Don’t throw rocks from the side-lines

Abstract

Word count = 9,107 excluding references Abstract PurposeSocial media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually-constituted performance of the material and social. Design/methodology/approachThe aim of our research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, we adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is our use of data released under a Freedom of Information request. FindingsWe present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. We draw on literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually-constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. We also invoke the notion of 'extended chains of intra-action' to theorise changes in the wider organization. 2 Originality/valueAdoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming, challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific materialdiscursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.

Towards Team-Centered Informatics: Accelerating Innovation in Multidisciplinary Scientific Teams Through Visual Analytics

“…However, the data representation and its content evolved through several intermediate states using representation shifts (table, network, heatmap with dendrogram), representation transformations (circular network, force-directed network, layered network with clusters, layered network with significant clinical variables), and content modifications (raw table values, normalized table values, clusters, significance) driven by feedback from different team members, and leading to emergent representations and insights. Therefore, similar to results reported by other studies on computational boundary objects discussed earlier (Daniel et al, 2017;Taylor, 2007), the boundary object was not a static object, but rather one that evolved having its own emergent states, in addition to having emergent effects on team dynamics. However, in contrast to previous studies where the boundary object was reported as changing mainly in content (e.g., text changes in a blog, graphical additions to a 3D model), here we observe that the boundary object in addition to changing in content, also changed in representation by shifting and transforming.…”

“…While several studies have analyzed computational boundary objects, they have primarily focused on the macro impact such boundary objects have had on an organization. For example, the introduction of anonymous blogs into an organization empowered employees to make candid recommendations on how to improve operations (Daniel, Hartnett, & Meadows, 2017). Because many of these recommendations from employees were implemented by the management, the evolving content of the blog revealed a shift in the organizational boundaries related to decision making.…”

The Digitalised Terrorism Ecology: A Systems Perspective

“…In Figure 3, we see, from a problem-structuring perspective, the pervasive role of digital technology in human systems-a finding that resonates with the sociomateriality literature (see Cecez-Kecmanovic et al, 2014), and with how technology affordances and capabilities play a critical role in agency (Weißenfels, Ebner, Dittes, & Smolnik, 2016). For instance, Daniel, Hartnett, and Meadows (2017) forcefully argue that social media's democratising affordances are evident in the transformation of power structures from top-down to much more bottom-up power. With increased online access to information, terrorists can develop counter-strategies to governments' counter-terrorism efforts.…”