Technology and Sociomaterial Performation

Part 1: IS/IT Implementation and AppropriationInternational audienceOrganizational researchers have acknowledged that understanding the relationship between technology and organization is crucial to understanding modern organizing and organizational change [1]. There has been a significant amount of debate concerning the theoretical foundation of this relationship. Our research draws and extends Deleuze and DeLanda’s work on assemblages and Callon’s concept of performation to investigate how different sociomaterial practices are changed and stabilized after the implementation of new technology. Our findings from an in-depth study of two ambulatory clinics within a hospital system indicate that “perform-ing” of constituting, counter-performing, calibrating, and stratifying explained the process of sociomaterial change and that this process is governed by an overarching principle of “performative exigency”. Future studies on sociomateriality and change may benefit from a deeper understanding of how sociomaterial assemblages are rendered performative

Seeing the potentialities at the intersection: A reflection on performativity and processuality mindsets

© 2019 M@n@gement. In this paper, we propose to approach performativity and processuality as mindsets. We suggest that researchers interested by or pursuing performative studies should recognize more explicitly the inherent processuality of performativity. After offering broad overviews on performativity and process thinking, we highlight that both mindsets rest on a similar view of reality as processual, and both share a strong commitment to qualitative empirical work. In spite of the differences that exist between the two mindsets-such as their treatment of agency, the place of socio-materiality and their approach to continuity and change-we contend that acknowledging and engaging more directly with processuality benefits performative studies, as it helps these studies to deal with some of the challenges they often face. In doing so, performative studies could refine their analyses of managerial and organizational phenomena and would also increase their contribution to our field

Performative Narrative and Actor-Network Theory – A Study of a Hotel in Administration

Purpose –By weaving together Narrative Analysis (hereinafter NA) and ANT (hereinafter ANT) we address recent calls for performative studies to combine approaches and specifically to employ ANT. Particularly, we address how a conflicting narrative is mobilised through a network of internal-external and human-nonhuman actors. Design/methodology/approach – A fragment of data, generated from a longitudinal case study, is explored using NA and ANT in combination. Findings –By engaging with ANT’s rejection of dualisms (i.e. human-nonhuman, micro-macro) and its approach to relationality we inform NA and performative studies. We also add to the limited literature addressing how conflicting antenarratives are mobilised and shape the organisation’s trajectory. Research limitations/implications – Generalizing from a single case study is problematic although transferability is possible. Generalisability could be achievable through multiple performative studies. Practical implications – By demonstrating how counter networks form and antenarrative is constructed to supplant hegemonic narrative we are able to problematize the taken for granted and to highlight the possibilities offered by divergent voices. Originality/value – Our perfomation provides a deeper understanding of organizational performance through our NA-ANT combination and we provide insight into the mobilisation of conflicting narratives in organisation studies. Type - Research Pape

How ‘matter matters’ for morality : the case of a stock exchange

This work was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship - RF-2016-078.While matter clearly matters to organization theory, its absence from the study of organizational ethics is striking. Despite the obdurate materiality of the workplace, critical scholarship on organizations and morality sees ethics as interpersonal, subjective and embodied. Organizations, meanwhile, are characterised by moral anomie and dysfunction. This paper advances our understanding of the material entanglements of organizational morality, drawing on the science and technology studies inflected study of markets to show how moral orders arise in dialectic between the social and the material. It argues that moral orders are entangled in the material infrastructures of organizations. Its empirical case is the founding and development of a small-company focused stock exchange, OFEX, launched in London in 1995, accessed through elite interviews and documentary work. The paper seeks to develop our understanding of morality in critical organization studies, to further defend the Weberian notion of ‘ethics of office’ by emphasising the sociomaterial dimension of organizational morality, and to contribute to an ongoing renaissance of the study of morality as a sociological phenomenon. There are implications for managers and engaged scholars alike.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe