28.01.2020; Vortragsreihe
Jan Recker (Universität Köln) - Process Theorizing with Digital Trace Data: Involving Artifacts, Involving Context
Abstract:
Process research in organizational scholarship tries to “catch reality in flight” by examining behavior within and between organizations through the lens of context, activity and outcomes that unfold over time, asking questions of what, who, where, why, when and how. However, for the most part, process scholarship has reduced this focus to activity sequences alone, largely overlooking context; and asked questions of who, when and how, foregoing questions such as what, where, why and with which tool?
The advent of ubiquitous computing and digital infrastructure has now changed the setting of process scholarship. Because processes, practices and routines increasingly leave digital traces, new possibilities emerge to study processual phenomena in context. At the same time, a need arises to pay more attention to the role of technology as a source of material agency within these processes.
I will present several elements of our research program over the past six years that builds on the idea of formalizing processes as event network graphs, and which extends this model to incorporate technological artefacts and other contextual elements on an equal footing. I will use data from call centers and dermatology clinics to demonstrate our new ideas on process theorizing with digital trace data on basis of what we call affordance networks.