigates the introduction of the dynamo (a general purpose technology) in factories that previously relied upon steam powered engines for their power. Davis essentially holds that managers' initial decisions regarding dynamos were driven by functional fixity: they installed a single massive dynamo in the center of their factories, merely replacing the massive steam engines. The new dynamo drove a massive camshaft which in turn rotated a number of belts which distributed power to the machines of production. Efficiency gains were minimal. New factories were built with this basic presumption of a single centralized mechanical power source. Davis claims that modern-day managers were likely doing the same thing vis à vis computers.

It was only once managers/organizations decided to attach a smaller dynamo to each piece of equipment that productivity gains skyrocketed. Factories were redesigned to take advantage of this flexibility, machines were rearranged so that production tasks were more streamlined. Again, Davis posits that managers have been and/or will soon find freedom from their computer-related functional fixity, and it will be then that we will more clearly "see" a return on our IT investment.
|journal=The American Economic Review
|pub_date=1990
|subject=Economics
|journal_volume=80
}}

The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox

2012-05-19T17:03:40Z

Mattbeane: BibTeX auto import 2012-05-19 07:03:40

{{Summary
|title=The dynamo and the computer: an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox
|authors=David, P. A
|pub_date=1990
|journal=The American Economic Review
|journal_volume=80
}}

Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres

2012-05-18T20:51:25Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres
|authors=Daniel Nyberg
|url=http://oss.sagepub.com/content/30/11/1181.short
|tags=cyborg, call center, call centre, computers, categories, after ANT, agentic cuts, practice lens
|summary=In this piece, Nyberg offers a socio-material account of an eight-month ethnography in an Australian call center.

He is, in part, responding to calls from the literature (e.g. Orlikowski 2007, Barad 2007, Suchman 2007) for accounts that focus on practices (Feldman & Orlikowski 2011) that emerge from and produce human-machine intRA-actions (a term coined by Barad), as opposed to intERactions. Nyberg claims that viewing exchanges within human-machine assemblages as intERactions reinforces a variety of occasionally burdensome Cartesian dualisms, e.g. subject/object, person/machine, agency/structure. Viewing these practices as intRA-actions argues more aggressively for a relational ontology - a perspective in which "There are no predetermined, unchanging agents that can cause something to happen: agencies are dependent on their mutual inextricability. The starting point for this type of investigation is thus not the actors that produce practices. On the contrary, it is the intra-actions within practices that produce actors and categories." (p1184)

Nyberg explores the ways in which call center representatives separate (or "cut") themselves from the technology with which they are so deeply enmeshed; he makes causal links here to the reps' desires to blame others for work-related problems. He also shows ways in which these cuts challenge the notion that agency resides in humans only: workers speak of systems' interactions with each other, and they note that a merger of two systems in 2001 "created" new agency in that the system "added" an additional unnamed driver to many customer car insurance records. Nyberg holds that these unnamed drivers exerted a form of agency.
|relevance=In short, Nyberg challenges the assumptions embedded in humanist and dualistic accounts. He also attempts a truly relational socio-material account of a complex organizational phenomena. Creating such accounts without falling back on old assumptions is notoriously difficult (Feldman & Orlikowski 2011).
|journal=Organization Studies
|pub_date=2009
|doi=10.1177/0170840609337955
|subject=Sociology
}}

Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres

2012-05-18T20:48:52Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres
|authors=Daniel Nyberg
|url=http://oss.sagepub.com/content/30/11/1181.short
|tags=cyborg, call center, call centre, computers, categories, after ANT, agentic cuts, practice lens
|summary=In this piece, Nyberg offers a socio-material account of an eight-month ethnography in an Australian call center.

