Organizational Culture, Anthropology of

Krause-Jensen, Jakob; Wright, Susan

doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.12122-1

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…Indeed, Krause-Jensen notes that concerns may be individual or shared, but they do not describe a homogeneous group or view – in fact, those who share a concern may have little in common (Krause-Jensen, 2010: 268). Put differently, ‘concern’ is expressed and acted upon differently across organisations, much like risk assessment (Garsten and Hasselström, 2003; Zaloom, 2004), culture (Krause-Jensen and Wright, 2015; Wright, 1998) or values (Krause-Jensen, 2011). Importantly, concerns can be thought, expressed or acted upon, and therefore they provide a sense of direction in ambiguous fields such as organisations, which are often marked by unresolved questions, doubts and dilemmas in changing environments.…”

Section: Theoretical Framementioning

confidence: 99%

Dislocated dialogue: An anthropological investigation of digitisation among professionals in fire safety

Karsten

2020

Organization

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Like many other industries worldwide, the Danish architecture, engineering and construction industry is currently undergoing digitisation of knowledge, processes and standards. While digitisation promises great improvements in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, not everyone is convinced that digitisation will always lead to the hoped for benefits. In this article, I explore a number of prominent concerns that Danish fire safety professionals have raised with regards to ongoing efforts to digitise their knowledge and expertise. The focus on digitisation is deliberate, as I suggest that scrutinising the implications and concerns raised by professionals in digitisation can help us foresee unintended, potentially dangerous, consequences, of digitalisation. In building on anthropological fieldwork, I argue that professionals are concerned about digitising fire safety, and its potentially dark results, because they worry that digitisation may dislocate ‘mētis’ from ‘techne’, and that digital outputs may be misunderstood or not applied correctly. Such a turn of events could lead not just to material losses (e.g. destroyed buildings), but to the loss of human lives too. This ‘ concern’ with life and death thus appears to underpin the fire safety professionals’ belief in the importance of dialogue in organizationally complex circumstances, and their hesitance to engage with digitisation. On this basis, I propose that by shifting from a resistance and apprehension framework to a concern and dialogue framework, we may be able to foster more empathetic, productive and understanding collaborations within and across organisations during both digitisation and digitalisation.

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