{"title":"分布式观察:算法和工作场所的重新配置,一个“自动化”交易的案例","authors":"Thijs Willems , Ella Hafermalz","doi":"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100376","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies structuring how work gets done. Algorithms in particular are fundamental for such technologies. Management literature on digital transformation has studied how algorithms either automate or augment work. In doing so, this literature treats algorithms as largely independent from existing work practices. This paper, on the contrary, theorizes and empirically illustrates how algorithms transform the workplace in a spatiotemporal sense by introducing a new epistemic vantage point through which work is understood. We do so by drawing on previous work on reconfiguration and ‘Ways of Seeing’, and through a qualitative case study on sports trading. Our analysis shows that traders and algorithms each perceive and see the market in specific, though incomplete ways. Since this market is partly virtual and constituted via a range of heterogeneous actors, ‘seeing’ the market entails knowing its distributed nature and pulling spatiotemporal distant elements together. Our paper contributes to the literature on the effects of algorithms on work by putting forward the conceptual lens of ‘distributed seeing’. This highlights that digital transformation is more than an instrumental optimization process by automating or augmenting tasks with technology but that it actively reconfigures the work to be done. We show that digital transformation 1) is reciprocal and thus irreversible; 2) patchworked and thus requires mending work; 3) introduces new organizational vulnerabilities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47253,"journal":{"name":"Information and Organization","volume":"31 4","pages":"Article 100376"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Distributed seeing: Algorithms and the reconfiguration of the workplace, a case of 'automated' trading\",\"authors\":\"Thijs Willems , Ella Hafermalz\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100376\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<div><p>Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies structuring how work gets done. Algorithms in particular are fundamental for such technologies. Management literature on digital transformation has studied how algorithms either automate or augment work. In doing so, this literature treats algorithms as largely independent from existing work practices. This paper, on the contrary, theorizes and empirically illustrates how algorithms transform the workplace in a spatiotemporal sense by introducing a new epistemic vantage point through which work is understood. We do so by drawing on previous work on reconfiguration and ‘Ways of Seeing’, and through a qualitative case study on sports trading. Our analysis shows that traders and algorithms each perceive and see the market in specific, though incomplete ways. Since this market is partly virtual and constituted via a range of heterogeneous actors, ‘seeing’ the market entails knowing its distributed nature and pulling spatiotemporal distant elements together. Our paper contributes to the literature on the effects of algorithms on work by putting forward the conceptual lens of ‘distributed seeing’. This highlights that digital transformation is more than an instrumental optimization process by automating or augmenting tasks with technology but that it actively reconfigures the work to be done. We show that digital transformation 1) is reciprocal and thus irreversible; 2) patchworked and thus requires mending work; 3) introduces new organizational vulnerabilities.</p></div>\",\"PeriodicalId\":47253,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Information and Organization\",\"volume\":\"31 4\",\"pages\":\"Article 100376\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":5.7000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-12-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"2\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Information and Organization\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"91\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772721000427\",\"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}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Information and Organization","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772721000427","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}
Distributed seeing: Algorithms and the reconfiguration of the workplace, a case of 'automated' trading
Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies structuring how work gets done. Algorithms in particular are fundamental for such technologies. Management literature on digital transformation has studied how algorithms either automate or augment work. In doing so, this literature treats algorithms as largely independent from existing work practices. This paper, on the contrary, theorizes and empirically illustrates how algorithms transform the workplace in a spatiotemporal sense by introducing a new epistemic vantage point through which work is understood. We do so by drawing on previous work on reconfiguration and ‘Ways of Seeing’, and through a qualitative case study on sports trading. Our analysis shows that traders and algorithms each perceive and see the market in specific, though incomplete ways. Since this market is partly virtual and constituted via a range of heterogeneous actors, ‘seeing’ the market entails knowing its distributed nature and pulling spatiotemporal distant elements together. Our paper contributes to the literature on the effects of algorithms on work by putting forward the conceptual lens of ‘distributed seeing’. This highlights that digital transformation is more than an instrumental optimization process by automating or augmenting tasks with technology but that it actively reconfigures the work to be done. We show that digital transformation 1) is reciprocal and thus irreversible; 2) patchworked and thus requires mending work; 3) introduces new organizational vulnerabilities.
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.