Knowledge, Decisions, and Norms: A Framework for Studying the Structuration of Spreadsheets in Social Organizations

This article applies Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration to analyze how digital spreadsheet technologies both produce and are the products of structures that reinforce and transform the institutionalized routine practices of workers in social organizations from which the effects of power flow. Specifically, it identifies the built-in capabilities and features of spreadsheet applications that are reconfigured to embed organizational structures within them. A framework is proposed to explain the ways spreadsheets are assembled to embody three general forms of modalities central to Structuration Theory: (1) interpretive schemes, (2) facilities, and (3) norms. The proposed framework characterizes specific spreadsheet properties by their roles in enabling how these structural modalities construct realities with digital information that predetermine organizational thinking and doing. Illustrations of spreadsheets-in-practice are given as evidence of how digital spreadsheets reinforce and change organizational structures through their widespread diffusion and use.

Caring for Computers: The Hidden Work of Clinical Nurses during the Introduction of Health Information Systems in a Teaching Hospital in Taiwan

Implementing health information systems for enhancing patient care and management occurs worldwide. Discovering how nurses, as important system end-users, experience technology-reliant clinical practice involved focus groups (n = 25) and in-depth individual interviews with nurses (n = 4) and informatics staff (n = 3) in a major Taiwanese medical center. This qualitative study explores the unintended effects of these systems on nurses’ role and clinical practice. First, nurses’ additional role caring for computer devices supporting patient care involves highly-demanding invisible effort, especially when tackling system malfunctions affecting patients with urgent conditions. Second, nurses are resourceful in developing solutions to protect patients during unexpected technical malfunctions. Third, troubleshooting using telephone technical support as the first resort is problematic. It is argued that computerization requires nurses to care for co-clients: patients and computers. Managing technical malfunctions is an unintended consequence for nurses, reflecting the hidden work required by new technology.

Strategic enablement investments: Exploring differences in human and technological knowledge transfers to supply chain partners

Business-to-business firms have a long history of investing in training their supply chain partners using primarily salespeople. However, advances in technology now allow for elements of sales enablement programs to be automated and run without human involvement. This paper examines how human and technology enablers are suited to transfer tacit and explicit knowledge respectively. It constructs a strategic enablement investment framework that, depending on the mix of investments in human or technology enablers, results in four types of learning environments: self-directed, collaborative, adaptive, and complex. We close by discussing the implications for future research and offer guidance for industrial marketing managers.

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Strategic enablement involves the transfer of a firm's knowledge to their partners.

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Tacit (explicit) knowledge is best transferred using human (technology) enablers.

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Enablement investments in human vs technology lead to diverse learning environments.

Classifying emerging knowledge sharing practices and some insights into antecedents to social networking: a case in insurance

Purpose

The paper aims to explore a case of early adoption of the use of social media tools for the purposes of knowledge and information sharing across a supply chain in the UK home insurance market.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology used includes genre and content analysis to analyze empirical data from blogs and posts via a customized social extranet [Engaging in Knowledge Networking via an interactive 3D Social Supplier Network (KNOWLEDGE NETWORK)] involving 130 users over a 13-month period.

Findings

The results uncover a set of emerging practices which support both information and knowledge exchange, but which are mainly driven by organizational factors such as buyer power and supplier competitive influencing.

Research limitations/implications

This study has contributed an overall conceptual understanding of reasons behind social media adoption by identifying organizational attributes of buyer power and supplier influence as key antecedents to knowledge sharing within a supply chain.

Originality/value

This paper builds on current thinking in social media theory by providing a window into organizational and supply chain attributes that can explain social media adoption within the context of knowledge sharing supply chains. A systematic classification of user posts over an extended period enabled this work to illuminate not only emerging knowledge sharing practices across a buyer-led supply chain but also the effects of buyer power on users in an online community.

Communicating virtually in a global organization

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which changes in communication media are associated with changes in the nature of manager-expatriate employee communications. Using an affordance lens, the authors explore how hierarchical level and communication medium interact to influence status dynamics manifested in communication attributes.

Design/methodology/approach

– The hypothesis was tested with a 2 (hierarchical level)×3 (communication media) multivariate analysis of covariance (experience level) in a sample of 1,193 messages that were transmitted between managers and field employees in a global organization over a ten year period.

Findings

– The authors found significant interaction effects between communication media and hierarchical level on communication attributes such that changes in communication media intensified status differences between managers and their employees.

Research limitations/implications

– Communications media may be appropriated differently depending on one’s hierarchical level.

Practical implications

– Managers should adopt new communication media more consciously given their potential influence of how people communicate.

