To Vanquish the Social Monster: The Struggle for Social Inclusion among Peers in the Field of Systems Development

Abstract:

The mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion may operate among professionals within organizations and communities of practice. These mechanisms can be embedded into formal organizational structures, and exert powerful control over who the members of
organizations and communities will deem to be acceptable and unacceptable within their society. Using capital theories as
a theoretical lens, we analyze the texts of interviews with knowledge leaders in a software development organization. The
analysis reveals how a threshold event operates to bring inclusion of newcomers to a collection of social communities. Until
the threshold event, communities of newcomers are socially excluded. The existence of the threshold event, and the nature
of the threshold event, is an unspoken and unacknowledged structure used in creating the social fabric of the organization
or community. It is collectively, yet implicitly, decided when such an event occurs, and the social inclusion triggered without
any explication otherwise.

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