Autonomy and Control? How Heterogeneous Sociomaterial Assemblages Explain Paradoxical Rationalities in the Digital Workplace

Bader, Verena; Kaiser, Stephan

doi:10.5771/0935-9915-2017-3-338

Cited by 36 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(114 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Similarly, our findings on rational distancing, which are grounded in the divergence between algorithmic decisions and human decision logic, suggest that future research in organization studies consider in more detail the role of epistemologies in algorithmic decision-making (Abbasi et al, 2016; Pachidi et al, 2014). On the workplace level, considering the user interface as the site of clashing rationalities could be a fruitful approach to explaining decision-making in organizations (Bader and Kaiser, 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research in this field has analyzed unintended uses or ‘drift’ of new management systems (e.g. Ciborra and Hanseth, 2000), although it neglects the role of technologies as carriers of rationality (Bader and Kaiser, 2017; Cabantous and Gond, 2011). In pursuing our notion of rational distancing, we examine how the user interface builds a site on which decision-makers with different and sometimes opposing decision rationalities meet.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Algorithmic decision-making? The user interface and its role for human involvement in decisions supported by artificial intelligence

Bader

Kaiser

2019

Organization

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Artificial intelligence can provide organizations with prescriptive options for decision-making. Based on the notions of algorithmic decision-making and user involvement, we assess the role of artificial intelligence in workplace decisions. Using a case study on the implementation and use of cognitive software in a telecommunications company, we address how actors can become distanced from or remain involved in decision-making. Our results show that humans are increasingly detached from decision-making spatially as well as temporally and in terms of rational distancing and cognitive displacement. At the same time, they remain attached to decision-making because of accidental and infrastructural proximity, imposed engagement, and affective adhesion. When human and algorithmic intelligence become unbalanced in regard to humans’ attachment to decision-making, three performative effects result: deferred decisions, workarounds, and (data) manipulations. We conceptualize the user interface that presents decisions to humans as a mediator between human detachment and attachment and, thus, between algorithmic and humans’ decisions. These findings contrast the traditional view of automated media as diminishing user involvement and have useful implications for research on artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making in organizations.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithmic decision-making? The user interface and its role for human involvement in decisions supported by artificial intelligence

Bader

Kaiser

2019

Organization

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…So, because usually if we get an anonymous referral, we’d go out and speak to them about it, but I found it easier to get it up and basically read from it, if that makes sense, and then what they agreed with and what they didn’t agree with, I could literally write it in a case note. It was just, I felt it was easier and then it was dealt with, it was done with.While technologies such as information systems are commonly expected to rationalise and standardise practice, this example illustrates how practitioners engage with information systems in diverse contexts, with unpredictable consequences (Bader and Kaiser, 2017). Dominant representations of contemporary social work present recording as separate in time and space from work with families, but here records are being shared and composed with co-present service users.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While technologies such as information systems are commonly expected to rationalise and standardise practice, this example illustrates how practitioners engage with information systems in diverse contexts, with unpredictable consequences (Bader and Kaiser, 2017). Dominant representations of contemporary social work present recording as separate in time and space from work with families, but here records are being shared and composed with co-present service users.…”

Section: Sociomaterials Practices Heterogeneous Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entanglements with offices, information systems, laptops and phones: How agile working is influencing social workers’ interactions with each other and with families

Jeyasingham

2020

Qualitative Social Work

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Agile working (flexibility about where and when practitioners do their work) is increasingly common across public sector social work, but there has been little research about how practitioners engage with it or its impacts on communication between social workers, their colleagues and the families with whom they work. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of a children’s safeguarding social work team in an English local authority who were engaged in agile working. It draws on data from observations, local authority documents, semi-structured interviews, participant research diaries, participants’ photographs and the researcher’s photographs taken during fieldwork. An analytical frame drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s concept of spatial dialectics and Wanda Orlikowski’s concept of sociomateriality is used to identify how agile working involves entanglements of practitioners and families with restructured office spaces, digital information systems and mobile devices such as convertible laptop–tablet computers and mobile phones. Innovations such as these are commonly understood as promoting more effective and transparent social work practice, but the study’s data show that entanglements between workspaces, digital devices and people in practice are having multiple effects, producing new hierarchies of belonging in space, shaping what can be communicated, and the ways it can be presented and received. The article argues for critical attention to the role of material space in digital and place-based innovations in social work practice.

show abstract

“…Whereas many ideas and experiences might be transferable from existing approaches to improve the efficiency and success rate of automation concepts and HCI in production logistics settings, also new insights are required as for example how automation and robotics concepts have to be designed in order to allow for a smooth change management in this specific application field of production logistics and to develop the worker's self-efficacy as outlined in Section 4 [11,17,19,111,112]. This is highly relevant for management practice as there are many projects for further automation steps at the doorsteps in most companies.…”

Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Production logistics and human-computer interaction—state-of-the-art, challenges and requirements for the future

Klumpp¹,

Hesenius

Meyer

et al. 2019

Int J Adv Manuf Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Current concept, development, and testing applications in production concerning Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Industry 4.0 (I40), and Internet of Things (IoT) are mainly addressing fully autonomous systems, fostered by an increase in available technologies regarding distributed decision-making, sensors, and actuators for robotics systems. This is applied also to production logistics settings with a multitude of transport tasks, e.g., between warehousing or material supply stations and production locations within larger production sites as for example in the automotive industry. In most cases, mixed environments where automated systems and humans collaborate (e.g., cobots) are not in the center of analysis and development endeavors although the worker's adoption and acceptance of new technologies are of crucial relevance. From an interdisciplinary research perspective, this constitutes an important research gap, as the future challenges for successful automated systems will rely mainly on human-computer interaction (HCI) in connection with an efficient collaboration between motivated workers, automated robotics, and transportation systems. We develop a HCI efficiency description in production logistics based on an interdisciplinary analysis consisting of three interdependent parts: (i) a production logistics literature review and process study, (ii) a computer science literature review and simulation study for an existing autonomous traffic control algorithm applicable to production logistics Purpose This paper addresses three approaches determined to analyze the crucial role of human interaction in automated environments in production logistics and Industry 4.0 settings. The methods stem from different disciplines as successful automation concepts also have to consider computer science, economics and work science perspectives. Contribution We answer the question of human intuition and its development within a digitalized production logistics setting as well as automated algorithm reaction to human actions from an interdisciplinary perspective. So far, existing research contributions are mainly focusing on technical aspects and automation concepts as solely computer science optimization aspects. However, feasible and sustainable concepts for automated production, e.g., within production transport will only work out if the human factor is included as for a long time to come production environments will be mixed settings of robotics and human workers. Thus, we develop a HCI efficiency description in production logistics for future research and business applications.

show abstract

Autonomy and Control? How Heterogeneous Sociomaterial Assemblages Explain Paradoxical Rationalities in the Digital Workplace

Cited by 36 publications

References 52 publications

Algorithmic decision-making? The user interface and its role for human involvement in decisions supported by artificial intelligence

Algorithmic decision-making? The user interface and its role for human involvement in decisions supported by artificial intelligence

Entanglements with offices, information systems, laptops and phones: How agile working is influencing social workers’ interactions with each other and with families

Production logistics and human-computer interaction—state-of-the-art, challenges and requirements for the future

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About