Florian Ueberbacher

Anticipating intended users: prospective sensemaking in technology development

How do developers and designers of a new technology make sense of intended users? The critical groundwork for user-centred technology development begins not by involving actual users’ exposure to the technological artefact but much earlier, with designers’ and developers’ vision of future users. Thus, anticipating intended users is critical to technology uptake. We conceptualise the anticipation of intended users as a form of prospective sensemaking in technology development. Employing a narrative analytical approach and drawing on four key communities in the development of Grid computing, we reconstruct how each community anticipated the intended Grid user. Based on our findings, we conceptualise user anticipation in terms of two key dimensions, namely the intended possibility to inscribe user needs into the technological artefact as well as the intended scope of the application domain. In turn, these dimensions allow us to develop an initial typology of intended user concepts that in turn might provide a key building bloc towards a generic typology of intended users.

Quantitative methods in Strategy-as-Practice Research

While most of the prior work in the Strategy as Practice research has been conceptual or qualitative in nature, there would be major potential in researching strategy practices also quantitatively. There are a number of different benefits that could be gained in comparison to a solely qualitative research orientation. Expanding the use of quantitative methods in studying strategy practices would further lead to the development and validation constructs for the study of strategy practices, verification of the applicability of the results across different contexts, and, as a whole, more effective accumulation of the empirical evidence. Moreover, innovative quantitative methods could also lead to the emergence of novel insights that might not be achievable with purely qualitative research designs. Despite the scarcity of quantitative research on strategy practices, there is extensive research in closely related research streams that one can build on. In particular, prior research on top management teams, middle management, strategic decision-making, strategic consensus, and strategic issues and initiatives provide in this respect important pillars on which to build ones own research on strategy practices.

How Entrepreneurs Become Strategic Cultural Operators

Recent cultural perspectives on entrepreneurs premise that entrepreneurs are strategic cultural operators who are able to purposefully use ‘cultural resources’ that resonate with their audiences to...