Metaphors of virtuality: shaping an emergent reality

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.

Constructing and enacting normality online across generations

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how different age groups construct and enact normality within social networking sites (SNS) and consequently extend theory in the area of online interactions.

Design/methodology/approach

The chosen research site was Facebook and research design involved focus groups across three different age groups: teenagers, young adults and the middle-aged. In total, there were 78 participants. The focus groups explored the metaphoric images of Facebook interactions. In doing so, participants were asked to draw a picture to represent their metaphor and following this, to position themselves and other characters within the picture. The drawings as well as the facilitators’ records provided the main data set for the study.

Findings

Connective and protective encounters were found to be used by different age groups when constructing and enacting normality on SNS. Further, it emerged that the interpretation and enactment of normality across the different age groups significantly varied. The metaphorical images have transpired as being a resourceful way of unpacking these differences.

Research limitations/implications

The study relied on focus groups in order to capture metaphorical images across generations. It did not include interviews with individual participants to elicit the extent to which they agreed with the group metaphor or whether there was anything else they might have presented in the drawings. This could be on the agenda for future research.

Practical implications

The findings of the study suggest that SNS managers and designers should sympathise with the view that users of different ages engage in different ways with SNS and as a result, user interfaces should be customised according to the age of the user.

Social implications

The study has implications for those interested in cross- and inter-generational research.

Originality/value

This is the first study in which the concept of normality has been adopted as a theoretical lens for understanding the interactions on SNS. Further, this work adds to the limited body of research on SNS use across different generations whilst it expands on the range of methodologies used within the information systems field.

Religious discourse and organizational change

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to present a case of proactive change that occurred in a large organization in Saudi Arabia.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper explains how management actively used religious discourse to institute a stakeholder perspective within the organization.

Findings

– The process of change that occurred leads to the development of a successful change process that borrows from legitimacy theory and legitimation in discourse. The findings show the impact of religious discourse on organizational change in the context under study.

Research limitations/implications

– While this change process, grounded in religious discourse, cannot be assumed to work across contexts, future research can uncover what contextual or cultural dimensions facilitate or impede such an approach.

Social implications

– This study provides an example as to how change agents can engage people within their organizations in the change process through a systematic process of sensemaking that grants moral legitimacy to company's initiatives.

Originality/value

– The paper draws attention to the importance of religious discourse in institutional change, a thing that has rarely been discussed at the firm level.

Participation in ICT-Enabled Meetings

Meetings are a common occurrence in contemporary organizations. The authors’ exploratory study at Intel, an innovative global technology company, suggests that meetings are evolving beyond their familiar definition as the pervasive use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) changes work practices associated with meetings. Drawing on data gathered from interviews prompted by entries in the employees’ electronic calendar system, the authors examine the multiple ways in which meetings build and reflect work in the organization and derive propositions to guide future research. Specifically, the authors identify four aspects of meetings that reflect work in the 21st century: meetings are integral to work in team-centered organizations, tension between group and personal objectives, discontinuities, and ICT support for fragmented work environment.

Changing Attitudes and Behavior of Stakeholders During an Information Systems-Led Organizational Change

In this article the authors use G. Morgan's (1986, 1997) metaphors to look at the changes to stakeholder attitudes and behavior during an information systems—led organizational change. They discuss the introduction of an organization-wide intranet system in a U.K. National Health Service organization and elicit metaphorical attitudes and infer behavior by using multiple research methods within a longitudinal case study. The findings show that various contextual factors shift the organization's overall stance from psychic prison (repression) to organism (flexible) metaphor. Furthermore, many stakeholders aspire to more than one metaphor at a given time, although a predominant metaphor can still be identified for most stakeholders. The authors present the metaphorical journey map as a tool for capturing attitude and behavioral changes of individuals during the change period. The authors advocate that use of metaphors in such a way can help management better understand the overall social orientation of their organizations and devise appropriate interventions to expedite the change process and increase its legitimacy.

