Sensemaking Practices in the Everyday Work of AI/ML Software Engineering

This paper considers sensemaking as it relates to everyday software engineering (SE) work practices and draws on a multi-year ethnographic study of SE projects at a large, global technology company building digital services infused with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities. Our findings highlight the breadth of sensemaking practices in AI/ML projects, noting developers' efforts to make sense of AI/ML environments (e.g., algorithms/methods and libraries), of AI/ML model ecosystems (e.g., pre-trained models and "upstream"models), and of business-AI relations (e.g., how the AI/ML service relates to the domain context and business problem at hand). This paper builds on recent scholarship drawing attention to the integral role of sensemaking in everyday SE practices by empirically investigating how and in what ways AI/ML projects present software teams with emergent sensemaking requirements and opportunities

Organizational Ethnography and the Art of Judgment in-the-Moment

This paper responds to the conveners’ call on exploring and advancing Organizational Ethnography (OE) as a paradigm for the organizational sciences. This sub-theme is linked through my empirical study of senior managers in international development organizations and how they make sense of using their judgment ‘in-the-moment’ in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. I adopt an “ethnographic orientation” (Watson, 2011, p.216) and emphasize the need for a highly reflexive approach in an ethnographer’s role as making judgments throughout the challenging processes of doing “fieldwork, headwork and textwork” (Van Maanen, 2011, p.218). Theoretically, this study contributes to the existing judgment and decision making literature from a social constructionist perspective by drawing linkages to judgment as a co-constructed phenomenon. How senior managers understand their judgment-making in situations ‘in-the-moment’ is an understudied area thus far and even scarcer in the context of international development organizations. Methodologically, the ethnographic and radically reflexive approach taken addresses a gap in the literature, builds awareness and raises in importance examining the ‘multiple selves’ (Reinharz, 1997) of the ethnographer. How I influenced my research and was influenced by it as both subject and object were key to my findings. In addition to the sub-theme call, this paper also links to the overarching Colloquium theme, ‘Bridging Continents, Cultures and Worldviews’, by connecting the cultures and co- constructed views of the researcher and practitioners. The collaborative, ethnographic approach taken was a unique way to get ‘up close and personal’ in understanding what judgment meant to senior leaders in the two participating UK-headquartered organizations. With international development missions in African nations, the senior leaders continuously constructed their own bridges across borders in their financing, operations and communications between their team members and external stakeholders located in multiple countries, reliant on virtual offices and mobile and Internet technology to stay connected. My judgment as an ethnographer was necessary to determine how to best embrace this way of ‘working’ during fieldwork and become another type of stakeholder to them. I will begin with a brief theoretical and methodological background of my exploratory study, identifying the gap in the literature and how my study fills it. Then I will outline the methodology, methods, data collection and analysis and findings. Finally, I will conclude with the challenges of ‘doing organizational ethnography’ inside small international development organizations and the contributions made to advance OE as a unique way to study the social phenomenon of judgment ‘in-the moment’

Do compassionate firms outperform? The role of organizational learning

Purpose – Based on a new management paradigm rooted on care and compassion, this study explores the consequences of compassion at work on organizational learning and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the research model by using data from two different samples. Findings – Results confirm that compassion increases firm performance through organizational learning capability; however, compassion do not enhances directly firm performance. Research limitations/implications – The study findings indicate that when compassion is propagated among organizational members, organizations are better able to learn so they obtain a competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate and leads to higher firm performance. Originality/value – This study takes a step forward on literature by providing empirical evidence for a promising area of management research such is compassion in organizations

Managing the Tension between Standardization and Customization in IT-enabled Service Provisioning: A Sensemaking Perspective

