Heba El-Sayed

“Modes of mediation” for conceptualizing how different roles for accountants are made present

Purpose - – This paper aims to, using the concept of “modes of mediation”, examine how different roles for accountants are “made present” in an Egyptian manufacturing company. The paper introduces the notion of “modes of mediation” as a different perspective for the opposing popular archetypes of accountants: “bean-counter” versus “business partner”. Modes of mediation emphasise the materiality of artefacts, entities and technologies, as well as organisational space and spatial settings. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper draws on a field study in an Egyptian manufacturing company where accountants are engaged as business partners and involved in operations planning and decision-making. The data were collected over a period of four years through participant observation, interviews and ethnographic techniques. Findings - – The paper reveals the relational nature of accountants’ calculative agency and shows how roles of accountants are intimately associated with a web of technologies and artefacts, as well as spatial working arrangements that represent particular “modes of mediation”. Research limitations/implications - – The concept of “modes of mediation”, which is still under-explored in the role change literature, is useful in studying the roles of accountants. It enriches our understanding of the wider involvement of accountants in business decision-making that goes beyond the major drivers of role change and deliberate interventions discussed in the existing literature. Originality/value - – The paper contributes to the literature on role change by drawing attention to the way in which different modes of mediation, involving certain material and spatial arrangements, enact different forms of calculative agency. Minor alteration to these arrangements can result in a wider involvement of accountants in business decision-making.

‘I download my prayer schedule’: exploring the technological mediation of Islamic religious practice at work

The practice of daily prayers in Islam and how observances such as Ramadan fall each year follow specific solar or lunar calendars different from the Gregorian calendar of UK work places. Identifying the time for daily prayers and finding a place to practise is a skilled activity requiring ways to ascertain the correct (and changing) time and a place in which prayer can take place. In the absence of traditional mediation such as the call to prayer broadcast from a local mosque, new, often technologically innovative, approaches are being adopted. This paper reports on a study of how Muslims practise and negotiate the difficulties of performing daily prayers in a UK university. Though technological mediation is a significant aspect of daily prayers, it is but one part of a complex practice which often involves multiple technologies and multiple ways of working.

On the Emergence of Techno-religious Spaces: Implications for Design and End Users

The developer/user or technology/user dichotomy has long been an important feature in thinking about information systems (IS) development and IS use (for example: Greenbaum and Kyng 1991; Lamb and Kling 2003; He and King 2008). Calls to reframe our understanding of the user of technologies are timely and invite us to rethink some well worn issues. One is the mediation of social preoccupations through technologies. Here the move is away from the frame of a dyad of developer and user towards investigation of how technologies become significant in social life and how attempts to regulate social activity through technologies appear to remain incomplete aspirations.