Designing Technology, Work, Organizations and Vice Versa - Hardcover

Bruni, Attila

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1622730283 ISBN 13: 9781622730285

Publisher: Vernon Press, 2016

Synopsis

The concept of design has been defined in a multitude of ways and used in a variety of academic fields, ranging from the classics of organizational and system design to studies on corporate culture, aesthetics and consumption. However, in mainstream organization and management studies, the concept of design has been 'black-boxed' and easily implied as an updated (and more fashionable) version of the traditional idea of structuring organizational processes. At the same time, working and organizing seem to be embedded nowadays in increasingly complex and situated technologies and practices. If the spreading of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has changed workplaces (and even the very meaning of 'workplace' as an area marked by the physical presence of different human actors), working and organizing mobilizes the joint action of humans, technologies and knowledges. The aim of the book is thus to discuss the relations among technologies, work and organisations from multiple theoretical perspectives and to engage with questions about design as well as the sociomaterial foundations of working and organising. The book focuses on the close study of practices and processes that inextricably link work and organisation to the use of artefacts and technological systems (and vice versa), exploring by means of different cases of organizational and design research articulations and disarticulations of daily work and design; the doing of objects and technologies in everyday organizational life; the reconstruction of organizational processes through technological and design practices; the relation between learning, innovations and technologies in organizational settings. The book is addressed to graduate students, PhDs, scholars and researchers interested in the fields of Organization Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology and Design, as well as to professionals and practitioners interested in new methodological approaches towards the relations between technology, work and organization.

About this title

Review

" [...] the product of competent scholarship [...] an original approach and a smooth way of presenting a difficult argument on a topic at the frontier of several disciplinary interests." Silvia Gherardi, University of Trento " This edited collection of ethnographic essays uses the theme of design to explore how technologies, work, and organizations interact with each other. Taking the post-humanistic shift seriously, the essays attempt to show what happens when in technologically dense environments we remove the human from the center of the design process and focus instead upon the materials, practices, technologies and organizations with which designers and design teams interact. The result is a fascinating process of configuration and reconfiguration which provides a fractal gaze into the minutiae of practices, work routines, and organizations which are constantly entangled with each other. The case studies, as one might expect, are wonderfully diverse including studies of hospitals, Italian furniture design, science museums, and the practices involved in designing a new video game. This work is theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich and will appeal to scholars in Science and Technology Studies and Organizational Studies and all those interested in work practices and design." Trevor Pinch, Goldwin Smith Professor of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University

About the Author

Attila Bruni is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento, where he teaches Sociology of Technological Phenomena and Sociology of Organizations. He is a passionate ethnographer and his main research interests concern intersections between working, organizing and technological phenomena.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vernon Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1622730283
• ISBN 13: 9781622730285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 538