{"title":"“Keeping the Queen’s Peace”: A Sociomaterial Study of Police and Guns in a “Mangle of Risk”","authors":"Amy L. Fraher , Shireen Kanji , Layla J. Branicki","doi":"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2024.100513","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This sociomaterial study analyzes the ways that material agency plays a key role in the organizing dynamics of risky work through a study of the carrying and use of handguns by U.S. and U.K. police officers. Qualitative data (interviews and focus groups) were collected over a three-year period with police (<em>N</em> = 61) in New York, where officers routinely carry guns, and in London, where they typically do not. Police unanimously describe the agentic role non-human artefacts like guns play in: a) framing their cognitive processes, b) influencing their behaviour and decision-making processes, and c) impacting individuals around them. Expanding Pickering's theorization of a <em>mangle of practice,</em> we inductively develop a <em>mangle of risk</em> to explain how human and non-human agency become entangled in risky work contexts, where danger is real and time pressure is high. Understanding these dynamics requires analysis of both frontline police narratives and the prescribed organizational policies, procedures, and routines intended to contain risky situations. Findings reveal that the tools provided to police to do their job both frame and constrain operational capabilities, potentially escalating danger for police, suspects, and the community in a <em>mangle of risk</em>.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47253,"journal":{"name":"Information and Organization","volume":"34 2","pages":"Article 100513"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information and Organization","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772724000137","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This sociomaterial study analyzes the ways that material agency plays a key role in the organizing dynamics of risky work through a study of the carrying and use of handguns by U.S. and U.K. police officers. Qualitative data (interviews and focus groups) were collected over a three-year period with police (N = 61) in New York, where officers routinely carry guns, and in London, where they typically do not. Police unanimously describe the agentic role non-human artefacts like guns play in: a) framing their cognitive processes, b) influencing their behaviour and decision-making processes, and c) impacting individuals around them. Expanding Pickering's theorization of a mangle of practice, we inductively develop a mangle of risk to explain how human and non-human agency become entangled in risky work contexts, where danger is real and time pressure is high. Understanding these dynamics requires analysis of both frontline police narratives and the prescribed organizational policies, procedures, and routines intended to contain risky situations. Findings reveal that the tools provided to police to do their job both frame and constrain operational capabilities, potentially escalating danger for police, suspects, and the community in a mangle of risk.
期刊介绍:
Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.