He is, in part, responding to calls from the literature (e.g. Orlikowski 2007, Barad 2007, Suchman 2007) for accounts that focus on practices (Feldman & Orlikowski 2009) that emerge from and produce human-machine intRA-actions (a term coined by Barad), as opposed to intERactions. Nyberg claims that viewing exchanges within human-machine assemblages as intERactions reinforces a variety of occasionally burdensome Cartesian dualisms, e.g. subject/object, person/machine, agency/structure. Viewing these practices as intRA-actions argues more aggressively for a relational ontology - a perspective in which "There are no predetermined, unchanging agents that can cause something to happen: agencies are dependent on their mutual inextricability. The starting point for this type of investigation is thus not the actors that produce practices. On the contrary, it is the intra-actions within practices that produce actors and categories." (p1184)

Nyberg explores the ways in which call center representatives separate (or "cut") themselves from the technology with which they are so deeply enmeshed; he makes causal links here to the reps' desires to blame others for work-related problems. He also shows ways in which these cuts challenge the notion that agency resides in humans only: workers speak of systems' interactions with each other, and they note that a merger of two systems in 2001 "created" new agency in that the system "added" an additional unnamed driver to many customer car insurance records. Nyberg holds that these unnamed drivers exerted a form of agency.
|relevance=In short, Nyberg challenges the assumptions embedded in humanist and dualistic accounts. He also attempts a truly relational socio-material account of a complex organizational phenomena. Creating such accounts without falling back on old assumptions is notoriously difficult (Feldman & Orlikowski 2009).
|journal=Organization Studies
|pub_date=2009
|doi=10.1177/0170840609337955
|subject=Sociology
}}

Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres

2012-05-18T20:45:33Z

Mattbeane: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres |authors=Daniel Nyberg |url=http://oss.sagepub.com/content/30/11/1181.short |ta..."

{{Summary
|title=Computers, Customer Service Operatives and Cyborgs: Intra-actions in Call Centres
|authors=Daniel Nyberg
|url=http://oss.sagepub.com/content/30/11/1181.short
|tags=cyborg, call center, call centre, computers, categories, after ANT, agentic cuts, practice lens
|summary=In this piece, Nyberg offers a socio-material account of an eight-month ethnography in an Australian call center.

He is, in part, responding to calls from the literature (e.g. Orlikowski 2007, Barad 2007, Suchman 2007) for accounts that focus on practices (Feldman & Orlikowski 2009) that emerge from and produce human-machine intRA-actions (a term coined by Barad) as opposed to intERactions. Nyberg claims that viewing actions within human-machine assemblages as interactions reinforces a variety of burdensome Cartesian dualisms, e.g. subject/object, person/machine, agency/structure. Viewing these practices as intra-actions argues more aggressively for a relational ontology - a perspective in which "There are no predetermined, unchanging agents that can cause something to happen: agencies are dependent on their mutual inextricability. The starting point for this type of investigation is thus not the actors that produce practices. On the contrary, it is the intra-actions within practices that produce actors and categories."

Nyberg explores the ways in which call center representatives separate (or "cut") themselves from the technology with which they are so deeply enmeshed; he makes causal links here to the reps' desires to blame others for work-related problems. He also shows ways in which these cuts challenge the notion that agency resides in humans only: workers speak of systems' interactions with each other, and they note that a merger of two systems in 2001 "created" new agency in that the system "added" an additional unnamed driver to many customer car insurance records. Nyberg holds that these unnamed drivers exerted a form of agency.
|relevance=In short, Nyberg challenges the assumptions embedded in humanist and dualistic accounts. He also attempts a truly relational socio-material account of a complex organizational phenomena. Creating such accounts without falling back on old assumptions is notoriously difficult (Feldman & Orlikowski 2009).
|journal=Organization Studies
|pub_date=2009
|doi=10.1177/0170840609337955
|subject=Sociology
}}

Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory

2012-05-17T18:23:44Z

Mattbeane: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory |authors=Martha S. Feldman, Wanda J. Orlikowski, |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66516 |tags=Sociology, Practice Len..."

{{Summary
|title=Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory
|authors=Martha S. Feldman, Wanda J. Orlikowski,
|url=http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66516
|tags=Sociology, Practice Lens, Structuration Theory, routines, Practice Theory
|summary=In this piece, Feldman and Orlikowski articulate a practice perspective on organizational phenomena, contrast it with previous approaches, describe their scholarly journeys to a practice perspective and identify the value and challenges associated with this perspective.

Taking a practice perspective implies a focus on "the relationship between specific instances of situated action and the social world in which the action takes place." Giddens's structuration and Bordieu's theory of practice are exemplars.

