Turning a Community into a Market: A Practice Perspective on IT Use in Boundary-Spanning

This paper examines how Information Technology (IT) transforms relations across fields of practice within organizations. Drawing on Bourdieu’s practice theory, we argue that the production of any practice involves varying degrees of embodiment (i.e., relying on personal relationships) and objectification (i.e., relying on the exchange of objects). We subsequently characterize boundary-spanning practices according to their relative degrees of embodiment and objectification. We distinguish between "market-like" boundary-spanning practices which rely primarily on an objectified mode of practice production from “community-like” practices which involve mostly the embodied mode of practice production. IT is then conceptualized as a medium for sharing objects in the production of practices. As such, IT use allows, but does not necessitate, the sharing of objects without relying on embodied relationships. We use data from an in-depth ethnographic case study to investigate how IT was used in such a way as to transform community-like boundary-spanning practices within an organization into market-like ones. Moreover, we demonstrate how, as IT became used to support the exchange and combination of de-personalized objects, other aspects of the practice (such as the roles of intermediaries and the nature of meetings) also changed. The related changes in these diverse aspects of a boundary-spanning practice supported the trend towards greater objectification. IT use also made the terms of exchange vis-a-vis the objects in a market-like practice more visible to relevant stakeholders. This increased visibility exposed the inequity of the exchange and encouraged the disadvantaged party to renegotiate the relationship.