Algorithms and Organizing

Abstract

Algorithms are a ubiquitous part of organizations as they enable, guide, and restrict organizing at the level of everyday interactions. This essay focuses on algorithms and organizing by reviewing the literature on algorithms in organizations, examining the viewpoint of relationality and relational agency on algorithms and organizing, exploring the properties of algorithms, and concluding what these mean from an organizational communication viewpoint. Algorithms need data to be collected. The data are always biased, and algorithms exclude everything that is not in their code. They define what is seen as important. Their operating principles are opaque, and they are political due to human interference. Algorithms are not just used. Rather, they are co-actors in organizing. We argue that algorithms demand rethinking communication in the communicative constitution of organizations and call for more empirical research emphasizing the properties of algorithms, the relationality of algorithms, and the temporality of the materialization of algorithms.

Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: An HCR Special Issue

“…The special issue features work on AI in a variety of contexts. Topics involve persuasion (Dehnert and Mongeau, 2022), personal relationships (Brandtzaeg et al, 2022), and organizational communication (Endacott and Leonardi, 2022; Laapotti and Raappana, 2022) as well as partisan news coverage about health topics (Duan et al, 2022). A variety of methods were employed in these studies such as experiments (Banas et al, 2022), computational methods (Duan et al, 2022), and ethnographic interviewing and observation (Endacott and Leonardi, 2022).…”