The Work of Technologies & Technologies at Work: Implications for Organizing, Managing & Innovating

Questions associated with the implications of new technologies at work have grown and led to new theorizing in multiple domains of inquiry in management. Technologies such as the Internet of Things, robots or analytics software for instance have the potential to transform radically how we work and require scholars of work and organizations to make sense of these transformations. Recent theoretical developments have started to explain our entangled and imbricated relationship with technological artefacts that draw on Science and Technology Studies and more mainstream management literature. This symposium is about taking stock of and extending theoretical concepts and ideas to clarify and elucidate the complicated relationship we have with algorithms, technology and software more generally. Each of the presenters will bring their perspective on materiality, material agency, affordances and algorithmic agency to discuss the overlaps in a) ontology, b) epistemology, c) and agential movements. Empirical data as well as theoretical concepts will be discussed to negotiate the differences and overlaps between ideas of entanglement, imbrication, affordances and agential movements with the aim of furthering the conceptualization of the relationships between technology at work and organizing, managing, and innovating.