The Role of Institutional Work in Platform Establishment: An Investigation of Digital Innovation Practices for Creating, Maintaining and Disrupting Institutions

While the significance of digital platforms for contemporary organizations has been demonstrated both in theory and practice, how they emerge is less understood. We argue that one source of digital platform emergence is the recombinatorial innovation processes individuals enact in organizational work practices. We draw on theory on institutional work to empirically examine how innovation processes led to the emergence of a digital platform in the Swedish transport administration. We find that actors engage in work aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting socio-technical structures. These work practices involve exploring the possibilities of specific digital resources, their combinatorial options, and how new resources can be generated. The analysis contributes to the literature on digital platforms by (1) demonstrating the role of digital malleability in bypassing institutional resistance, (2) identifying temporal patterns and dependencies of activities, and (3) detecting distinct emphasis in types of institutional work

Knowledge Workers\u27 Use of Electronic Information Sources

Knowledge workers are those who interact knowledgeable with information by creating, reading,analyzing and acting upon it. Being able to find relevant information is thus an important task for anyknowledge worker, but how is this achieved? By interviewing knowledge workers about their information seeking activities, we have produced novel findings. Firstly, we suggest that the knowledge worker moves between and within three different information environments – the local, theorganizational and the global – and are thus forced to switch between tools to satisfy an information need. Therefore we suggest that future tools need to be designed to allow seamless interaction across all environments and tools. Secondly, the knowledge worker does not use the intranet search engine but finds intranet information via URLs received from colleagues. Thirdly, the knowledge worker seems to appreciate the judgment of fellow employees and to trust human filtering more than computer algorithms. Fourthly, surprisingly often the knowledge worker searches manually in the local and organizational environment, despite the existence of search tools. In contrast, when the public web issearched, search engines are often used heavily. We discuss how these findings are useful insights forthe design of future information seeking tools

Integration for innovation: Studying the role of middleware in RFID applications

This paper is based on an interpretative multiple case study of two organization where we examine how different middleware architecture approaches affect the utilization of sensor technology, in particular Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Our study reveals five interesting findings. First, sensor technology is able to digitize and automate previously manual routines but the received value of this process alone is often limited. Second, the possibility of downstream exploitation, and thus innovation, is inhibited when sensor data is too rigidly packaged. Third, organizations should have a clear strategy or vision regarding the desired business benefits when filtering and aggregating sensor data. Fourth, to enable innovative business solutions organizations should combine sensor data with business application data. Fifth, and finally, when utilizing sensor data organizations should prioritize exploitation over exploration since it enables organizations to obtain business innovation

Email as an Integration Device: A Study of Work Place Information Sharing

Being able to find relevant information is an important task for today’s organisational members, but how is this achieved when there are so many sources and tools to choose amongst? By interviewing thirteen IT professionals about their information seeking activities, we have analysed their needs, their sources, and their tools and made interesting and novel discoveries. Our findings suggest that social issues are important also in such a seemingly individual task as information seeking. Lack of social awareness in search tools made people use email as a way to integrate different information environments and be able to relate to fellow employees. These insights should be used to design future work place information seeking tools to benefit from the social interactions that exist in a corporate setting

Enabling Process Innovation through Sensor Technology: A Multiple Case Study of RFID Deployment

The advances in information technologies (IT) that we have witnessed in recent years has enabledorganisations to digitise much of the work that previously was carried out manually or supported byanalogue tools only. As this development continues, it is likely that IS in the future will have an evenmore profound impact on organisations and their capacity to innovate. In this paper, we make acontribution to the study of IT’s effect on business process innovation by reporting from a multiplecase study of five Swedish organisations using sensor technology. Understanding sensor technology asa boundary spanning technology, we have studied in particular the purpose of introducing RadioFrequency Identification (RFID), the intended effects on process innovation and what businessprocesses were affected. We illustrate how business values are achieved as automational,informational, and transformational effects, and whilst the automational effects are easiest to detectand value, it is the transformational effects that are likely to have the strongest and most profoundimpact on the organization. In addition we identify three major inhibitors: insufficient integration withexisting systems; lack of organisation adjustment; and uneven distribution of cost/benefits. Our workthereby offers contributions to both academia and practice

Barriers of Knowledge Transfer between Globally Distributed Teams in ICT Product Development

Increased globalization has generated a growth of globally distributed teams, which are characterized by geographical distance and used by organizations to increase innovation. However, to be able to collaborate effectively, teams are obligated to continuously conduct knowledge transfer (KT) between different geographical locations. Thus, this paper focused on identifying the main barriers that globally distributed teams face in conducting KT and how these barriers are unraveled. Based on an interpretative case study of a product development unit (PDU) in research and development (R&D) department of a telecom company, we identified eight main barriers that hinder the KT between globally distributed teams. These barriers are; knowledge embeddedness, knowledge accessibility and documentation gaps, knowledge complexity, knowledge problematic articulability, ICT tools reliance vs. face to face, inefficient ICT tools utilization, inefficient IT support, and lack of formal processes and guidelines

