TY - Generic T1 - Affordance Lost, Affordance Regained, and Affordance Surrendered Y1 - 2016 A1 - Sharma, Divya A1 - Saha, Biswatosh A1 - Sarkar, Uttam K. ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Informed by the ontology of becoming, this study explores technological affordances in the context of use of social media technologies where multiple human and material agents interact without necessarily being co-present. In such scenarios, tracing the relational configuration of social and material agents becomes a challenge. So far, extant literature based on the ontology of becoming has only considered the actualization of affordances in the proximal co-presence of other people and objects. Extending this understanding of affordances by using actor-network theory (ANT) as a methodological and conceptual device, this research traces translations of the ``distant'' in the form of inscriptions that can travel across space and time. This study points towards the utility of using ANT, over other interpretive methods, as a tool to study complex technological phenomena. It shows that affordances are collective, ongoing accomplishments of diverse actors, some co-present physically and others, though distant, co-present through translated representations. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Critical Realism and Actor-Network Theory/Deleuzian Thinking: A Critical Comparison in the Area of Information Systems, Technology and Organizational Studies Y1 - 2016 A1 - McLean, Chris A1 - Aroles, Jeremy ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Much debate has encircled studies of information systems (IS), technology and organizations with regards to ideas of process, stability and change, performance and materiality. This encapsulates different ways of viewing dualities (e.g. subjective/objective, social/technical, local/global, macro/micro, structure/agency, reality/construction, being/becoming, etc.) as well as alternative ontological and epistemological commitments underlying particular approaches and research perspectives. This paper seeks to explore two specific approaches by focusing on a comparison of critical realism (CR) and actor-network theory (ANT)/Deleuze-inspired forms of inquiry. In particular, we focus on the notion of morphogenesis in order to explore in greater detail how this concept conjures up rather different images in relation to approaches centred around CR and ANT/Deleuze. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - A Developmental Perspective to Studying Objects in Robotic Surgery Y1 - 2016 A1 - Seppänen, Laura A1 - Kloetzer, Laure A1 - Riikonen, Jarno A1 - Wahlström, Mikael ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Drawing on interventionist activity theoretical approaches, this paper describes a method of self-confrontation as a way in which to study objects in technology-mediated practices. In addition to research interests, the aim of examining the objects is to develop the capacity of professionals and organizations to work and learn better in complex technology-mediated work. The method was applied in robotic surgery, in which instruments are tele-operated by a surgeon. The robot offers better, collective visualization of the area under surgical operation than previous techniques. In particular, the paper shows how objects were revealed and new objects emerged during the intervention. We suggest that activity theoretical developmental interventions such as self-confrontations may help understand the complexity and evolution of objects, and thus contribute to studies of technology and organizations. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Enactment or Performance? A Non-dualist Reading of Goffman Y1 - 2016 A1 - Hafermalz, Ella A1 - Riemer, Kai A1 - Boell, Sebastian ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - This paper contributes to the sociomateriality research orientation with a critical examination of two concepts – enactment and performance – that have been associated with the notion of performativity. While a preference for the term enactment has been expressed in influential IS literature, we argue that sociomateriality will benefit from an engagement with the body of research that focuses on Goffman's notion of performance. We provide a critique of Mol's reading of Goffman's notions of ``persona'' and ``mask''. We then show how a careful non-dualist reading of his work reveals his opus as relevant and useful for sociomateriality, because his notion of performance affords locating technology in differing roles within a performance. In doing so, we argue that Goffman's work, largely overlooked within this stream of research so far, contributes important concepts and terminology for making sociomateriality actionable for IS. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - From Substantialist to Process Metaphysics – Exploring Shifts in IS Research Y1 - 2016 A1 - Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - This article examines the shifts in Information Systems (IS) research from a positivist to interpretive to sociomaterial paradigm by demonstrating how the shifts reflected the move from substantialist towards process metaphysics. Such metaphysical grounding provides a foundation for deeper understanding of paradigm differences and the struggles when shifts occur. After a brief historical overview of substantialist and process metaphysics and a summary of their key assumptions, the article explores paradigm shifts in IS research and highlights the underlying metaphysical nature of surrounding difficulties and controversies. The article advances the paradigm debate by drawing attention to the metaphysical nature of paradigmatic shifts in IS research and by opening up intellectual space for conceiving and understanding novel research approaches beyond Burrell and Morgan's model [1]. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Ideological Materiality at Work: A Lacanian Approach Y1 - 2016 A1 - Pignot, Edouard ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - While recent theoretical debates have foregrounded sociomaterial studies and the interpenetration between the social and the material, practice-based studies have neglected, if not omitted, the place of affect and ideology in work practice. The use of the notion of materiality causes a conflation of different ontological claims, and a conceptual clarification is needed to grasp the polysemy of materiality. This paper provides some key notions for those interested in addressing the materiality of the affective register at work. By drawing on authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Butler and the Essex Lacanian School, this paper suggests that much is to be gained by addressing two difficult but crucial notions: the materiality of the signifier and ideological fantasy. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Inscribing Individuals into a Formalized System: The ``Labour'' Performed by Affective Spaces Y1 - 2016 A1 - Toll, Alexandra A1 - Mazmanian, Melissa ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - A substantial amount of ongoing work in organizations can be characterized as processes of formalization in which unique circumstances are rendered legible to organizational frameworks and inscribed into institutionalized ways of knowing and doing. Embedded in these processes is the need to manage, distance, and condition the affective and physical experience of the players involved. Using twelve months of ethnographic data gathered in the Family Law unit of the courts in a large county of California, we explore how formalization happens. We find that a dynamic combination of actants (technologies of formalization) engender affective spaces that serve as passage points in the process of formalization. These affective spaces condition the bodies and emotions of customers in a manner that generally mitigates unstable intensity and renders the customer ready to focus on the ``facts'' of the case. We suggest that by attending to the multiple actants in an environment we are able to interrogate both the origin and effects of ``affect'' as well as better understand how key passage points work in the service of formalization processes. In so doing we expand the conversation about the challenges of public service delivery and put forth the beginning of a theory of how affective spaces serve organizational and institutional goals. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Performing Cyborgian Identity: Enacting Agential Cuts in Second Life Y1 - 2016 A1 - Schultze, Ulrike ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - As people live their lives online more and more, they increasingly rely on digital bodies to extend their senses and to perform identities. With this hybridization of physical and digital embodiments, they become cyborgs and are compelled to negotiate the dualistic space defined by the binary opposition of actual and virtual reality. Whereas actuality typically connotes concrete existence, virtuality signifies phenomena that are ideal, essential and unrealized but that have actual effects. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Performing Research Validity: A ``Mangle of Practice'' Approach Y1 - 2016 A1 - Johnston, Robert B. A1 - Reimers, Kai A1 - Klein, Stefan ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Mainstream discussions of research validity (truth, significance, objectivity) draw heavily on a certain ``representational idiom'' of science [1] that assumes a knowledge–reality correspondence. However, for research on practices, rather than nature, such a knowledge-reality distinction is neither feasible nor desirable, as it is at odds with the very notion of a ``practice''. Drawing on Pickering's alternative ``performative idiom'' for science, and extending it to participatory forms of social research, we propose alternative validity claims for practice-oriented research. Using the example of information infrastructuring practices, we show that the three aspects of validity thus reinterpreted become quite closely related to each other and also to the process of information infrastructuring itself. In so doing, we demonstrate the importance of extending the notion of ``material agency'' to embrace the dual agencies of the practice studied and the researcher's own disciplinary practice. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - A Relational Approach to Materiality and Organizing: The Case of a Creative Idea Y1 - 2016 A1 - Martine, Thomas A1 - Cooren, François ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - In this paper, we propose to go beyond the notion of entanglement that has been proposed in recent years to fill the so-called gap between ``the social'' and ``the material'', especially in organizational studies. While this notion rightly invites us to reconsider the way we traditionally approach the question of materiality and organizing, we believe that its formulation tends to implicitly reproduce the gap it claims to fill. In contrast, we propose a view according to which sociality and materiality should, in fact, be considered aspects of everything that comes to be and exist. Throughout the analysis of an episode taken from fieldwork devoted to creative teams, we show that things as abstract as ideas, for instance, in order to emerge, exist, and continue to exist, have to materialize themselves in various identifiable beings. While the sociality of an idea is identified through the various relations that make it what it is, we show that its materiality comes from what precisely materializes these relations. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Synthetic Situations in the Internet of Things Y1 - 2016 A1 - Parmiggiani, Elena A1 - Monteiro, Eric A1 - Østerlie, Thomas ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - The proliferation of distributed digital technologies in contemporary enterprise challenges the understanding of situated action. This paper revisits this notion in the era of Big Data and the Internet of Things. Drawing upon longitudinal studies within the offshore oil and gas industry, we empirically expand upon Knorr Cetina's ``synthetic situation'' to encompass data-intensive work where people are not co-located with the physical objects and phenomena around which work is organized. By highlighting the performative nature of synthetic situations in the Internet of Things – where phenomena are algorithmically enacted through digital technologies – we elaborate upon the original formulation of synthetic situations by demonstrating that (i) algorithmic phenomena constitute the phenomena under inquiry, rather than standing in for physical referents; (ii) noise is irreducible in algorithmic phenomena; (iii) synthetic situations are productive rather than reductive. Finally, we draw brief methodological implications by proposing to focus on the material enactment of data in practice. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Thoughts on Movement, Growth and an Anthropologically-Sensitive IS/Organization Studies: An Imagined Correspondence with Tim Ingold Y1 - 2016 A1 - Ingold, Tim A1 - Introna, Lucas A1 - Kavanagh, Donncha A1 - Kelly, Séamas A1 - Orlikowski, Wanda A1 - Scott, Susan ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - In what follows, we present the outcome of an imagined dialogue with Tim Ingold on possible future directions for an anthropologically-sensitive approach to studying Information Systems (IS) and Organization Studies (OS). The aim is to try to convey some of the strangeness and freshness that we have found in his thought, with a view to stimulating IS/OS scholars to engage further with his work and ideas. The piece takes the form of an imagined Q{&}A session with Tim, which we have synthesized from excerpts of previously published interviews and writings. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - What if the Screens Went Black? The Coming of Software Agents Y1 - 2016 A1 - Cetina, Karin Knorr ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Trading screens are not supposed to be black. In fact, when we see them on trading floors, on TV, or in media centres, they attract us with catching colours and blinking information. They project urgency, speed, and power – the power of big money, the power of winning and losing. When we are near them, we feel their heat. We want to give in to their considerable attraction. We want to be players of the game and part of the action. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - Generic T1 - When Is an Affordance? Outlining Four Stances Y1 - 2016 A1 - Lanamäki, Arto A1 - Thapa, Devinder A1 - Stendal, Karen ED - Introna, Lucas ED - Kavanagh, Donncha ED - Kelly, Séamas ED - Orlikowski, Wanda ED - Scott, Susan AB - Affordance has emerged as a core concept in information systems (IS) research during the last decade. This relational concept is applied to understand and theorize the relationship between the social and the technical. In the works of the concept originator James Gibson, the relation was mainly portrayed as an ever-existing fact between the natural environment and an animal. In contrast, IS research focuses on relationships in-the-making between artificial things and human beings. In the IS context, we have identified vagueness in temporal and relational ontology: when do affordances exist and between whom or what? In this paper, we delve into the temporal and relational questions that have been omitted in much of the IS literature. What kind of a relationship is an affordance and when does it occur? Based on our hermeneutic understanding, we identify four stances from the existing literature. We classify those stances as canonical affordance, designed affordance, potential affordance, and affordance as completed action. We further argue that each stance has its own assumptions, consequences, and thus strengths and weaknesses. JF - Beyond Interpretivism? New Encounters with Technology and Organization PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-49733-4 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Bitcoin and the Blockchain: A Coup D'État in Digital Heterotopia? JF - Available at SSRN 2624922 Y1 - 2015 A1 - Miscione, Gianluca A1 - Kavanagh, Donncha ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Bitcoin and the Blockchain: A Coup D'État in Digital Heterotopia? JF - Available at SSRN 2624922 Y1 - 2015 A1 - Miscione, Gianluca A1 - Kavanagh, Donncha ER -