Understanding Virtual Embodiment: A Phenomenological Lens

The paper develops a phenomenological perspective on virtual interactions, which focuses on the centrality of the human body for developing meaningful engagements and relationships in virtual settings. From such a stance, the paper problematizes the extant perspectives that are being premised either on the physicality of the human body and thereby face-to-face interactions, or on the negligence of the body and its reduction to digital text in virtual interactions. In contrast, by drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, this paper sets a middle ground, which emphasizes the relationship between the phenomenal (lived) body, and the objective (image) body, which also constitutes our engagements with others. The findings of the paper, based on an analysis of an in-depth, longitudinal, exclusively-mediated software development relationship, identify the importance of inter-orienting and inter-presencing practices. These practices show that virtual interactions are qualitatively distinct mode of engagement, which is more-than-linguistic and more-than-task-oriented. This perspective of virtual embodiment is valuable for addressing the research contradictions in the area of virtual interactions, and offering important insights to the recent IS discourse on performativity and ontological inseparability

Uncovering the affective affordances of videoconference technologies

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the role of videoconferencing technologies for mediating and transforming emotional experiences in virtual context. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on empirical data of video conferencing experiences, this study identifies different constitutive relations with technology through which actors cope with actual or potential anxieties in virtual meetings. It draws on the phenomenological-existential tradition (Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and on an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to conceptualize and illustrate the role of affective affordances in virtual settings. Findings: The study identifies four different body–technology–other relations that provide different action possibilities, both disclosing and concealing, for navigating emotional experiences in virtual encounters of mutual gazing. These findings offer insights into the anatomy of virtual emotions and provide explanations on the nature of Zoom fatigue (interactive exhaustion) and heightened feelings of self-consciousness resulting from video conferencing interactions. Originality/value: This paper builds on and extends current scholarship on technological affordances, as well as emotions, to suggest that technologies also afford different tactics for navigating emotional experiences. Thus, this paper proposes the notion of affective affordance that can expand current information system (IS) and organization studies (OS) scholarship in important ways. The focus is on videoconference technologies and meetings that have received little research attention and even less so from a perspective on emotions. Importantly, the paper offers nuanced insights that can advance current research discourse on the relationships between technology, human body and emotions.European Research Counci

Distributed Communication as Collective Socio-material Sensemaking in Global Software Work

In this paper, we address the issue of communication difficulties on globally distributed offshoring projects. We argue that although communication issues feature prominently in the extant literature on offshoring, and in that pertaining to project management more generally, they are not dealt with in a very satisfactory way. In particular, much of the literature either treats communication as an unproblematic process of information exchange, thus implicitly embracing a naïve conduit model (Kelly 2005; Lakoff et al. 1980; Reddy 1979), or adopts a detached, factor based approach that neglects the actual practices sustaining the process of communication (for notable exceptions see Boland 1995; Kelly 2005). We draw on in-depth, longitudinal, processual case study of an offshore relationship comprised of two software development projects with varying degrees of success. By contrasting and comparing these two projects we develop a richer understanding of communication practices and the specific challenges posed by the globally distributed nature of the project teams. Based on the rich empirical evidence from these two detailed projects, we build upon and develop previous work (i.e. Kelly et al. 2008) in order to synthesize a distinctive theoretical perspective on communication practices in distributed projects based on the notion of collective socio-material sensemaking. On basis of this perspective, we, furthermore, suggest a more holistic role of project managers that is crucially concerned with senseshaping

Hospitality Analysis of IS Innovation

The problematic nature of popular structured methodologies and methodological frames that ‘straightjacket’ the complex social and organizational processes encompassing system development have been widely reported but few theoretically informed analyses or remedies have been proposed. We draw upon Ciborra’s insightful concept of Xenia (i.e. hospitality) to reveal the intrinsic and heterogeneous nature of the socio-technical interplay underlying processes of organizational innovation mediated through technologies. Social processes of development and implementation are illuminated through the notion of hospitality which offers interesting insights into ‘messy’ socio-technical dynamics, often invisible and ignored by structured methodologies

Emergent leadership in online communities: an interactive process of co-influencing

