Don’t throw rocks from the side-lines: A sociomaterial exploration of organizational blogs as boundary objects

Purpose Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually-constituted performance of the material and social. Design/methodology/approach The aim of our research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, we adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is our use of data released under a Freedom of Information request. Findings We present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. We draw on literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually-constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. We also invoke the notion of ‘extended chains of intra-action’ to theorise changes in the wider organization. Originality/value Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming, challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization

Sense-making of consumer wellbeing in information technology-enabled services from a relational ontology position

Information technology (IT) built into products and services have become the key drivers for service innovation. How information technology-enabled services (ITESs) affect consumer wellbeing has increasingly become a concern to service scholars. In response to this, transformative service research (TSR) has emerged as a new stream in service research. This paper investigates consumer wellbeing derived from the consumption of ITESs in consumers’ daily lives. A mixed-method approach was employed in our study, including self-reflective reports, in-depth interviews and visual artistic methods. We demonstrated that a relational ontology, drawing on the ‘focal things’ concept (Borgmann, 1984) and sociomateriality (Orlikowski, 2009), could be used as a lens for us to understand consumer wellbeing in ITESs. We used four vignettes to demonstrate how relational ontology can enhance our understanding of consumer wellbeing in ITESs. Theoretically, this paper contributes to TSR by proposing and demonstrating the need to shift or at least extend the extant predominant technology ontology in marketing literature to make sense of consumer experiences and wellbeing in ITESs. In practice, this research encourages ITESs designers to emphasise the relational entanglement of technology with consumer routine practices in their service innovations for the purposes of consumer wellbeing

Sustainability Governance and the Sociomateriality of Social Media: Lessons from Megaprojects

There is a need for effective governance of environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the modern age. This paper discusses the most neglected social sustainability dimension considering the case of megaprojects as they are large scale displacements and disruptions. The multiple and conflicting interests of different stakeholders make social sustainability very challenging in the context of megaprojects. Social media is used for different purposes and encompasses multiple affordances from a sociomateriality perspective. From the dimensions of power perspective, this paper conceptualizes how social media can be leveraged for alternative governance. The persuading, framing, and hegemonizing uses of social media for implementing negotiated interests, identifying with existing interests, and influencing existing interests respectively are discussed. Following this, the role of organizing in social media to give continuity and consistency to discourses is discussed. It is highlighted that for leveraging the full affordances of social media, the interest group’s representing environmental, economic, or social dimensions need to organize themselves through social media pages

Balancing the Social Media Seesaw in Public Sector: A Sociomaterial Perspective

The use of social media in the public sector changes the professionals\u27 everyday work practice. This paper sheds light on the emerging challenges of using social media as a part of work, based on the analysis of three contexts within the public sector in Sweden and through the lens of sociomateriality and affordances. The approach is interpretive field studies with a narrative analysis, where we interpret and analyse key elements of the storylines, focusing on the transition to social media use among professionals (nurses, municipal communicators, and physicians) in the three contexts. Social media enables an open work environment where information is visible and potentially spreadable to an unknown audience. The process of interacting with an unknown audience and finding a professional tone is analysed here as context collapse. The unknown, and at times imagined complex audience, makes it hard to balance the seesaw between friendliness on the one hand and an authoritative tone on the other; a tonality which leaves most of the potential audience unreached. The interplay between social media and the professionals shapes the professionals’ practice. We analyse this interplaying practice more specifically, as sociomateriality in action

Social media influence on viewer engagement

Society is being reshaped through Social Media. The case of Social Media integration into the London 2012 Olympics mainstream media coverage is used to demonstrate this. Social Media has modified television viewing from a passive to an active activity. It has also allowed opinions to be shared more quickly and broadly. Analysis of practical examples through the theoretical lens of sociomateriality demonstrates that greater use of the components in the \u27Theoretical Framework of Member Needs\u27 reflect the presence of viewers who are more active. This paper discusses the inability to separate the use of technology from its social context, the power of Social Media and the impact of this on business use of Social Media. It also demonstrates a novel method for evaluating the benefits of emerging technologies in society

Sociomateriality Implications of Software As a Service Adoption on IT-workers’ Roles and Changes in Organizational Routines of IT Systems Support

This paper aims to deepen our understanding on how sociomateriality practices influence IT workers’ roles and skill set requirements and changes to the organizational routines of IT systems support, when an organization migrates an on-premise IT system to a software as a service (SaaS) model. This conceptual paper is part of an ongoing study investigating organizations that migrated on-premise IT email systems to SaaS business models, such as Google Apps for Education (GAE) and Microsoft Office 365 systems, in New Zealand tertiary institutions. We present initial findings from interpretive case studies. The findings are, firstly, technological artifacts are entangled in sociomaterial practices, which change the way humans respond to the performative aspects of the organizational routines. Human and material agencies are interwoven in ways that reinforce or change existing routines. Secondly, materiality, virtual realm and spirit of the technology provide elementary levels at which human and material agencies entangle. Lastly, the elementary levels at which human and material entangle depends on the capabilities or skills set of an individual

Doing Sociomateriality Research In Information Systems

This paper agrees with Mueller et al.'s (2016) view that researchers who want to adopt a sociomaterial approach often find themselves confused regarding research methods. However, it departs from Mueller's et al. suggestion to seek guidance from the structural-functionalist approach of Parsons' and Shils' (1951) General Theory of Action. The paper argues that finding a methodological framework for research following a sociomaterial approach has to be consistent with the philosophy, ontology and roots of this approach and that it is limiting to read the post-human approach of sociomateriality through a structural-functionalist lens. The paper briefly reviews the roots of the sociomaterial approach in sociology and information systems and offers a methodological guidance based on Actor Network Theory (ANT) and post ANT/Feminist lenses.</jats:p