Intranet Users’ Information-Seeking Behaviour: An Analysis of Longitudinal Search Log Data

Today’s knowledge workers rely increasingly on information to get their job done, and the availability of search engines to locate relevant information is thus essential. Understanding how users interact with search engines is a prerequisite for the successful design of useful systems and a body of knowledge has in recent years begun to compile. However, all previous studies have focused on the public web, not acknowledging the fact that much business-related information seeking occur on corporate internal networks. In this exploratory study, we have collected and analysed intranet search engine log files from three different years – 2000, 2002, and 2004 – enabling us to detect shifting trends in intranet search behaviour. Comparing our data to what has been reported from the public web we conclude that intranet searchers are both similar to and different from searchers on the public web. In sum, it appears that intranet users are more extreme in their behaviour and that qualitative studies are needed to understand the motives and rationales governing their actions

The Emergence of Digital Institutions

Pervasive digitalization reshapes identities and processes of public sector providers, ranging from healthcare to education and justice. Recently, significant research attention has been given to such transformations, but still, there is more to learn about the mechanisms that may lead to the establishment of “digital institutions.” My dissertation seeks to provide empirical and theoretical insights into the dialectic between stability and change that many contemporary institutions encounter. Empirically, the research builds on a nine-year longitudinal interpretative case study of the Swedish Transport Administration (STA) and its efforts to grapple with emerging digital technology. Theoretically, I draw on Zietsma and Lawrence’s (2010) model of institutional work to investigate the purposeful actions of actors to deploy such technology for creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutional boundaries and practices. As such, my research is guided by the following research question: how do digital institutions emerge and come into being through the interplay of boundary work and practice work? Based on the theoretical model and the empirical analysis, I engage in theorizing that contributes to the current understanding of ways to organize digitally induced transformation of institutions and with what effects. First, it identifies and demonstrates exogenous and endogenous digital innovation as a key trigger of transitions between cycles of institutional stability and change. Second, it conceptualizes and illustrates a transformative trajectory in which organizational responses first revolved around entrepreneurial initiatives, then manifested through the creation of a platform solution, and finally focused on the formation of digital strategies. These insights provide a theoretically grounded conceptualization of evolving digital institutions with a particular emphasis on the nature of boundary work, practice work, and their recursive relationships. The recursiveness is the outcome of novel micro-level practices – arising in response to blurred boundaries – that traverse hierarchical levels, ultimately growing the scope and scale of institutional arrangements. At STA, the increasing distribution of innovation agency accelerated the change process whereby the carriers of the institution – artifacts, activities, relational systems, and symbolic systems – gradually became intrinsically interwoven with digital technology. As such, it tells an important story about what the emergence of digital institutions might entail

Ökad digitalisering och det moderna Trafikverket

Den ökade digitaliseringen av världen ställer nya ständigt föränderliga krav på Trafikverket. Traditionellt har fokus på verksamheten varit att utveckla och förfina fysiska transportnätverk (vägar/tågbanor etc.) med tillhörande tjänster kvalitetskriterier såsom punktlighet, anläggningseffektivitet och kundnytta. Numera är det inte bara traditionella sammanhang, såsom lagar, fysisk infrastruktur, eller politiska förutsättningar som förändras med jämna mellanrum utan även andra faktorer som man inte kan förutse eller planera inför. Exempel på detta är den snabba ökningen av användandet av öppna digitala plattformar såsom Android och Facebook, realtids data som ändrar innehåll, betydelse och struktur (exempelvis GPS-data som används både för att följa gods och hur snabbt man sprang på sin senaste löprunda), och snabbt växande antal uppkopplade enheter. Detta är konsekvenser av en ökande digitalisering och påverkar Trafikverket på alla områden i organisationen, från affärsmodeller till sociotekniska infrastrukturer. Då Trafikverket numera sammanför fysiska infrastrukturer (tågbanor och vägar) med digitala infrastrukturer (såsom plattformar och sensorteknologi) behöver man finna dynamiska strategier för hur dessa skall komplettera och dra nytta av varandra. För att möjliggöra detta krävs gemensamma målbilder och en organisation med flexibla strukturer som möjliggör ständig förändring. I ett paradigmskifte som detta är det viktigt att balansera digitaliseringens möjligheter gentemot organisatoriska konsekvenser och potential. Viktiga frågor att ta med sig är: Vilka är digitaliseringens utmaningar och möjligheter för Trafikverket som en modern myndighet? Hur bör man utforma framtidens digitala infrastruktur för att möta en ständig föränderlig värld?Ökad digitalisering och det moderna Trafikverke