We propose a theoretical approach informed by a power-in-practice perspective that allows us to examine the emergence of leadership in online communities. We theorize leadership emergence as a process of co-influencing that is constituted by forces of ‘pushing’ and ‘pulling’ different enactments of power that are formative of communal interactions. More specifically we identify three pathways for emergent leadership based on different modes of community influence. These insights are based on a detailed exploration of interactions in one particular online community #WeAreNotWaiting, offering distinct contributions to the literature on leadership emergence, particularly in online communities without formal roles and hierarchies

Introduction to the Minitrack on Social-Technical Issues in Organizational Information Technologies

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Trust Development in Networked Environments: A Performative Account

We focus on trust development in dynamic, unstructured and non-commercial networked environments and conceptualize it as the process of producing a stable network ordering. We present a longitudinal, in-depth case study of the global humanitarian aid network, which is undergoing a disruptive transformation due to the emergence of digital volunteers who offer unique digital capacity for collecting and analyzing humanitarian aid data. Integrating this new actor-network into the existing global humanitarian network, comprised of formal organizations exhibits many problems that are concerned with trust. The ongoing inter-penetrating of these two networks is leading towards stabilizing into a new, qualitatively different network ordering that morphs the traditional and digital network models. We draw on sociology of translation, with its relational and performative sensibility, to analyze the network emerging and stabilizing as processes of trust development. We highlight the importance of four practices, performative of network trust: problematization, interessement, enrollment and mobilization

Affective resonance and durability in political organizing: The case of patients who hack

We explore the role of affect in fuelling and sustaining political organizing in the case of an online Type-1 Diabetes community. Analysing this community’s interactions, we show that the drive towards political transformation is triggered by affective dissonance, but that this dissonance needs to be recurrently enacted through the balanced circulation of objects of pain and hope. We propose the notion of affective resonance to illuminate the dynamic interplay that collectively moderates and fosters this circulation and that keeps bodies invested and reverberating together around shared political goals. Affective resonance points researchers toward the fragile and complex accomplishment that affective politics represents. Focussing particularly on the community’s interactions on Twitter, we also reflect on the role of (digital) resonance spaces in how affects circulate. By adopting and transposing concepts from affect theories into the context of patient communities, we further add important insights into the unique embodied challenges that chronic illness patients face. Highlighting the hope induced by techno-bodily emancipation that intertwine into a particular form of political organizing in such healthcare movements, we give emphasis to patient communities’ deeply embodied affects as important engines for political, social, and economic change.European Commission Horizon 2020European Research CouncilPlease check date and citing details, double copyright and add set text accordingl

Democratic research: setting up a research commons for a qualitative, comparative, longitudinal interview study during the COVID-19 pandemic

The sudden and dramatic advent of the COVID-19 pandemic led to urgent demands for timely, relevant, yet rigorous research. This paper discusses the origin, design, and execution of the SolPan research commons, a large-scale, international, comparative, qualitative research project that sought to respond to the need for knowledge among researchers and policymakers in times of crisis. The form of organization as a research commons is characterized by an underlying solidaristic attitude of its members and its intrinsic organizational features in which research data and knowledge in the study is shared and jointly owned. As such, the project is peer-governed, rooted in (idealist) social values of academia, and aims at providing tools and benefits for its members. In this paper, we discuss challenges and solutions for qualitative studies that seek to operate as research commons

Evaluating Distributed Leadership in Open Source Software Communities

This paper suggests that leadership in Open Source Software (OSS) communities can be better conceptualised as collectively shared, communal processes or ‘distributed leadership’. The quality of distributed leadership and its role in the Community performance can be, however, difficult to evaluate and improve. In order to address this problem, the paper develops an integrated analytical framework that organizes leadership practices along three dimensions: technocratic, empathic and network. We apply and further elaborate this framework in relation to the Drupal OSS community in which we follow the interactions over three months of four developers who have generic leadership roles. The findings show how the repertoire of leadership practices of each developer pattern into a particular leadership style. These leadership styles are then used to show how they co-constitute the overall leadership capacity of the Drupal community. This paper, thus, offers granular and discriminatory insights into our understanding of leadership, which plays a central role in sustaining open communities. This research also holds practical implications for evaluating and improving distributed leadershi