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Exploring The Temporal Nature Of Sociomateriality From A Work System Perspective, Steven Alter
Exploring The Temporal Nature Of Sociomateriality From A Work System Perspective, Steven Alter
Steven Alter
This paper uses work system theory (WST) to explore the temporal nature of sociomateriality. It summarizes concepts related to WST and sociomateriality, and notes sociomaterial aspects of WST. It uses static and dynamic views of a work system toexamine six examples that can be classified in one of three time frames, minutes-to-hours, days-to-weeks, and months-to years. The result is a straightforward interpretation of systems and related events across all of the time frames, which exhibit different types of phenomena related to adaptations, workarounds, emergence of informal work patterns, and sequences of formal projects. After approaching sociomateriality from a perspective not …
Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter
Reconciling The Social/Human And Technical/Material In Is Research Without Trying Too Hard, Steven Alter
Steven Alter
This contribution to the SIGPHIL workshop on reconciling the social and technical in IS research proposes a sociotechnical approach that addresses many issues related to the long-standing duality of the social/human versus the technical/material. It shows that a sociotechnical approach based on work system concepts 1) highlights and potentially bypasses extremely basic ontological stumbling blocks in IS research, 2) incorporates many of the topics and concerns of the original sociotechnical school, 3) illuminates issues related to the duality of the social/human versus the technical/material, and 4) addresses these topics using concepts and terminology that are much easier to understand than …