Originality/value

– Unlike many computer-mediated communications (CMC) effects studies that compare face-to-face communications with CMC or employ self-report questionnaires or laboratory designs with student samples, this study examines a complete set of manager-employee communications over an extended period of time.

More than meets the eye: working around technology in cross-boundary work contexts

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia.

Design/methodology/approach

– Case study methodology involving semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observations, and archival records was utilized in the study. Interview subjects include management staff, general employees, and information technology (IT) specialists to provide rich descriptions of their work practice.

Findings

– Three distinct contexts contribute to cross-boundary work practice in relation to IT use and non-use, namely, standardization (complete IT use), hybridization (partial IT use), and conventionalization (zero IT use). Technology enactment strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, adaptation, and configuration are employed depending on actors’ interpretation of technology complexity and task interdependency.

Practical implications

– Early interventions could involve examining how and why employees accept or avoid technology as part of their work practice and how they switch between enactment strategies. Organizations could ensure better team support to capitalize on the robust social interaction in cross-boundary work contexts to develop greater synergy in technology improvisations.

Originality/value

– The study extends the technology enactment perspective as it offers new meanings to structures of action by understanding the temporal agentic orientations and how these are constructed by cross-boundary work contexts. It also offers insight into how enactment strategies are developed according to the productive tensions that arise from the interplay of cognitive orientations.

Wittgenstein e a administração: potencialidades da pragmática da linguagem aos estudos organizacionais e à estratégia

Motivado pelos trabalhos de Mantere (2010), Mattos (2003a), e Schatzki (1996), o ensaio visa discutir quais as potencialidades que a noção wittgensteiniana de jogos de linguagem oferece para os Estudos Organizacionais (EOs) e para os estudos em Estratégia Organizacional (particularmente na vertente da Estratégia como Prática). Para isso: (a) explica-se a noção de jogos de linguagem, central na pragmática da linguagem do período maduro da filosofia de Wittgenstein; (b) analisam-se ideias dessa pragmática já versadas para a Administração, com ênfase particular a temas dos EOs e ao strategizing organizacional; e (c) enunciam-se as possibilidades analíticas e explicativas vislumbradas às áreas.

The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication

This paper examines the pervasive role of Microsoft’s presentation software PowerPoint as a genre of professional and organizational communication. Frequently, PowerPoint is not only used for the primary function it was initially designed for, i.e., facilitating live presentations, but also for alternative purposes such as project documentation. Its application in a neighboring domain, however, poses a functional dilemma: does the PowerPoint genre preserve the features of its primary function, i.e., presentation, or rather adapt to the new function, i.e., documentation? By drawing on a communication-centered perspective, this paper examines PowerPoint’s role in the domain of project documentation as a clash between the constitutive affordances of professional and of organizational communication. To investigate this issue empirically, I conducted a case study at a multinational business consulting firm. The study allows identification of three distinct PowerPoint subgenres, which differ in how they adapt to the function of project documentation. This paper contributes to organization studies by specifying the boundary conditions under which a genre of professional communication such as PowerPoint can be expected to maintain its genre-inherent characteristics even in the face of contradictory organizational requirements and to impose these characteristics on a neighboring domain of organizational communication practices.

Managing meta‐learning in offshore software development environments

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current glocal (global and local) environment to answer the following research questions: How does the glocal environment influence software exporting industries in India? How is the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals and teams assimilated into organizational knowledge repositories? What management practices have been learnt and applied for advancement of knowledge portfolios in the offshore software business market?

Design/methodology/approach

An interpretivist research design is used to gain insights into organizational learning processes adopted by offshore software vendors for assimilating evolving knowledge into knowledge repositories.

Findings

This paper describes the influence of the current glocal environment on software exporting industries in India and presents a model for organizational learning to assimilate knowledge and build effective representations of emerging knowledge artifacts. The authors employ the concept of meta‐learning (or “learning about learning”) to analyze the recursive nature of organizational learning processes.

Practical Implications

The proposed model of meta‐learning explains how software organizations build on individual and team competencies to build core competencies. The model helps us to understand how organizations advance their learning processes and upgrade their knowledge repositories.

Originality/value

The paper offers new perspectives on how organizations reflexively monitor their knowledge processes to advance their knowledge portfolios. It identifies adhocratic and bureaucratic management processes for assimilating the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals into organizational knowledge repositories. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that emphasizes ongoing learning from individual to collective level in the knowledge industry sector.

