METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE STUDY OF SOCIOMATERIALITY

This article uses a case of oil and gas exploration as the starting point for methodological considerations in the study of sociomateriality. I argu a sociomaterial research continuum ranging from hard to soft sociomateriality depending on how the technology-human relationship is conceptualised in the literature. In the hard end, there can be no understanding of the one without the other, while contributions towards the soft end of the scale accept a conceptual distance between them, although claiming symmetry. The hard version is under critiqu for using unclear language and producing confusing levels of analysis, and the soft version has been critiqud for not properly addressing macro level influnces. The case is critical in that it illustrates the problematics of sociomateriality, being saturated of data and IT tools that are both necessary for the process to work and produce outputs that without these same tools would be very different. There is in other words symmetry performed. I answer the call to not reside to simplified and single scholarly approaches and use relevant discussions and insights from science studies, sociology and organisational research to suggest that the issus discussed in sociomateriality transcends the debate between critical realism and agential realism going towards the core of scientific qustions of the relationship between the subjective and the objective and between data and theory. I find that the consequnce of this is that sociomaterial research must cut across ontological, epistemological and methodological borders to embed the notion of performativity and not impose a-priori ontological barriers, but rather ask qustions that allow us to construct concepts that are applicable in our empirical analysis. I suggest that sociomateriality in addition to commit to subtle realism should glance to conventionalism and pragmatically consider the applicability of the concept without restricting to claims of truth. Sociomateriality is, it seems, in the constructive process of exhausting epistemological obstacles by a necessary consideration of existing concepts (such as agential realism, sociotechnical and critical reality)

Using digital platforms to promote a service-oriented logic in public sector organizations: A case study

A growing number of scholars and practitioners have recognized that value is defined and co-created by citizens, and that citizens must be involved in the service delivery process to improve the quality and efficacy of public services. Central to such a service-dominant logic, is that public sector organizations cannot manufacture value for citizens, they can only make a value proposition which the citizen might choose to use. Hence, value must be co-created. However, this entails accommodating co-creation practices with millions of users. Currently, co-creation is often limited to involving a carefully selected set of users in crafting requirements early, and/or measuring user satisfaction upon service launch. There is an empirical blind spot in the current literature in terms of how to shape service delivery in a way that is capable of effectively capturing emergent and process-oriented value co-creation across large user groups. Through a longitudinal case study of the IT department at the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), providing services to millions of users, this paper explores how digital platforms are used to transform value co-creation into a process of continuous improvement. We find that adopting a process-oriented approach for co-creation within public sector organizations requires structural changes, including sourcing strategy and governance structure. We also show the importance of digital platforms in increasing the efficiency of co-creation. We discuss how these structural changes were done, and the role of digital platforms in achieving these changes

Minimum Viable Common Ground: A Case Study of Collaboration Rooms as an Agile Approach to Interdepency Management

Large-scale agile transformation implies that agile approaches are moving from standalone in-formation system development units such as teams towards being applied in more complex organi-sational settings with multiple and diverse units. Research on large-scale agile transformation suggests that agile methods with its focus on mutual adjustment increases interdependencies be-tween diverse units. However, extant empirical research on how interdependencies can be man-aged in large-scale agile transformations is scarce. We report from an interpretative case study of an agile transformation initiative in a company with 20.000 employees. Based on data from 32 interviews combined with participatory observation in retrospectives we analyse how “collabora-tion rooms” are used to manage the interdependence between heterogeneous units, and how the collaboration rooms are conceived by information systems development practitioners as an agile transformation initiative. Using the concept of trading zones we contribute by discussing how het-erogeneous units can manage interdependencies by using collaboration rooms as a minimum via-ble common ground. We discuss how the minimum viable ground i) fit new practices with existing practices, ii) allows flatter decision structures, and iii) is a subtle and iterative approach to organ-izational transformation

Invisible Data Curation Practices: A Case Study from Facility Management

Facility management, which concerns the administration, operations, and maintenance of buildings, is a sector undergoing significant changes while becoming digitalized and data driven. In facility management sector, companies seek to extract value from data about their buildings. As a consequence, craftsmen, such as janitors, are becoming involved in data curation. Data curation refers to activities related to cleaning, assembling, setting up, and stewarding data to make them fit existing templates. Craftsmen in facility management, despite holding a pivotal role for successful data curation in the domain, are understudied and disregarded. To remedy this, our holistic case study investigates how janitors’ data curation practices shape the data being produced in three facility management organizations. Our findings illustrate the unfortunate that janitors are treated more like a sensor than a human data curator. This treatment makes them less engaged in data curation, and hence do not engage in a much necessary correction of essential facility data. We apply the conceptual lens of invisible work – work that blends into the background and is taken for granted – to explain why this happens and how data comes to be. The findings also confirm the usefulness of a previously proposed analytical framework by using it to interpret data curation practices within facility management. The paper contributes to practitioners by proposing training and education in data curation

Minimum Viable Common Ground: A Case Study of Collaboration Rooms as an Agile Approach to Interdepency Management