The outsourcing literature has offered a plethora of perspectives and models for understanding decision determinants and outcomes of outsourcing of business processes. While past studies have contributed significantly to scholarly research in this area, there are an insufficient number of studies that are provider centric. Consequently, there is a need to understand how service providers address a core challenge: to achieve scalable growth by developing standardized offerings that can be sufficiently customized to meet the unique demands of individual customers. This study explores how patterns of collective action within and between a provider and two of their largest customers relate to the tension between standardization and customization of information technology (IT)-enabled service provisioning. Specifically, it investigates the relationship between such behavioral patterns and the development of an enterprise architecture designed to address the tension between standardization and customization. A socio-cognitive sensemaking framework consisting of six core properties provides the analytical lens through which the relationship is investigated. The study adopts an interpretive case study methodology guided by the assumption that distinct dimensions of the social world exist, but understanding them comes from inter-subjective interaction between researcher and subject. The approach adopts a combination of literal and theoretical replication strategies (Yin 1994) to help identify similarities and dissimilarities during cross case comparison. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, direct observations, participant observations, and analysis of documentation and archival records. Our findings suggest that localized action at the expense of global coordination exacerbates the tension between standardization and customization. Furthermore, attempts to address the tension through the logics of spatial and temporal separation proved largely ineffective, as these initiatives put added pressure on the sensemaking processes responsible for guiding collective action. Our findings further suggest that a paradigm modification might be useful for service providers, where they shift their focus from reducing equivocality to improving their internal ability to respond to it. The results of this study contribute to a large body of outsourcing literature that has too often neglected a provider centric perspective. By uncovering key factors that exacerbate the tension within and between organizations, and providing practical methods for addressing them, this study also offers valuable insight for practicing managers

Enhancing organizational self-awareness with enterprise modelling frameworks

In a time when technology has made the world smaller and important events take place at an incredibly high pace, organizations constantly need to adapt themselves in order to survive. The challenge of today’s organizations is to develop capabilities of continuous sensing, learning and adjusting to the dynamics of their environments (Magalhães, 2004). An essential requirement of these capabilities entails developing organization’s self-awareness. Human consciousness gives subjects the capacity of self-awareness. Self-aware beings know who they are, how they do things and what they (and others) are doing at any particular moment

Project Archetypes: A Blessing and a Curse for AI Development

Software projects rely on what we call project archetypes, i.e., pre-existing mental images of how projects work. They guide distribution of responsibilities, planning, or expectations. However, with the technological progress, project archetypes may become outdated, ineffective, or counterproductive by impeding more adequate approaches. Understanding archetypes of software development projects is core to leverage their potential. The development of applications using machine learning and artificial intelligence provides a context in which existing archetypes might outdate and need to be questioned, adapted, or replaced. We analyzed 36 interviews from 21 projects between IBM Watson and client companies and identified four project archetypes members initially used to understand the projects. We then derive a new project archetype, cognitive computing project, from the interviews. It can inform future development projects based on AI-development platforms. Project leaders should proactively manage project archetypes while researchers should investigate what guides initial understandings of software projects

Project archetypes: A blessing and a curse for AI development

Software projects rely on what we call project archetypes, i.e., pre-existing mental images of how projects work. They guide distribution of responsibilities, planning, or expectations. However, with the technological progress, project archetypes may become outdated, ineffective, or counterproductive by impeding more adequate approaches. Understanding archetypes of software development projects is core to leverage their potential. The development of applications using machine learning and artificial intelligence provides a context in which existing archetypes might outdate and need to be questioned, adapted, or replaced. We analyzed 36 interviews from 21 projects between IBM Watson and client companies and identified four project archetypes members initially used to understand the projects. We then derive a new project archetype, cognitive computing project, from the interviews. It can inform future development projects based on AI-development platforms. Project leaders should proactively manage project archetypes while researchers should investigate what guides initial understandings of software projects

Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration and Knowledge Emergence as a Business Web Strategy Enabler

The Web is becoming in many respects a powerful tool for supporting business strategy as companies are quickly becoming more and more reliant on new Web-based technologies to capitalize on new business opportunities. However, this introduces additional managerial problems and risks that have to be taken into consideration, if they are not to be left behind. In this chapter we explore the Web’s present and future potential in relation to information sharing, knowledge management, innovation management, and the automation of cross-organizational business transactions. The suggested approach will provide entrepreneurs, managers, and IT leaders with guidance on how to adopt the latest Web 2.0-based technologies in their everyday work with a view to setting up a business Web strategy. Specifically, Enterprise 2.0 is presented as a key enabler for businesses to expand their ecosystems and partnerships. Enterprise 2.0 also acts as a catalyst for improving innovation processes and knowledge work