We analyze information and communication technology in education initiatives in two South American countries: Bolivia and Uruguay. Utilizing qualitative data collection and analysis methods, we ...construct a comparative case study to trace the path of how national discourses—in response to the idea of globalization and initiatives promoting computers in education—were translated into policy goals, strategic implementation plans, and teaching and learning practices and outcomes. We document the role of the selected information and communication technology’s materiality in terms of portability and connectivity along this translation path. Our findings point to the importance of considering national discourse, often overlooked in information and communication technology in education studies, when examining initiative success and failure, and of conceptualizing materiality as more than merely the infrastructural foundation upon which information and communication technology in education initiatives are built. Understanding the role that materiality plays in interaction with national discourse may be especially important in guiding successful information and communication technology in education initiatives in developing countries, where financial resources are limited.
I consider what effect technologically deterministic rhetoric might have on the process of technology implementation. I argue that deterministic discourse creates an ideological orientation toward ...technological change--a Discourse of inevitability--which makes the fundamentally indeterminate relationship between technology and culture appear determinate. The implications of the paper concern the need for researchers to take into account how institutionalized images of technology can be used discursively to create outcomes in multinational corporations and how such discourse can promote the interests of powerful actors while marginalizing others.
Recognizing Expertise Treem, Jeffrey W.; Leonardi, Paul M.
Communication research,
03/2017, Letnik:
44, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Previous research has demonstrated the critical role communication plays in a group’s ability to recognize its expert members. This study looks broadly at the different forms of communication that ...might influence expertise recognition and considers how structural, relational, and communicative factors are related to individuals’ success in having their expertise recognized by other group members. In addition, we advance a view of expertise recognition in terms of expertise sharing and consider the circumstances under which an individual’s self-perceived expertise is likely to match the perceptions of other group members. Drawing on survey data from 99 employees at a financial services company, we find that it is communication practices, and not structural influences, that primarily relate to group members having their expertise recognized by coworkers. The findings extend theory that views attributions of individuals’ expertise in organizations as a communicative phenomenon that emerges through work practices.
This paper addresses the need for theoretical advancements in understanding team processes and the impact of technology on teams. Specifically, it examines the use of digital collaboration ...technologies by organizational teams and their effect on team communication and collaboration. Using the concept of affordances as a theoretical lens, the paper explores the potential relationships between technology affordances and essential team processes. It also provides an agenda for future research on social technologies and teams as well as novel methodological approaches for better understanding the ways in which digital technologies are affecting team processes and performance in the workplace.
Prior research suggests that boundary objects gain meaning through group interaction. Drawing from the literature on strategic ambiguity, we explore the possibility that individuals strategically ...create potential boundary objects in an attempt to shape the meanings that groups develop. From ethnographic observations of automotive engineers, we identify 2 creation strategies: ambiguity (to create objects that support multiple meanings) and clarity (to create objects that permit a particular meaning). We detail design activities that engineers undertook to create objects under each strategy. We find that, when creating objects, engineers favored a strategy of ambiguity, which they believed would foster healthy long‐term group interactions, over a strategy of clarity, which they tended to employ only when they expected resistance to their ideas.
Construire des objets pour la collaboration : stratégies d’ambiguïté et de clarté aux frontières des connaissances
Résumé
Les recherches précédentes suggère que les objets frontières acquièrent une signification à travers l’interaction de groupe. Puisant dans la littérature sur l’ambiguïté stratégique, nous explorons la possibilité que les individus créent stratégiquement des objets frontières potentiels pour essayer de déterminer les significations que développent les groupes. À partir d’observations ethnographiques d’ingénieurs automobiles, nous identifions deux stratégies de création : l’ambiguïté (créer des objets qui confirment des significations multiples) et la clarté (créer des objets qui permettent une signification particulière). Nous détaillons des activités de conception qu’ont entreprises les ingénieurs pour créer des objets selon chaque stratégie. Nous constatons que, lorsqu’ils créent des objets, les ingénieurs favorisaient une stratégie de l’ambiguïté, dont ils croyaient qu’elle encouragerait des interactions de groupe saines à long terme, plutôt qu’une stratégie de clarté, qu’ils avaient tendance à n’utiliser que lorsqu’ils s’attendaient à de la résistance face à leurs idées.
Mots clés : objets frontières, ambiguïté stratégique, collaboration, communication organisationnelle, technologie, frontières des connaissances, interaction de groupe
Objektentwicklung für die Zusammenarbeit: Ambiguität und Klarheit als Strategien an Wissensgrenzen
Frühere Forschungsarbeiten deuten darauf hin, dass Grenzobjekte durch Gruppeninteraktion Bedeutung erlangen. Basierend auf dieser Forschungsliteratur zu strategischer Ambiguität untersuchen wir die Möglichkeit, dass Individuen potentielle Grenzobjektive strategisch erschaffen im Zuge des Versuchs, Bedeutungen zu formen, die Gruppen entwickeln. Basierend auf ethnographischen Beobachtungen von Automobilingenieuren identifizieren wir zwei Entwicklungsstrategien: Ambiguität (Entwicklung von Objekten, die mehrere Bedeutungen unterstützen) und Klarheit (Entwicklung von Objekten, die eine bestimmte Bedeutung zulassen). Wir explizieren Design‐Aktivitäten, die von den Ingenieuren angewendet wurden, um Objekte basierend auf diesen beiden Strategien zu entwickeln. Dabei kamen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass Ingenieure im Zuge der Objektentwicklung eine Strategie der Ambiguität bevorzugten, von der sie annahmen, dass sie langfristige gesunde Gruppeninteraktionen befördert. Im Gegensatz dazu verfolgten sie eine Strategie der Klarheit, wenn sie Widerstand gegen ihre Ideen erwarteten.
