Sociomateriality

Sociomateriality offers a novel way to study technology at the workplace, as it allows researchers to study the social and the material at the same time. It was introduced after legacies of contingency theory and structuration theory had characterised the field of Information System research in Management Studies.

Early papers by Wanda Orlikowski feature structuration theory[1] and practice theory.[2] However, the key papers for sociomateriality stem from the later work of Orlikowski in collaboration with Susan Scott.[3][4][5] The concept adopted the focus on relations from Latour's [6] and Law's [7] actor-network theory (ANT) and further opposes the Kantian dualism of subject and object drawing on Barad's [8][9] and Suchman's [10] feminist studies. Drawing on Barad, sociomateriality proposes the concept of agential realism. Key aspects of sociomateriality are according to Matthew Jones [11] a relational understanding of the world, the observation of day-to-day technology use at the workplace during practices and the inextricability and inseparability of the social and the material.

Human actors and technological objects are understood to emerge in sociomaterial assemblages. Those assemblages are the results of agential cuts, which transform the boundary objects into temporally stabilised agencies. Sociomateriality draws on actor-network theory and feminist studies. Traditionally concepts to study technology use at the workplace were adopted from advancements in philosophy and sociology, such as contingency theory, structuration theory and actor-network theory. However sociomateriality is the first concept to be developed inside the field of Information System (IS) studies inside management and organization theory. It has been argued that sociomateriality is "the new black" of IS.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Orlikowski, Wanda J. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science (3)3, pp. 398–427.
  2. ↑ Orlikowski, Wanda J. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures: A practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, (11)4, pp. 404–428.
  3. ↑ Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work. Organization Studies (28)9, pp. 1435-1448.
  4. ↑ Orlikowski, W. J. (2010). The Sociomateriality of Organizational Life: Considering Technology in Management Research. Cambridge Journal of Economics (34)1, pp. 125-141.
  5. ↑ Orlikowski, W. J., and Scott, S. V. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization. The Academy of Management Annals (2)1, pp. 433-474.
  6. ↑ Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  7. ↑ Law, J. (1992). Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity. Systems Practice 5(4), pp. 379-393.
  8. ↑ Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (28)3, pp. 801-831.
  9. ↑ Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  10. ↑ Suchman, L. (2007). Feminist STS and the Sciences of the Artificial. In: New Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. MIT Press.
  11. ↑ Jones (2014). A matter of life and death. exploring conceptualizations of sociomateriality in the context of critical care. MIS Quarterly, 38(3).
  12. ↑ Arzabkowski, Paula J; Pinch, Trevor (2013). "Sociomateriality is 'the New Black': accomplishing repurposing, reinscripting and repairing in context". M@n@gement. 16 (5). Retrieved 23 October 2016.
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