The “Theoretical Lens” Concept: We All Know What it Means, but do We All Know the Same Thing?

The term theoretical lens has grown in usage in business and social science research and particularly in the information systems (IS) discipline. In this paper, we question what the term really means by examining it on several dimensions in the context of its actual use. In particular, we consider 1) where the term appears in each paper, 2) how many conceptualizations of theoretical lens each paper uses, 3) the research method the paper uses, 4) the IS domain the paper considers, and 5) which underlying conceptualizations the paper actually uses. To do so, we examine the full set of actual uses in the IS journal that uses the term most frequently, the European Journal of Information Systems. We conclude by discussing several further questions that these observations raise, which suggest deeper issues about better and less advantageous uses of theoretical lenses in IS research and what these issues might imply for the IS discipline

Paradox and the negotiation of tensions in globally distributed work

Tensions are a major source of communication problems, coordination issues and conflict in globally distributed work (GDW). In this paper we argue that extant literature falls short of addressing tensions in GDW at two levels. First, it fails to fully account for the intrinsic and entrenched nature of tensions in GDW, suggesting instead that they can be resolved or made to disappear. Second, it does not examine the key interactions amongst different kinds of tensions. Drawing on qualitative data from a distributed finance organization and applying concepts from paradox theory, we show how globally distributed units negotiate knowledge, power and identity tensions in collaborative work. The findings illuminate how a sequential enactment of both formal and informal solutions can better address tensions and generate collaborative opportunities in GDW. Building on the findings, we develop a phasal model of tension evolution and management in GDW which explains how tensions evolve from a phase of suppression through to a phase of attenuation. We demonstrate the interactions of knowledge-power-identity tensions against a background of defensive, interactive and collaborative behaviors, and suggest several practical implications for GDW practice

“[Taking] Responsibility for the Community”: Women Claiming Power and Legitimacy in Technical and Professional Communication in India, 1999-2016

Though the field of technical and professional communication has long been saturated with the narratives of Euro-Western males, technical and professional communication as a field has a responsibility to expand the lens of study to include the experiences of global and nontraditional practitioners. This study examines the experiences of Indian women working as practitioners, building power and legitimacy in a globalized economy. Drawing from interviews with 49 practitioners as well as an analysis of historical documents, this study examines the methods that Indian practitioners have used to build power and legitimacy by founding professional organizations, leveraging their educational opportunities, and using tactical strategies in their workplaces. The data suggests that Indian women have done strong, innovative work in building their own legitimacy in the field. However, work remains to remove barriers that disproportionately bar women from access to professionalizing structures

Knowledge Overlap in Nearshore Service Delivery

Multinational organizations now increasingly source tasks from nearshore units. While, offshore locations promise superior opportunities for cost savings and access to large scale, flexible workforces, organisations are increasingly distributing work much closer to home (Deliotte 2014). One of the biggest attractions of nearshore locations is proximity. In principle nearshore units are geographically, temporally, and culturally closer to their onshore counterparts reducing the cost and coordination effort to manage distance. Despite the anticipation that onshore units and nearshore units will operate effectively from distinctive and separate knowledge bases, they continue to be bogged down by knowledge overlaps. Knowledge overlaps (KOs) are a duplication of information and know-how of specific migrated activities that allow onshore units to retain control of nearshore units. In this paper, we draw on data from an on-going qualitative case study to demonstrate how nearshore units manage KOs and relinquish control of processes

Imaging and the National Imagining: Theorizing Visual Sovereignty in Trinidad and Tobago Moving Image Media through Analysis of Television Advertising

Academic and popular discourse frequently positions postcolonial countries as receivers of visual culture rather than as producers and transmitters. These countries are often deemed as being subject to hegemonic forces of global media flows, the influx of foreign programming into their media landscapes hindering any significant development of distinct national identity through visual media. Since independence from British rule in 1962, government, media practitioners and viewers in the postcolonial Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago have sought ways to build a national visual culture despite the inundation of non-local visual texts into the country. This study positions postcolonial Trinidad and Tobago as actively productive of its own identity, and through a cultural studies analysis of television advertising, examines the central role that this industry (including personnel, economic structure, equipment and texts) plays in the construction of a national visual culture. This process of collective imagining takes place within the visual imaging of the advertising industry, and ultimately charts the undoing of colonial, hegemonic discourses within the broader mediascape. Ultimately the advertising industry facilitates the active negotiation of national identity, catalyzing the process of visual sovereignty

1-800-(Re)Colonize: A Feminist Postcolonial and Performance Analysis of Call Center Agents in India Performing U.S. Cultural Identity

The contemporary historical moment finds us in a web of globalization that spans the globe. While our interconnectedness brings us into unforeseen communications, we enter the conversation grounded in particular subject locations. Postcolonial subjectivities hold strategic memories of colonial violences as a means of survival and resistance while colonizing forces hold onto binary narratives of their own superiority. Globalization provides the context wherein decolonized and colonizing nations interact with unequal power resulting in multifaceted outcomes, one of which I argue is a re-colonial dynamic. The phenomenon of U.S. corporate outsourcing to India is one instance where a re-colonial dynamic occurs. India\u27s post-1991 liberalization policies facilitated its current relationship with U.S. corporations, many of which invested heavily in India\u27s economy and telecommunications development. One facet of this investment resulted in the creation of call centers which provide customer service support to large corporations. Indian call centers supply customer service operations to U.S. corporations and Indian workers interact with U.S. consumers on the telephone. The condition of employment for largely 20- to 30-something Indian workers, what marks the unequal power relations and re-colonial dynamic, is a performance of American culture. Indian call center agents undergo training in American voice and culture to mimic and interact with the U.S. consumer while simultaneously erasing their Indian cultural identities. To understand the implications of this practice, I rely on the voices of Indian call center agents and their performance of U.S. culture in their work and training and its impact on their daily and cultural lives. The performances come from personal interviews with call center agents conducted by Sheena Malhotra and me in Bangalore and Mumbai, India, on film footage from Aradhana Seth\u27s documentary I-800-CALLRVDIA, and on media representations from U.S. mainstream media. Interweaving postcolonial and performance theories as the framework, I use Robert Scholes (1985) method of textual criticism which involves a three-step hermeneutic process of reading, interpreting and criticizing performances to deconstruct and analyze their pleasures and power. I rely on Homi K. Bhabha\u27s (1 994) theorization of ambivalence, hybridity and mimicry to understand colonial subjects\u27 complex negotiation of colonial forces. From these performances emerge several themes and reveal the tensions between colonial forces of corporations and the complex negotiations of it through the performances of postcolonial subjectivities. While U.S. corporations outsource narrow constructions of what it means to perform American, embedded in notions of whiteness, Indian call center agents perform a much more nuanced understanding of U.S. culture. Call center agents also narrate the implications of call center work for their personal and cultural lives as they balance the tensions of high paying nighttime employment with familial and cultural relations. It is a delicate negotiation from which emerge performances of postcolonial agencies in a re-colonial context. I analyze these performances for their agency and the oppressions of colonizing corporations to access the cultural costs on both sides of the line

The realignment of offshoring frame disputes (OFD): an ethnographic ‘cultural’ analysis

In Information Systems (IS) research on cross-cultural issues, cultural categories are typically introduced as analytical labels that explain why and how organizational groups in different parts of the world act and think differently. However, broad cultural categories can also be discursively mobilized by organizational members as strategic adaptive resources. Drawing on an ethnographic study of offshoring frame disputes (OFD) in an Indian subsidiary unit of a large Western information technology (IT) organization, this paper explores how members actively invoke a series of beliefs about Western culture and implicitly position them as the binary opposite of Eastern (or Indian) culture. The findings demonstrate how the mobilization of such beliefs eventually plays a vital role in the reconciliation of four different types of OFD. Drawing on this analysis, I build a social–psychological process model that explains how frame extensions trigger a cognitive reorganization process, leading to the accomplishment of OFD realignment. The paper argues that discursively invoked binary cultural categories help maintain non-confrontational definitions of situations and sustain working relationships in IT offshoring environments. Furthermore, interpretations linked to cultural notions seem to reflexively take the offshore–onshore power differentials into account

Constructing the 'social' in social entrepreneurship : A postcolonial perspective

Social entrepreneurship is often depicted as the solution to the various problems we have in society today. In the mainstream literature, it tends to be presented as a site of empowerment, inclusion, morality and compassion. However, while much attention has been granted the ‘entrepreneurship’ part of the term, we know less about the ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship. The meaning of the ‘social’ is largely left vague and open-ended, seemingly implying a neutral and universal form of goodness. Drawing upon a more critical stream of literature, which emphasizes the inherently political and ideological character of the ‘social’, I explore how the ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship is constructed and upheld. In viewing this process through a postcolonial lens, I further address the power relations involved in shaping the ‘social’.Through a qualitative study, I explore a social entrepreneurship initiative that took place on a small Danish Island. Facing challenges such as depopulation and a high unemployment rate, with many residents having to tackle various social problems and health issues, a group of actors initiated a project aiming to bring life back to the Island. The project, referred to as a strategy by some and as branding by others, went under the label ‘Sustainable Island’ and aspired to change the image of the Island from that of a rural society in decline to a sustainable society in the forefront of green technology. While receiving praise and support from an international audience, the project was met with protests and scepticism from the local community. To understand the power relations present in the local construction of the ‘social’ on the Island, I draw upon Bhabha’s (1994) concepts of Otherness, ambivalence and mimicry.By considering both human and non-human actors, I analyze how the ‘social’ is held together. My findings highlight how the ‘social’ takes form as an idea of what is good for society and how it relates to an idea of what it means to be a good citizen. I argue that social entrepreneurship involves processes of Othering necessary to uphold an idea of the ‘social’ as well as the ‘entrepreneurial’. I further show how associations with ‘good’ objects facilitated the settlement of a certain idea of the ‘social’ on the Island. ‘Good’ objects as well as the discursive construction of the Other became important actors in upholding a certain meaning of the ‘social’ against resistance. Based on these findings, I argue that the relational construction of the ‘social’ involves parallel processes of exclusion and inclusion. While a variety of actors were necessary to construct the ‘social’, they did not participate equally in the conversation on what was good for society. My study thus adds to our understanding of how power relations shape the idea of what the ‘social’ in social entrepreneurship means