Large-scale agile transformation implies that agile approaches are moving from standalone in-formation system development units such as teams towards being applied in more complex organi-sational settings with multiple and diverse units. Research on large-scale agile transformation suggests that agile methods with its focus on mutual adjustment increases interdependencies be-tween diverse units. However, extant empirical research on how interdependencies can be man-aged in large-scale agile transformations is scarce. We report from an interpretative case study of an agile transformation initiative in a company with 20.000 employees. Based on data from 32 interviews combined with participatory observation in retrospectives we analyse how “collabora-tion rooms” are used to manage the interdependence between heterogeneous units, and how the collaboration rooms are conceived by information systems development practitioners as an agile transformation initiative. Using the concept of trading zones we contribute by discussing how het-erogeneous units can manage interdependencies by using collaboration rooms as a minimum via-ble common ground. We discuss how the minimum viable ground i) fit new practices with existing practices, ii) allows flatter decision structures, and iii) is a subtle and iterative approach to organ-izational transformation.acceptedVersio

TECHNOLOGY FOR KNOWLEDGE WORK: A RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

In this research in progress paper, we consider how two major trends drive digitalization. First, software product management focuses on fast and iterative development where users are involved in the design phase of products through product managers. Second, there is a push toward applying AI in knowledge domains. We show how these trends intensify the need to focus on relations between IS development and use. Through an interpretative case study of digitalization, drawing on ethnographic methods, we investigate key relations and how they compound into constellations of relations. We discuss key constellations of relations, how the data flow between constellations of relations functions, and how we can zoom in and out to understand relations—allowing for a reposition of IS development for AI, both theoretically and practically

Managing Competing Concerns in Digital Innovation: A Case Study of an Incumbent Maritime Company

The need for new digitally enhanced solutions has led companies in traditionally non-digital industries to explore the potential of digital innovation. Various process frameworks claim their ability to support this endeavor by facilitating the digital innovation process. However, such frame-works alone may not be sufficient because digital innovation in established firms tends to involve numerous actors with competing interests. This introduces the need to manage the competing concerns in order to orchestrate the digital innovation process. Knowledge about how the organizational actors negotiate, agree, and collectively drive the innovation process forward thus becomes crucial. This interpretive case study describes how participants of a digital innovation program in an established maritime company manage their competing concerns through four negotiation episodes: Mobilizing of internal stakeholders, Developing capacity for faster decision-making, Pricing new digital services, and Establishing a connection between business and development. The results indicate that negotiating competing concerns is necessary for the incumbents to move forward with their digital innovation and that communities of practice can facilitate such negotiations. We conclude that recombination of the established processes as an outcome of such negotiations is necessary to succeed with digital innovation in incumbent firms.publishedVersio

Managing Competing Concerns in Digital Innovation: A Case Study of an Incumbent Maritime Company

The need for new digitally enhanced solutions has led companies in traditionally non-digital industries to explore the potential of digital innovation. Various process frameworks claim their ability to support this endeavor by facilitating the digital innovation process. However, such frame-works alone may not be sufficient because digital innovation in established firms tends to involve numerous actors with competing interests. This introduces the need to manage the competing concerns in order to orchestrate the digital innovation process. Knowledge about how the organizational actors negotiate, agree, and collectively drive the innovation process forward thus becomes crucial. This interpretive case study describes how participants of a digital innovation program in an established maritime company manage their competing concerns through four negotiation episodes: Mobilizing of internal stakeholders, Developing capacity for faster decision-making, Pricing new digital services, and Establishing a connection between business and development. The results indicate that negotiating competing concerns is necessary for the incumbents to move forward with their digital innovation and that communities of practice can facilitate such negotiations. We conclude that recombination of the established processes as an outcome of such negotiations is necessary to succeed with digital innovation in incumbent firms

Understanding Barriers to Internal Startups in Large Organizations: Evidence from a Globally Distributed Company

Large global companies need to speed up their innovation activities to increase competitive advantage. However, such companies' organizational structures impede their ability to capture trends they are well aware of due to bureaucracy, slow decision-making, distributed departments, and distributed processes. One way to strengthen the innovation capability is through fostering internal startups. We report findings from an embedded multiple-case study of five internal startups in a globally distributed company to identify barriers for software product innovation: late involvement of software developers, executive sponsor is missing or not clarified, yearly budgeting and planning, unclear decision-making authority, lack of digital infrastructure for experimentation and access to data from external actors. Drawing on the framework of continuous software engineering proposed by Fitzgerald and Stol, we discuss the role of BizDev in software product innovation. We suggest that lack of continuity, rather than the lack of speed, is an ultimate challenge for internal startups in large global companies.acceptedVersio

Digital Transformation – A Flow Perspective

As we move along the ever-transforming world of digital technology and organizations, the perspective of how we view digital transformation (DT) also transforms. The episodic and continuous nature of changes requires an in-depth, nuanced temporal perspective. Through a case study on an incumbent maritime organization chasing new digital value propositions, we explore the flows of actions within DT. We discuss 1) DT as flows of action, 2) the challenges of planning and measuring DT, and 3) how resistance can spur action. Moving further, we argue that this view will enable future research on how to perform DT in a way that considers the convergence of flows of action