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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Politics Of Sociotechnical Intervention: An Interactionist View, Karin Garrety, R Badham
The Politics Of Sociotechnical Intervention: An Interactionist View, Karin Garrety, R Badham
Karin Garrety
In this article, we apply concepts from symbolic interactionism - a well-established tradition of interpretivist sociology - to investigate the social and political processes involved in a sociotechnical intervention. The intervention was designed to elicit operator involvement in an experimental trial of an advanced manufacturing system at an industrial site in Australia. The interactionist concepts of social worlds, boundary objects and trajectories are used to explore the interrelationships among the theoretical, practical and contextual elements of intervention. We believe that these concepts are flexible intellectual resources that can extend and enrich our understanding of the politics involved in the shaping …
Humanistic Redesign And Technological Politics In Organizations, R. Badham, Karin Garrety, Christina Kirsch
Humanistic Redesign And Technological Politics In Organizations, R. Badham, Karin Garrety, Christina Kirsch
Karin Garrety
The political nature of technology design and implementation is explicitly addressed in human centered projects to introduce technologies that support job enrichment, group autonomy and industrial democracy. Yet the political meaning of such projects does not simply manifest itself in pure form from the methods employed or the intentions of the humanistic actors but, rather, from the complex configuration of these and other factors present in the design and implementation context. This paper illustrates this theme in an analysis of a case study human centered project. It argues that an improved understanding of the configurational politics surrounding such projects is …
Rebels Without Applause: Time, Politics And Irony In Action Research, R J. Badham, Karin Garrety, M. Zanko
Rebels Without Applause: Time, Politics And Irony In Action Research, R J. Badham, Karin Garrety, M. Zanko
Karin Garrety
Purpose of this paper: This paper seeks to raise for discussion and reflection some of the key dynamics of action research projects-in-practice. It focuses in particular on how action researchers broker academic and client interests, and how this brokering shifts over time. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on participant observation, drawing on the reflective and processual accounts of action researchers involved in a collaborative academic-industry-government project. Findings: The paper argues that the scope of action research projects to effectively address the needs of both audiences is compromised by managerialism in universities and organizations. However, the emergent and chaotic nature of …