Feldman and Orlikowski first identify that one can take a practice perspective with regard to empirical phenomena, matters of theory and matters of philosophy. The authors focus primarily on the theoretical level, though they draw heavily upon their empirical work. They then scan the Strategy, Knowledge and Institutionalist literatures for examples of practice-focused work.

Feldman offers her path to the development of a practice-focused theory of organizational routines, and Orlikowski offers her path from Giddens's original conception of structuration (which foregrounded technology) to a modified approach which brought "technologies-in-practice" to the fore. In essence hers was a move away from the technological artifact in general to the situated and particular engagement with that technology.

While organizational scholars have been pushing since the 60s for engagement with the action (rather than the being) of organizations, actually adopting a practice perspective remains unusual and somewhat risky. Readers want "to know what knowledge has been acquired or what resources are being used rather than how knowing is achieved or action is resourced."

The authors hold that it is very difficult to write, let alone think from a practice perspective. The core difficulty here is categorization: on the one hand we survive and operate by creating and connecting abstract categories and dualities (e.g. agency/structure, good/bad), and on the other the closer we examine the dynamics inherent in our reality the more difficult it is to hold fast to these distinctions.

The authors claim that practice perspective scholars respond by inventing new terms, writing in circular language and spending more time in the field. In return for all this effort, the authors claim, a practice perspective allows for "powerful theoretical generalizations" (e.g. Lave's "cognition in practice") and practical guidance that acknowledges and incorporates the real-world complexities of the systems with which managers must contend.
|relevance=Organization Science 22 (2011): 1240-1253
|journal=Organization Science
|pub_date=2011
|doi=10.1287/orsc.1100.0612
|subject=Sociology
}}

Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity

2011-07-07T13:31:57Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity
|authors=Ezra W. Zuckerman
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593054 .
|tags=categories, stocks, valuation, efficient markets hypothesis, valuation, Economic Sociology,
|summary=Zuckerman hypothesizes that stocks that defy categorization are traded more frequently, at higher volume, and with higher price volatility than stocks that are more easily classified. He validates these hypotheses (all are supported) by looking at market activity just after first-quarter earnings announcements for US firms from 1995 to 2001.
|relevance=Zuckerman draws upon categorization as a theoretical perspective; referring to the likes of Douglas ("Purity and Danger") he claims that "greater trading volume reflects the tendency... for the market to contain more pairs of traders with opposing orientations toward the same asset", and that "When valuing a firm's shares, investors first place that stock in the context of peer firms from the same industry." If we presume, as Zuckerman does, that we make economic decisions based partially upon available classificatory frames, then it's a small leap to the conclusion that in cases of low frame frame availability we would see high volatility, volume and frequency of trading.

Zuckerman is quick to point out that he does not intend to upturn the efficient markets hypothesis; rather, he intends to show that it is not the sole factor governing financial markets. In so doing, he sides clearly with perspectives rooted in economic sociology (e.g. Grannovetter, 1985): our economic decisions are influenced both by a drive for utility maximization (e.g. the best stock at the best price) AND by social structure (e.g. what other kinds of stocks we can compare a potential stock purchase to).
|journal=American Sociological Review
|pub_date=2004/06
|subject=Sociology
}}

Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity

2011-07-07T13:26:39Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity
|authors=Ezra W. Zuckerman
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593054 .
|tags=categories, stocks, valuation, efficient markets hypothesis, valuation
|summary=Zuckerman hypothesizes that stocks that defy categorization are traded more frequently, at higher volume, and with higher price volatility than stocks that are more easily classified. He validates these hypotheses (all are supported) by looking at market activity just after first-quarter earnings announcements for US firms from 1995 to 2001.
|relevance=Zuckerman draws upon categorization as a theoretical perspective; referring to the likes of Douglas ("Purity and Danger") he claims that "greater trading volume reflects the tendency... for the market to contain more pairs of traders with opposing orientations toward the same asset", and that "When valuing a firm's shares, investors first place that stock in the context of peer firms from the same industry." If we presume, as Zuckerman does, that we make economic decisions based partially upon available classificatory frames, then it's a small leap to the conclusion that in cases of low frame frame availability we would see high volatility, volume and frequency of trading.

