Open Workshop: Artefacts of work as structures for (digital) coordination in distributed settings
Friday, February 15, 2019, 15:00 – 17:00
SSE Riga, Room 303
The aim of the Open Workshop Series in Business and Management Studies is to promote top-quality academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences. This is a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and networking with local and international community members.
Speaker: Dr Dmitrijs Kravcenko, University of Sussex Business School, UK
Coordinating, managing and executing work projects in complex settings can be a daunting task for any organization. That being said, businesses that are structured around projects and engage in knowledge-intensive work have is especially tough. On the one hand, proliferation of increasingly sophisticated information communication technologies (ICT’s) enables such organizations access to expertise, resources and capabilities in ways not previously possible. However, on the other hand, increasing digitization often brings with it increasing distribution, with professionals finding themselves spread further apart and increasingly reliant on ICT’s to perform even the most basic work functions such as sharing of documents. How does reliance on technology for collaboration affect work? Do ICT’s deliver on the lauded flexibility or are they restricting what individuals could otherwise be doing? How do professionals adapt to new collaborative ICT’s and what happens to the ‘old ways’ of doing the work once technological innovations are introduced?
In this presentation, we will consider the case of architecture and construction – an old, institutionalised industry predicated on project-based, cross-discipline expert collaboration. Drawing on data from a 15-month ethnographic study of an architecture firm in the UK, we will explore the role that artefacts of work play in the coordination of work. Specifically, I will demonstrate how certain artefacts of work guide the development and performance of power hierarchies and communication sequences between architects, various engineers, construction, suppliers, and the client; as well as what happens to coordination of work when these hierarchies and sequences are not followed.
As barriers to the adoption of more sophisticated technologies by organizations are steadily reducing, it is important to recognize the different ways in which any radical change to the way work is performed will affect patterns of interpersonal and interprofessional relations. Technological change, where technology is adopted as a blanket solution, has been shown to have a low success rate due to either rejection by users or mismatch with the issues it was intended to address. In addition to this, my work on the structures of coordination complexifies the picture by suggesting that certain ways of performing work actually become embedded within particular artefacts of work.
Dr Dmitrijs Kravcenko is Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the University of Sussex Business School; previously at Warwick Business School. He is an expert in knowledge management, complex collaboration, and organisation theory. Dmitrijs has worked on large research projects in the public sector (healthcare) and private sectors (architecture and construction), as well as at the policy development level. He has commercial experience in management consulting, publishing, and digital platform development. He is an executive board member of the Organisational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities community of scholars, an Associate Fellow at the Innovation, Knowledge and Organisational Network Research Unit at the Warwick Business School, and a creator and host of the popular Talking About Organizations Podcast.
Discussion moderated by Dr. Arnis Sauka.
Attendance is free of charge.
Please sign up for the seminar, writing to arnis.sauka@sseriga.edu by February 13, 2019.
The aim of the SSE Riga Open Workshop Series is to:
- Foster cooperation between business and management researchers, practitioners and policy makers, as well as
- To promote academic and applied research in various fields of the social sciences, focusing on but not limited to entrepreneurship, marketing, management, public administration and strategy.
Organised by the Centre for Sustainable Business at SSE Riga in cooperation with Representation of the European Commission in Latvia.