Using Process Mining to Support Theorizing About Change in Organizations

Process mining refers to a family of algorithms used to computationally reconstruct, analyze and visualize business processes through event log data. While process mining is commonly associated with the improvement of business processes, we argue that it can be used as a method to support theorizing about change in organizations. Central to our argument is that process mining algorithms can support inductive as well as deductive theorizing. Process mining algorithms can extend established theorizing in a number of ways and in relation to different research agendas and phenomena. We illustrate our argument in relation to two types of change: endogenous change that evolves over time and exogenous change that follows a purposeful intervention. Drawing on the discourse of routine dynamics, we propose how different process mining features can reveal new insights about the dynamics of organizational routines

Explaining Change with Digital Trace Data: A Framework for Temporal Bracketing

Digital trace data, along with computational techniques to analyze them, provide novel means to study how organizational phenomena change over time. Yet, as digital traces typically lack context, it is challenging to explain why and how such changes take place. In this paper, we discuss temporal bracketing as an approach to integrate context into digital trace data-based research. We conceptualize a framework to apply temporal bracketing in the analysis of digital trace data. We showcase our framework on the grounds of data from an onboarding process of a financial institution in Central Europe. We point to several implications for computationally intensive theory development around change with digital trace data

Achieving Gender Justice in Indonesia's Forest and Land Governance Sector: How Civil Society Organizations Can Respond to Mining and Plantation Industry Impacts

Land based industries, most significantly palm oil plantations, timber concessions and mining operations, are expanding quickly in Indonesia. With approximately 840,000 ha of forest loss per year (Margono et al 2014), Indonesia suffers the world's highest rate of deforestation. As civil society organizations (CSOs) implement forest conservation strategies and programs to respond to the issue of forest loss, there is a growing concern that they lack the ability to address gender justice, or more specifically, Gender, Environment and Development, one field of Gender and Development. 1 This weakness may undermine CSO's ability to ameliorate the gendered injustices that limit women and marginalized communities' participation in forest governance. It also limits CSO's ability to build grassroots constituencies, which are crucial for driving reform. Drawing on the Gender, Environment and Development literature, and a gender assessment of selected Indonesian environmental CSOs, this paper provides a brief overview of the major gender issues relevant to forest and land governance, and makes six recommendations to help CSOs develop more gender sensitive advocacy and programming. The paper aims to contribute to the overall objective of improving gender justice (including women's participation) in forest governance

Bringing Context Inside Process Research with Digital Trace Data

Context is usually conceptualized as “external” to a theory or model and treated as something to be controlled or eliminated in empirical research. We depart from this tradition and conceptualize context as permeating processual phenomena. This move is possible because digital trace data are now increasingly available, providing rich and fine-grained data about processes mediated or enabled by digital technologies. This paper introduces a novel method for including fine-grained contextual information from digital trace data within the description of process (e.g., who, what, when, where, why). Adding contextual information can result in a very large number of fine-grained categories of events, which are usually considered undesirable. However, we argue that a large number of categories can make process data more informative for theorizing and that including contextual detail enriches the understanding of processes as they unfold. We demonstrate this by analyzing audit trail data of electronic medical records using ThreadNet, an open source software application developed for the qualitative visualization and analysis of process data. The distinctive contribution of our approach is the novel way in which we contextualize events and action in process data. Providing new, usable ways to incorporate context can help researchers ask new questions about the dynamics of processual phenomena

Towards Design Principles for Data-Driven Decision Making: An Action Design Research Project in the Maritime Industry

Data-driven decision making (DDD) refers to organizational decision-making practices that emphasize the use of data and statistical analysis instead of relying on human judgment only. Various empirical studies provide evidence for the value of DDD, both on individual decision maker level and the organizational level. Yet, the path from data to value is not always an easy one and various organizational and psychological factors mediate and moderate the translation of data-driven insights into better decisions and, subsequently, effective business actions. The current body of academic literature on DDD lacks prescriptive knowledge on how to successfully employ DDD in complex organizational settings. Against this background, this paper reports on an action design research study aimed at designing and implementing IT artifacts for DDD at one of the largest ship engine manufacturers in the world. Our main contribution is a set of design principles highlighting, besides decision quality, the importance of model comprehensibility, domain knowledge, and actionability of results

STUDYING DYNAMICS AND CHANGE WITH DIGITAL TRACE DATA: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Digital trace data offer promising opportunities to study dynamics and change of various socio-technical phenomena over time. While we see a surge of empirical and conceptual articles, we lack a systematic understanding of why, how, and when digital trace data are or can be used to study dynamics and change. In this article, we present the findings of a systematic literature review to uncover common approaches, motivations, findings, and general themes in the existing literature. We systematically reviewed 40 studies that were published in premium outlets in the information systems field. Our review sheds light on (1) underlying purposes of such studies, (2) utilized data sources, (3) research contexts, (4) socio-technical phenomena of interest, (5) applied analytical methods, and (6) measures that are being used. Building on our findings, we point to several implications for research and shed light on avenues to advance this field in the future

Women, Resistance, and Extractive Development: The Case Study of the Marlin Mine

Women’s activism in response to large-scale mining is a topic largely unexplored in the existing social movement literature. This oversight is significant for the Global South, particularly in Latin American where mining expansion has been occurring since the 1990’s and is leading to increasing numbers of conflicts between mining companies and the communities hosting them. The strategies that anti-mining activists employ and the responses of their opponents (i.e., community members, mining and state authorities) are influenced by a wide range of factors, and one of these is gender. Using a case study analysis of Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in Western Guatemala and drawing on extensive field work conducted in the communities near the mine, this thesis examines women’s resistance strategies (categorized here as blockades and protests, legal complaints, and everyday activisms) and counterstrategies (violence, criminalization and cooptation) employed by the mine and its supporters against them. The thesis demonstrates that in both the strategies and counterstrategies, gender is a salient component in the tactics of both groups

A discourse perspective on creating organizational knowledge: the case of strategizing

This chapter outlines a discursive epistemology of knowledge production through an analysis of the role of time and context in the social construction of organizational insights, outcomes and theories. While the role of time and context has been widely acknowledged in organizational discourse analysis, it has remained unclear what is specific to knowledge generation. Drawing upon a case study of an attempted company acquisition, we illustrate how knowledge is discursively produced and consumed during a process of strategizing. Our analysis shows how knowledge producing processes (e.g. strategizing, theorizing, conceptualizing and hypothesizing) extend both the time horizon of discourses that relate to the future, and the context horizon for discourse(s) that relate to the broader context. This reconstructs the tapestry of interwoven discourses that make up a local discourse and enable new managerial knowledge to be produced

Entrepreneurial bricolage and firm performance: some preliminary findings

The behavioral theory of “entrepreneurial bricolage” attempts to understand what entrepreneurs do when faced with resource constraints. Most research about bricolage, defined as “making do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities” (Baker & Nelson 2005: 333), has been qualitative and inductive (Garud & Karnoe, 2003). Although this has created a small body of rich descriptions and interesting insights, little deductive theory has been developed and the relationship between bricolage and firm performance has not been systematically tested. In particular, prior research has suggested bricolage can have both beneficial and harmful effects. Ciborra’s (1996) study of Olivetti suggested that bricolage helped Olivetti to adapt, but simultaneously constrained firm effectiveness. Baker & Nelson (2005) suggested that bricolage may be harmful at very high levels, but more helpful if used judiciously. Other research suggests that firm innovativeness may play an important role in shaping the outcomes of bricolage (Anderson 2008). In this paper, we theorize and provide preliminary test of the bricolage-performance relationship and how it is affected by firm innovativeness