Zuckerman is quick to point out that he does not intend to upturn the efficient markets hypothesis; rather, he intends to show that it is not the sole factor governing financial markets. In so doing, he sides clearly with perspectives rooted in economic sociology (e.g. Grannovetter, 1985): our economic decisions are influenced both by a drive for utility maximization (e.g. the best stock at the best price) AND by social structure (e.g. what other kinds of stocks we can compare a potential stock purchase to).
|journal=American Sociological Review
|pub_date=2004/06
|subject=Sociology
}}

Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity

2011-07-07T13:17:08Z

Mattbeane: Created page with "{{Summary |title=Structural Incoherence and Stock Market Activity |authors=Ezra W. Zuckerman |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593054 . |tags=categories, stocks, valuation, effic..."

User:Mattbeane

2011-07-07T11:26:34Z

Mattbeane:

{{User
|name=Matt Beane
|location=MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
}}
Broadly, I'm interested in the implications of increasingly-autonomous IT for the social fabric of organizations. The more evocative the better, e.g. semi-autonomous robots, collocated and task-interdependent with humans.

For love or money: Commodification and the construction of an occupational mandate

2011-06-24T16:18:27Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=For Love or Money: Commodification and the Construction of an Occupational Mandate
|authors=Bonalyn J. Nelsen, Stephen R. Barley
|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393652
|tags=Occupations, altruism, interaction order, occupational mandate, commodification
|summary=Nelsen spent eleven months as a participant-observer in four Emergency Medical Services (EMS) groups. She was trained as an EMS worker, and went on dozens of emergency response calls. She also interviewed a number of medical professionals (e.g. nurses, doctors) as well as firefighters and police officers who interacted with EMS workers.

After setting the theoretical stage (see below), Nelsen and Barley recount the history of EMS work. Volunteer EMS squads began to appear in the late '50s and it was only by the '90s that communities began relying on a mix of volunteers and professionals. A federal act in '73 recommended standardized training and certification for EMS workers, but made no requirement regarding their compensation (or lack thereof). There was therefore no preexisting social structure (law, in this case) that EMS workers could appeal to in order to justify and propagate their frame on their work.

Nelsen and Barley (I presume) used a grounded theory approach to analyze Nelsen's fieldnotes and interview data, deriving a series of scripts (they don't name them as such, but they bear a striking resemblance to those in Barley's seminal paper on CT scanners). They go on to describe how paid and unpaid EMS workers deploy these scripts in order to secure their status.

In short, paid EMS workers received more intensive training and were held to higher standards, and this allowed them to both adopt scripts associated with professionalism (e.g. consistency, rationality) and with professionalized medicine in particular. Nelsen and Barley share ethnographic data that indicates the paid EMS workers used these scripts to denigrate their unpaid counterparts in a way that also increased their own status in the eyes of those that make proximate decisions about their status as professionals.
|relevance=Nelson and Barley make at least two important contributions here. Previous scholars had assumed that professionalization occurred via an appeal to/interaction with societal structures (e.g. law, policy). While supporting this view, they also claim that scholars have overlooked a crucial, early-stage mechanism: Goffman's "interaction orders". Nelson and Barley hold that the content and process of conversations at the front lines determines occupational status (in this case, conversations involving volunteer and paid EMS workers, patients, medical professionals, firefighters and police) as much as social structure does.

Their second contribution is to examine the commodification of labor. In their view, anything that becomes a commodity was previously an object of altruism - a gift. They thus open the door to the interaction between the sociological dynamics associated with gift giving and altruism and the sociological dynamics associated with commodified labor. Occupations in transition from one to the other (e.g. EMS) provide a unique opportunity to witness the dialectic between these two logics.
|journal=Administrative Science Quarterly
|pub_date=1997
|subject=Sociology
}}

Change in the presence of fit: The rise, the fall, and the renaissance of Liz Claiborne

2010-10-25T12:05:39Z

Mattbeane:

{{Summary
|title=Change in the presence of fit: The rise, the fall, and the renaissance of Liz Claiborne
|authors=Siggelkow, Nicolaj
|tags=performance landscape, liz claiborne, organizational change, fit, inertia
|summary=Siggelkow presents new theory on the relationship between the “tightness” of “fit” in an organization and its ability to adapt to changing market conditions. In order to achieve this, Siggelkow also offers a new taxonomy of market-based change. Previous approaches focused on whether environments were stable or turbulent. In proposing his theory, Siggelkow bridges the “fit” and “inertia” literatures.

Punchline: very tight internal fit implies a firmly-embedded mental model in individual managers. This makes the organization much less able to adapt to market changes that challenge external but not internal fit (that is, “the environmental change has left the internal logic of the firm's system of choices intact while decreasing the appropriateness of the system as a whole.” )

Key Terms:

Firm: “a system of interconnected choices: choices with respect to activities, policies and organizational structures, capabilities, and resources.” p838

Internal fit: “…whether a firm has a coherent configuration of [internal] activities.” (“Tight” in relation to this term simply means a great degree) p839

External fit: “…the appropriateness of the configuration [of internal activities] given the environmental conditions facing the firm.” (“Tight” in relation to this term simply means a great degree) This is essentially Porter’s alignment-of-strategy-with-the-market question. p839

Performance Landscape: a three-dimensional plot of organizational performance (z) and any other two variables that bear causal/correlational relationships with performance. Siggelkow uses “variety” and “flexibility” as the (x) and (y) variables to explain the concept. Siggelkow borrows this construct from a number of scholars (e.g. Leventhal, Rivkin).

Structure:
Introduction: Standard fare

Part 1: Literature review and Change Framework
Siggelkow proceeds here by defining new concepts. Each time he does this he cites relevant literature.

He begins by defining internal and external fit (to account for useful and different conceptions of fit from disparate literatures).

He then moves to organizational “inertia” (that which limits adaptive organizational behavior in turbulent times) and defines this in terms of managers’ mental models.

Key point here: the more previous success, the more deeply embedded a mental model, the more challenging it is to change.

Siggelkow then introduces performance landscapes as a way of visualizing internal and external fit. He says that external fit is represented by the height of a given point on the landscape. Internal fit is whether the firm occupies a given peak (so, as an aside, Porter’s “focused” firm would seek a high point on its performance landscape and try to occupy it).

Then Siggelkow defines four kinds of change, in terms of internal and external fit:

“In sum, with fit-destroying change the firm no longer occupies a peak [on its performance landscape]; with fit-conserving change, the firm still occupies a peak, the height of which has declined, however.”

Siggelkow claims that in fit-conserving change, firms can respond in one of three (self-evident) ways:
1- Playing the old game (graphically: firm stays on its sinking peak - BAD)
2- Playing an incomplete game (graphically: firm moves incrementally off its peak - BAD)
3- Playing a new game (graphically: firm relocates to a new and higher peak - GOOD)

Part 2: Liz Claiborne case study
Key sections, with summaries:

History of the firm: Story of its founding, really. The firm was incredibly successful very quickly; it occupied a very tall peak in its performance landscape by 1989, never having performed poorly (it was founded in 1976).

The Rise of Liz Claiborne: Siggelkow lays out key choices the firm made in the early days – choices that led to very tight internal and external fit well into the late 80s. He examines these choices and content codes them, ending with six categories (e.g. Marketing). These correspond with “flexibility” and “variety” variables on the sample performance landscapes, above.

Liz Claiborne’s fall: “during the late 1980s and early 1990s, changes in customer demand, retailers' economic health, and technological advances reduced the external fit of this coherent system: the height of Liz Claiborne's peak started to decrease when a new peak arose in the performance landscape.” Firm leaders and managers essentially adopted the “play an incomplete game” strategy.

Liz Claiborne’s renaissance: In 1994 a new CEO was hired. He and his management team successfully adopted the “play a new game” strategy. Siggelkow returns to his content-coded map of strategic choice in the firm, making modifications to reflect the new tactics associated with the “new game” strategy.

Part 3: Discussion and Conclusion
Other than summarizing his paper and views, Siggelkow proposes some (as yet untested) hypotheses, implied by his theoretical contribution:
1- In the face of benign, fit-destroying change, firms that have tight internal fit will react quicker because the organization is highly interdependent
2- “fit-conserving change can be observed if technological change allows rival firms to compete with new systems of activities.”
3- “moderate fit-destroying change is associated with environmental developments (such as technological improvements) that affect only individual activities.”
|journal=Academy of Management Journal 44: 838-857
|pub_date=2001
|subject=Business
}}