Susan V. Scott

10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization

Abstract We begin by juxtaposing the pervasive presence of technology in organizational work with its absence from the organization studies literature. Our analysis of four leading journals in the field confirms that over 95% of the articles published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role of technology in organizational life. We then examine the research that has been done on technology, and categorize this literature into two research streams according to their view of technology: discrete entities or mutually dependent ensembles. For each stream, we discuss three existing reviews spanning the last three decades of scholarship to highlight that while there have been many studies and approaches to studying organizational interactions and implications of technology, empirical research has produced mixed and often‐conflicting results. Going forward, we suggest that further work is needed to theorize the fusion of technology and work in organizations, and that additional perspe...

Networks, negotiations, and new times: the implementation of enterprise resource planning into an academic administration☆

Higher education is a sector entering an era of IT-enabled modernization in which it may have to cope with an influx of unfamiliar corporate concepts and practices. This paper analyzes one of the first Enterprise Resource Planning implementation projects within the academic administration of an Ivy League university. We contribute to existing qualitative literature in information systems by developing the theme of temporality within actor–network theory to support our analysis. This enables us to extend process-oriented ERP research by focusing on the identification of temporal zones and creation of durable work times designed to re-order priorities between competing visions for the future of higher education. We analyze detailed negotiations during periods of controversy to reveal how standard work practices come to be created and recreated. We consider how the ERP that emerges is affected by progressive trials of strength during the project and analyze the achievement of order as an on-going process. Our findings highlight the distinctive contribution that a ‘temporal turn’ can bring to longitudinal research studies by providing insight into the technical agency of ERP packages and how its temporal inscriptions shaped the emergence of a socio-technical information system. This reordered organizational work life and created a hybrid temporality that still needs to be negotiated into the working rhythms of the University’s actors.

The Creation Of ‘Best Practice’ Software: Myth, Reality And Ethics

The notion of best practice is a foundational concept for vendors of Enterprise Resource Planning systems who use it to support a claim to provide tried and tested, ‘best of breed’ process models. This study illustrates how a best practice ERP system was actually created. The product resulted from a socio-political process involving negotiations amongst a small group of interests in a particular context. This process is illuminated through the presentation of an intensive case study in which we follow the creation of the ERP product destined to be marketed as a best practice solution for higher education institutions. We focus on the design of an ERP-based grants management system to highlight the role of software in shaping operations and strategy at both a firm and industry level. The design of IT shapes the boundaries of organizational knowledge and decision-making by classifying work practices and translating them into the software. The focus of our investigation is the process by which a small group of powerful actors came to define the ‘best practice’ for an industry. Findings reveal the politics involved in constructing, marketing and disseminating best practice claims. Using theoretical concepts from Science and Technology Studies literature, we illuminate how the design of the ERP product changed the nature of work, and how later such practices were locally refuted and amended, despite the original product continuing to be sold by the software vendor. The ethics of such ‘best practice’ claims are questioned.

Reconceptualizing and Managing Reputation Risk in the Knowledge Economy: Toward Reputable Action

Globalizing knowledge economies foster conditions that intensify the role and value of organizational reputation risk. In an enterprise-focused era, reputation is a key strategic construct that can act as a boundary object linking communities within and between organizations. Yet approaches to its management tend to be reactive and remain under the hold of industrial society principles. Definitions of reputation risk in the existing literature and the business community have a tendency to be static and asset oriented. We suggest that this contrasts sharply with insights on the social construction of knowledge that inform recent risk studies. Drawing on this critique, we argue that the ambivalence engendered by on-going processes of definition (responsibilities, boundaries, fact construction) characterizing the knowledge society demands a reconceptualization of reputation risk. We propose a reconceptualization of reputation risk that not only incorporates a more sophisticated view of reputation, but also acknowledges the role that risk and trust relations can play in its constitution. In addition to contributing to the theoretical development of reputation risk in the organization studies literature, we develop the notion of reputable action as a guiding principle for realizing active trust development in the practical management of reputation risk.