Schlüsselbegriffe: Grenzobjekte, strategische Ambiguität, Zusammenarbeit, Organisationskommunikation, Technologie, Wissensgrenzen, Gruppeninteraktion
La Ingeniería de los Objetos para la Colaboración:
Las Estrategias de la Ambigüedad y la Claridad de las Fronteras del Conocimiento
Resumen
La investigación previa sugiere que los objetos fronterizos cobran sentido a través de la interacción grupal. Tomando de la literatura sobre la ambigüedad estratégica, exploramos la posibilidad que los individuos creen estratégicamente objetos fronterizos potenciales en un intento de dar forma al significado que los grupos desarrollan. De observaciones etnográficas de ingenieros automotores, identificamos 2 estrategias de creación: la ambigüedad (para crear objetos que apoyan los sentidos múltiples) y la claridad (para crear objetos que permiten un sentido particular). Detallamos las actividades de diseño que los ingenieros llevaron a cabo para crear los objetos bajo cada estrategia. Encontramos que, cuando se crean objetos, los ingenieros favorecieron una estrategia de ambigüedad, dado que creyeron promovería interacciones grupales sanas de largo plazo, sobre la estrategia de claridad, que ellos tendían a emplear sólo cuando esperaban resistencia a sus ideas.
Palabras claves: Objetos fronterizos, Ambigüedad estratégica, Colaboración, Comunicación organizacional, Tecnología, Conocimiento de las fronteras, Interacción de grupo
How Remote Work Changes the World of Work Leonardi, Paul M; Parker, Sienna Helena; Shen, Roni
Annual review of organizational psychology and organizational behavior,
01/2024, Letnik:
11, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Remote work is typically characterized as work that is done at some physical distance from the office. Existing research has shown that the main elements of this characterization-physical distance ...and the office-are far more complex than most people realize. This review develops a framework that refracts the concept of remote work into four types of distance-psychological, temporal, technological, and structural-and three objects from which one can be distant-material resources, social resources, and symbolic resources. We then use this refraction framework to answer five questions about the way remote work is changing the future of work: (
a
) Who will work remotely? (
b
) Where will people work remotely? (
c
) When will people work remotely? (
d
) Why will people work remotely? and (
e
) How will people work remotely? After demonstrating how existing research can help us answer these questions, we discuss important avenues for future investigation.
This study advances organizational communication scholarship by introducing the notion of an occupational identity gap as a misalignment among the personal, relational, communal, and enacted frames ...of identity. Despite knowledge that occupational identity gaps exist, scholars know little about how people manage them. Interviews with 31 graphic designers explain how occupational identity gaps were forged by personal frames (e.g., “I am a creative person”) that contradicted enacted (e.g., “I do boring template work”) and relational frames (e.g., “It’s the client’s decision which design he or she will like”). Workers managed this misalignment by employing two novel strategies—reappraising and repositioning—that bridged personal-enacted and personal-relational occupational identity gaps. Our analysis contributes to scholarship by a) theorizing these two occupational identity gap bridging strategies, (b) extending CTI research, and (c) offering a novel conceptualization of occupational identity.
This research draws on a resourcing perspective to challenge the assumption that expertise should be conceptualized as an asset with consistent value for organizations, and offers an alternative view ...that expertise is enacted through communicative processes that create resources-in-use. Analysis of the introduction of an offshoring center offering potential expert work in a global automotive company revealed that the meaning of this potential resource was shaped by existing schemas regarding the role of expertise within the organization. Ongoing communication among workers enacted the expertise in fundamentally divergent ways, leading organizational members to characterize offshore center workers as either ineffective contractors or supportive collaborators. Findings extend ongoing discussions in organizational communication by demonstrating expertise as emergent in communication among workers.
Digital simulation models have become increasingly important to innovation processes. When used within organisations intent on innovating products, processes or services, the affordances of these ...technologies can enable the possibility to explain, experiment, and predict complex systems. As complex tools, however, models must become integrated into a social context characterised by differences in technical knowledge about when, how, and why the models are useful. In this paper, we draw on our experiences studying the labour of digital modelling work over the past 10 years to discuss some of the important social mechanisms through which models come to be trusted by stakeholders, and, consequently, integrated into innovation processes. By comparing three very different contexts we show that the work of trust-building requires modellers to create appeals to the credibility of the model's analysis, the utility of its outputs, and to negotiate unavoidable political issues that emerge from differing values among parties in the innovation process. Revealing this labour positions models as social objects, and leads us to provide practical recommendations for scholars and practitioners who hope to use modelling as a key process for digital innovation.
