The family resemblance of technologically mediated work practices

Practice-based perspectives in information systems have established how, in every instance of use (i.e., work practices), the user exercises considerable discretion in their appropriation of the technology with local workarounds and situated improvisations. We analyse the relationship between technologically mediated work practices separated in time and space. Specifically, we analyse how similarity in work practices is achieved. Achieving absolutely similar (or 'best') practices is unattainable. Drawing on a longitudinal (2007-2011) case of ambulatory maintenance work in the oil and gas sector, we identify and discuss three constituting strategies (differentiation, assembling and punctuation) through which a family resemblance of - similar but not the same - work practices is crafted. We discuss how, in the absence of an essentialist criterion, similarity is subject to pragmatic but also political negotiations.

[1]  Ronald Batenburg,et al.  Technical isomorphism at work: ERP-embedded similarity-enhancing mechanisms , 2008, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[2]  Marie-Claude Boudreau,et al.  Accounting for the Contradictory Organizational Consequences of Information Technology: Theoretical Directions and Methodological Implications , 1999, Inf. Syst. Res..

[3]  D. Ihde.  Bodies in Technology , 2001 .

[4]  A. Amin,et al.  Architectures Of Knowledge , 2004 .

[5]  A. Langley.  Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data , 1999 .

[6]  Mustafa Emirbayer.  What Is Agency ? ' , 2008 .

[7]  S. Newell,et al.  Repairing ERP , 2006 .

[8]  W. Skipper,et al.  Shouldering Risks: The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry , 2006 .

[9]  Marie-Claude Boudreau,et al.  Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[10]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Improvising Organizational Transformation Over Time: A Situated Change Perspective , 1996, Inf. Syst. Res..

[11]  Sue Newell,et al.  'Best' for whom?: the tension between 'best practice' ERP packages and diverse epistemic cultures in a university context , 2004, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[12]  M. Clowes.  Talking to Machines , 1972, Nature.

[13]  Sampsa Hyysalo,et al.  Learning for learning economy and social learning , 2009 .

[14]  J. Orr.  Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job , 1998 .

[15]  K. K. Cetina,et al.  The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory , 2001 .

[16]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Stretching out and expanding work practices in time and space: The case of telemedicine , 2007 .

[17]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[18]  Libby Hemphill,et al.  Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions, 2nd ed , 2007, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[19]  A. Appadurai.  Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization , 1996 .

[20]  Wiebe E. Bijker,et al.  Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change ed. by Wiebe E. Bijker, John Law (review) , 1994, Technology and Culture.

[21]  Pierre Bourdieu,et al.  Outline of a Theory of Practice , 2020, On Violence.

[22]  L. Suchman.  Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions (2nd edition). , 2007 .

[23]  R. Suddaby.  From the Editors: What Grounded Theory is Not , 2006 .

[24]  Paul R. Carlile,et al.  The incompatibility of knowledge regimes: consequences of the material world for cross-domain work , 2006, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[25]  Knut H. Rolland,et al.  Trans-situated use of integrated information systems , 2012, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[26]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations , 2000, Theory in CSCW.

[27]  Deidra L. Fryer,et al.  The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology: Innovation, Actors and Contexts , 2005 .

[28]  Les Gasser,et al.  The integration of computing and routine work , 1986, TOIS.

[29]  A. Amin,et al.  Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities , 2004 .

[30]  R. Giere.  How Models Are Used to Represent Reality , 2004, Philosophy of Science.

[31]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Practice as the Site of Knowing: Insights from the Field of Telemedicine , 2011, Organ. Sci..

[32]  Neil Pollock,et al.  Organization Post Local Forms of Repair : The ( Extended ) Situation of Virtualised Technical Support , 2009 .

[33]  R. Leidner.  Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life , 1993 .

[34]  M. Engelmann.  The Philosophical Investigations , 2013 .

[35]  E. Rosch,et al.  Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[36]  Daniel Robey,et al.  Explaining changes in learning and work practice following the adoption of online learning: a human agency perspective , 2008, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[37]  Petter Grytten Almklov,et al.  Dual materiality and knowing in petroleum production , 2012, Inf. Organ..

[38]  R. Frodeman.  Envisioning the Outcrop , 1996 .

[39]  Sundeep Sahay,et al.  Transforming Work Through Information Technology: A Comparative Case Study of Geographic Information Systems in County Government , 1996, Inf. Syst. Res..

[40]  S. Gherardi.  Practice-Based Theorizing on Learning and Knowing in Organizations , 2000 .

[41]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions , 2006 .

[42]  Neil Pollock,et al.  Generification Work in the Production of Organizational Software Packages , 2022 .

[43]  Susan V. Scott,et al.  10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization , 2008 .

[44]  M. Feldman,et al.  Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change , 2003 .

[45]  Paul M. Leonardi,et al.  Materiality and Change: Challenges to Building Better Theory about Technology and Organizing , 2008, Inf. Organ..

[46]  Mustafa Emirbayer,et al.  What Is Agency?1 , 1998, American Journal of Sociology.

[47]  Marc Berg,et al.  Orders and Their Others: On the Constitution of Universalities in Medical Work , 2000 .

[48]  Petter Grytten Almklov,et al.  Between and beyond data: How analogue field experience informs the interpretation of remote data sources in petroleum reservoir geology , 2011 .

[49]  Mark Casson,et al.  Groupware adoption in a distributed organization: transporting and transforming technology through social worlds , 2004, Inf. Organ..

[50]  Yutaka Yamauchi,et al.  Local assimilation of an enterprise system: Situated learning by means of familiarity pockets , 2010, Inf. Organ..

[51]  Robin Williams,et al.  Software and Organisations: The Biography of the Enterprise-Wide System or How SAP Conquered the World , 2008 .

[52]  Daniel Robey,et al.  Theories that Explain Contradiction: Accounting for the Contradictory Organizational Consequences of Information Technology , 1995, ICIS.

[53]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. , 2001 .

[54]  Göran Goldkuhl,et al.  Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism in Action , 2009 .

[55]  Geoff Walsham,et al.  Trans-Situated Learning: Supporting a Network of Practice with an Information Infrastructure , 2009, Inf. Syst. Res..

[56]  M. Berg,et al.  Standardization in Action: Achieving Local Universality through Medical Protocols , 1997 .

[57]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[58]  Robert D. Galliers,et al.  The creation of 'best practice' software: Myth, reality and ethics , 2006, Inf. Organ..

[59]  S. Shapin.  HERE AND EVERYWHERE: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge , 1995 .

[60]  Diane M. Strong,et al.  Understanding enterprise systems-enabled integration , 2005, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[61]  Pär J. Ågerfalk.  Getting pragmatic , 2010, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..