Communication Genres for Dispersed Real-Time Collaboration (RTC)

In this paper, the author examines RTC and its implications on people’s lives. This paper analyzes the production and reproduction of presence and awareness through (RTC-mediated) communication genres. Specifically, the author argues that presence and awareness are two interrelated concepts. Four communication genres are presented, which people intentionally or unintentionally draw on in dispersed settings to create awareness. Furthermore, presence, understood as a person’s sensation of being perceived by others in whatever he or she is doing, is influenced by the information imparted through communication genres. The author argues that the sensation of presence shapes the characteristics of communication genres and that RTC technology modifies existing or enables new communicative practices. Consequently, emerging RTC technologies may affect the sensation of presence in dispersed settings. The line of argument is developed by presenting the working conditions and communication practices of a university professor, working on several projects with both dispersed and co-located colleagues.

Managing Knowledge Transfer in Offshore Software Development

The aim of this article is to examine the role of copresent interaction and the extent to which this can be supplanted by information and communication technology-based interaction for managing knowledge transferin distributed settings. This study draws on two case studies of small UK firms sourcing software development from India and Bangladesh. Using Nonaka and Konno’s knowledge creation theory, the role of copresent and ICT-based interactions in managing knowledge transfer is explained. The article contributes an extension of the concepts of knowledge creation theory by providing evidence of the role of copresent and ICT-based interaction for knowledge transfer in the context of offshore software development.

The Validity of the Improvisation Argument in the Implementation of Rigid technology: The Case of ERP systems

Claudio Ciborra's improvisation argument provides a realistic dynamic account of how organisational practices address technology. This was developed from the study of malleable open-ended technology, but little research has occurred to investigate the theory's validity within different settings. This paper seeks to address this gap, by examining improvisation in the context of a rigid highly structured technology. It presents findings from the successful implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system within a large international organisation, which was subsequently defined by the ERP vendor as being an ‘exemplary site’. Through the theoretical lens of Actor Network Theory, the paper reveals the improvisation, enactments and constant work around the plan that took place in dealing with the high contingencies of ERP implementation. The study extends the discussion on improvisation and contributes to an already illuminating argument. It invites practitioners to reflect on ERP implementation practice and review their evaluation methods.

Understanding intranets in the context of end-user computing

In this paper, we examine the adoption and use of organizational intranets as an extension of the end-user computing movement. This perspective provides a background against which the rapid proliferation of organizational intranets in the 1990s can be compared and contrasted with the explosion of personal computers and end-user computing in the 1980s. Our retrospective analysis of end-user computing is based on academic and business journal literature. Our contemporary analysis of intranet development and use relies on data from a large-scale study of intranets in US firms. We examine similarities with early EUC efforts, such as the initial grass-roots, multiple adoption of PC technologies, that were followed by efforts to standardize and integrate technological "islands." We also highlight ways in which organizational experiences with intranets may diverge from earlier EUC experiences. Our discussion of these organizational experiences and practices draws on institutional theory to understand how and why organizational adoption and use of information technologies may differ from those of the past in important ways that require rethinking of current practices. In particular, we focus on the issues related to intranet integration and to the evolving roles of intranet end-users and IT professionals.

Genre taxonomy

We propose a genre taxonomy as a knowledge repository of communicative structures or "typified actions" enacted by organizational members. The genre taxonomy is intended to help people make sense of diverse types of communicative actions and provide ideas for improving work processes that coordinate the communication of information. It engages several features to achieve this objective. First, the genre taxonomy represents the elements of both genres and genre systems as embedded in a social context reflecting the communicative questions why, what, who, when, where, and how (5W1H). In other words, the genre taxonomy represents the purpose, content, participants, timing, location, and form of communicative action. Second, the genre taxonomy distinguishes between widely recognized genres such as a report and specific genres such as a particular company's technical report, because the difference sheds light on the context of genre use. Third, the genre taxonomy represents use and evolution of a genre over time to help people understand how a genre is used and changed by a community over time. Fourth, the genre taxonomy represents aspects of information coordination via genres, thus providing ideas for improving work processes using genres. We have constructed a prototype of such a genre taxonomy using the Process Handbook, a process knowledge repository developed at MIT. We have included both widely recognized genres such as the memo and specific genres such as those used in the Process Handbook itself. We suggest that this genre taxonomy may be useful in the innovation of new document templates or methods for communication because it helps to clarify different possible uses of similar genres and explicates how genres play a coordination role among people and between people and their tasks.

A meta-communication model for structuring intercultural communication action patterns

This paper presents a meta-communication model for discursive construction of communication action patterns that may be part of an information system which supports communication and cooperation in virtual intercultural communities. The paper also provides a brief review of previous ideas on meta-communication from the language action perspective.