Methodological implications of critical realism for mixed-methods research

Building on recent developments in mixed methods, we discuss the methodological implications of critical realism and explore how these can guide dynamic mixed-methods research design in information systems. Specifically, we examine the core ontological assumptions of CR in order to gain some perspective on key epistemological issues such as causation and validity, and illustrate how these shape our logic of inference in the research process through what is known as retroduction. We demonstrate the value of a CR-led mixed-methods research approach by drawing on a study that examines the impact of ICT adoption in the financial services sector. In doing so, we provide insight into the interplay between qualitative and quantitative methods and the particular value of applying mixed methods guided by CR methodological principles. Our positioning of demi-regularities within the process of retroduction contributes a distinctive development in this regard. We argue that such a research design enables us to better address issues of validity and the development of more robust meta-inferences.

What Happens When Evaluation Goes Online? Exploring Apparatuses of Valuation in the Travel Sector

Our research focuses on the fast-changing landscape of contemporary social media where user-generated content is increasingly being used to evaluate a wide range of products and services. The move to online valuations is raising important questions about how valuations change when they are produced online by consumers and what outcomes they generate for the organizations being evaluated. To address these questions, we investigate two prominent hotel valuation schemes currently at work in the hospitality industry, and we identify significant differences in their valuation practices and outcomes. We develop a practice-based lens for examining the materiality of valuations, providing a way of understanding the differences we observed in terms of performativity. This lens explains both how valuations are actively produced in ongoing practice and how their production is significantly reconfiguring everyday practices of the organizations being evaluated. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for research on valuation and organizations.

Entanglements in practice: performing anonymity through social media

Information systems researchers have shown an increasing interest in the notion of sociomateriality. In this paper, we continue this exploration by focusing specifically on entanglement: the inseparability of meaning and matter. Our particular approach is differentiated by its grounding in a relational and performative ontology, and its use of agential realism. We explore some of the key ideas of entanglement through a comparison of two phenomena in the travel sector: an institutionalized accreditation scheme offered by the AA and an online social media website hosted by TripAdvisor. Our analysis centers on the production of anonymity in these two practices of hotel evaluation. By examining how anonymity is constituted through an entanglement of matter and meaning, we challenge the predominantly social treatments of anonymity to date and draw attention to the uncertainties and outcomes generated by specific performances of anonymity in practice. In closing, we consider what the particular agential realist concept of entanglement entails for understanding anonymity, and discuss its implications for research practice.

Sociomateriality - taking the wrong turning? A response to Mutch

In responding to Mutchs (2013) commentary on sociomateriality, our aim is to reassert a well-established tradition of plurality in theoretical approaches in information systems and organization research. We challenge his critique by proxy and exclusionary discourse in favour of identifying commonalities and mutuality among theories that explore subtle realism. Further, we maintain that ruling out novel perspectives and stifling innovation is likely to undermine any field of study. If there is a measure of healthy scholarship then it is surely our capacity to sustain the conditions that foster openness and experimentation in the framing and doing of our research endeavors.

IT-enabled credit risk modernisation: a revolution under the cloak of normality

This paper focuses on IT-enabled credit risk modernisation in commercial retail banking. The empirical material is based upon a longitudinal case study conducted during 1993–1996 using an interpretive approach. It documents the introduction of a leading-edge computer-based decision support system into middle market corporate lending processes in a major UK retail bank. An analysis is constructed against the backcloth of contemporary social theory with the aim of stimulating debate regarding the ethics and politics of corporate risk positions. It is suggested that changes to the definition, assessment and management of credit risk in a major financial services institution, implemented through the introduction of a new technology and enacted in everyday acts of normal consumption, need debating. The paper concludes by asserting that if we turn aside from our responsibility to challenge the epistemological basis of contemporary risk assessment and management we may find that our social, political and economic landscape has changed without our consent.

The algorithm and the crowd: considering the materiality of service innovation

This special issue acknowledges important innovations in the world of service and within this domain we are particularly interested in exploring the rise and influence of web-based crowd-sourcing and algorithmic rating and ranking mechanisms. We suggest that a useful way to make sense of these digital service innovations and their novel implications is to recognize that they are materialized in practice. We thus need effective conceptual and analytical tools that allow us to take materiality seriously in our studies of service innovation. To this end, we propose some theoretical ideas relating to a sociomaterial perspective, and then highlight empirically how this perspective helps us analyze the specific service materializations enacted through the algorithmic configuring of crowd-sourced data, and how these make a difference in practice to the outcomes produced.