Emergent States in Virtual Teams: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

Research on virtual teams (VTs) has proliferated in the last decades. However, few clear and consistent theoretical attempts to integrate the literature on VTs in a systemic way have emerged. This paper uses the complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective to integrate the literature on emergent states in VTs. According to this general framework, VT effectiveness depends on the interaction between three levels of dynamics: local, global and contextual. Team cognition, trust, cohesion and conflict are described as states that emerge from the interactions among the VT members and as parts of global dynamics, they impact on VT effectiveness, and in the same time they are influenced by the outcomes of the VT. The insights on this bidirectional causality as well as other benefits of using the CAS framework to improve our understanding of VTs are discussed in the paper. It also provides an overview of artificial simulation models as well as simulation results concerning the emergence of the four states described in the CAS framework and discusses several ways to improve the accuracy of the simulation models using empirical data collected in real VTs.

Designing virtual organizations? Themes and trends in political and organizational discourses

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the contemporary fascination with seemingly new, benign and transcendent virtual organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper extends Gerlach and Hamilton's investigations and critique into virtuality within the genres of business restructuring and science fiction.

Findings

The paper unravels a purposeful, enveloping consciousness that masks both neo‐liberal fictions and postmodern fantasies dominating the virtual organization discourse. This paper finds that practical examples of de‐physicalized, technologically transcendent virtual organizations, crucial to this virtual consciousness, do not exist or are fundamentally different from expectations. The paper finds that the presumed new epoch of global capitalism, based on the productivity unleashed by virtual organizations, is illusory. The paper concludes that once virtual consciousness is penetrated not only are the material and ideological aspects of virtual organizations unmasked but it is possible to locate a pragmatic, conjoint, physicalized type of “virtualized” organization that is not new, benign or transcendental. This type of co‐destiny, virtual organization (such as terrorist organizations and organized crime), is more reflective of enduring concerns and contemporary purposes fundamental to what organizations make visible or render invisible.

Originality/value

This paper presents an innovative and critical examination of the collusion between neo‐liberal and postmodern thought and the practicalities, or otherwise, of designing virtual organizations. This paper should also be valuable to those concerned with the “virtuality” of terrorist and criminal organizations and the relationship between the visible and invisible aspects of organization.

Making Organisations Virtual: The Hidden Cost of Distributed Teams

This paper reports an exploratory case study that used boundary theory to investigate the impact of organisational virtualisation on work units. Specifically, the research analysed the transition in a public sector organisation from permanent, co-located teams to temporary virtual teams and its impact on team boundary properties and activities. The study contributes to existing knowledge of virtual teams and virtualisation processes in several ways. The findings suggest that, contrary to existing thinking, rather than removing organisational and institutional boundaries, virtualisation increases the number and complexity of such boundaries at the work unit level. The findings also indicate that the chronic lack of knowledge sharing on virtual teams is, in addition to difficulties of establishing interpersonal trust, due to a lack of trust in the technology as an appropriate medium for sensitive knowledge sharing. The implications of the study for practice are that efficiency gains from organisational virtualisation can easily be offset by the need to invest additional resources and team members’ time into cultivating a greater number of transient relationships at a distance. Organisations also need to invest in opportunities for face-to-face interaction where sensitive knowledge sharing is a critical resource for a virtual team.

Workforce Agility: The New Employee Strategy for the Knowledge Economy

The notion of the agile workforce has been discussed as central to creating the agile organization, which achieves superior environmental responsiveness in contexts of turbulence and change. Previous agility research has focused overly on the organization, paying scant attention to the workforce. This paper addresses a significant gap in agility research by reporting on the first empirical study to examine how the pressures of organizational agility impact upon the workforce. Survey evidence from 515 UK organizations is used for eliciting an initial indicator of workforce agility. The data suggest that agile workforces acquire the five capabilities of intelligence, competencies, collaboration, culture and information systems (IS). From an information technology (IT) perspective the determinants of workforce agility are flexible infrastructure platforms that support the rapid introduction of new IS and the enhancement of IT competencies across the entire workforce. The survey also revealed that information and communications technology applications increase workforce agility most when used for collaborative working.