Nick Berente James Gaskin Kalle Lyytinen

Transcription

1 Nick Berente Nick Berente James Gaskin Kalle Lyytinen

2 "The universe is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real. " Hobbes, 1651, The Leviathan "Virtuality aims only for prostitution, for the extinction of the real by its double. Baudrillard, "Illusion, Desillusion, Ästhetik"

3 Design, Projects, and Physical and Virtual Materiality Nick Review of Virtual Organizing James Research Challenges and Road Ahead Kalle

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5 Social Studies of Design Different specialties Collaborate & design Often across distances Using Digital technologies To design create build something Social Studies of Design: Bucciarelli 1994; Buchanan 1992; Dougherty 1992; Ancona & Caldwell 1992; Carlile 2002; 2004; Boland et al 1994; Bergman et al 2002; Argyres 1999; Bardhan 2007; Thomke 2006; Perry & Sanderson 1998; Kellogg et al 2006; Star & Griesemer 1989; Henderson 1991; Majchrzak et al 2000; Malhotra et al 2001; Rosenman et al. 1996; Perry et al. 1998

6 Different specialties Collaborate & design Often across distances Using Digital technologies To design create build something Communities of Practice Networks Virtual Teams ICT Communication & Coordination Boundary Objects The Design Artifact Diffusion

7 Doubly distributed Multiple models Shifting organizational forms Rolling networks Cascading innovations Binate diversity Sources: Yoo et al 2007; Boland et al 2007; Berente et al 2007; Yoo et al 2008; Berente et al 2008

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9 Virtual being actually such in almost every respect (nearly); existing in essence or effect though not in actual fact (?) Material worldly, substantial, tangible, corporeal, usable Virtuality Digitalness or Remoteness Continuum 1: Digital vs. Physical Materiality Continuum 2: Co Located vs. Remote

10 Digital Digital and Physical Physical Co located GSS Synchronous collaboration Traditional studio work Remote Virtual Teams Asynchronous collaboration Blueprints, memos, etc.

11 Digital Digital and Physical Physical Co located GSS Resource sharing /communication Synchronous collaboration; Perspective M&T; Boundary Objects Traditional studio work Pre Industrial Remote Virtual Teams Communication Asynchronous collaboration PLM; Repositories & workflow Blueprints, memos, etc. Industrial / bureaucratic

12 Digital Digital and Physical Physical Co located GSS Resource sharing /communication Synchronous collaboration; Perspective M&T; Boundary Objects Traditional studio work Pre Industrial Remote Virtual Teams Communication Asynchronous collaboration PLM; Repositories & workflow Blueprints, memos, etc. Industrial / bureaucratic

13 Virtual Mt Material il

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15 1. Virtuality as a context of collaboration 2. Virtuality and virtualization of work as an outcome of digitalization 3. Consequences of virtualization of work on work organization 4. Virtuality as a capability of infrastructures or large scale IT systems 5. Virtual worlds as a new context of work

16 What we know: More and more prevalent form of collaboration Enables distributed network of minds 24/7 work What we don t know: Co located virtual collaboration Multi tool & multi task collaboration

17 What we know: Nature of work is changing Virtualization affects social mechanisms Virtual enhances material in some work What we don t know: Effect of virtualization over time Entanglement and the role of physical materiality in virtualization

18 What we know: Open Source and Remote work Benefits of virtual organizing Role changes What we don t know: Productivity differences Effect on individual affect

19 What we know: Tension between global and local action Standardization and compatibility Resource sharing necessity What we don t know: Field specific infrastructures Resource sharing strategies Multi or cross organizational management approaches

20 What we know: Difference between virtual and physical reality Immersivity of virtual worlds Real effects of virtual worlds What we don t know: Lasting value and effects

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22 Will focus on the content t of virtualityand it virtualization of work as an outcome of digitalization. Address specifically: Effect of virtualization over time? Entanglement t and the role of physical materiality in virtualization? What affects the bl balance and evolution of virtual and physical entanglement in project based design organizations oga ato with varying ay geeso levels of centralization at and environmental volatility?

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24 Digital Digital and Physical Physical Co located GSS Resource sharing /communication Synchronous collaboration; Perspective M&T; Boundary Objects Traditional craft approach Pre Industrial Remote Virtual Teams Communication Asynchronous collaboration PLM; Repositories & workflow Blueprints, memos, etc. Industrial / bureaucratic

25 Challenge 1: Paucity of research on how affordances of digital artifacts (new forms of virtual materiality) interact with the physical materiality of organizations. Challenge 2: Virtual capabilities are enabled and constrained not only by the affordances of the digital artifacts, but also by path dependent institutional and environmental factors including organizational control and environmental volatility.

26 Digital artifacts enable and constrain different types of interactions between the virtual and physical materiality of design work. For example, one can use e mail with one s laptop or mobile phone in nearly any physical location, while the use of a BIM capability may require a work station with a large screen and enough computing gpower that can be only accessed in specific physical sites and work environments. There is a mutual dependency between physical technological capabilities and virtual affordances, and they constantly interact with physical material practices (i.e. where and how certain tasks processed either in faceto face context, and which non digital tools are mobilized in that context, etc).

27 Study enactment of distinct forms of digital artifacts as they are appropriated over time, and how they become entangled ldwith physical material practices as to form unique combinations of virtualized work capabilities bl in design work. Go beyond simple view of new dispersion in space and time while thinking about virtual organizing

28 Analyze sequences of activities iii and how they combine material, virtual elements during the design process Capture the process enactment and then analyze differences and distances between different processes using string (gene) sequencing techniques Focus on performative aspect but how it relates to ostensive and material aspects of design process (Feldman, Pentland, Volkoff)

29 Ostensive Performative Material

30 Ostensive process models: (e.g. Aalst et al 2003, Russell et al 2005) used to specify prescriptively (a should be model) how a design process is expected to be enacted. to determine the scope of acceptable process variation, define the computational model (state machine) offering process support (what affordances to do when), determine appropriate constraints for consistency (e.g. deadlocks) and performance (e.g. timing) Limitations: transaction oriented, poor recognition of material aspects,,prescriptive, p no notion of affordances, variation only recognized as state space of the state machine or through exceptions Benefits: formal foundation, tools available, visual

31 Organizational process models: dl organizational processes as a grammar (Pentland 1995, Pentland & Feldman 2005, Feldman & Pentland 2003, Pentland & Tueter 1994) model sequence of design steps and abstract into a process grammar Limitations: granularity and ad hoc nature of process models; no recognition of the material, poor analysis of affordances; little formal analysis, no visual models, no tool support, Benefits: performative v.s. ostensive, idea of a generative grammar (c.f. Organizational DNA)

32 Organizational process models: dl organizational processes as event sequences (Abbot 1990) model design processes as a sequence of events and compares their differences using string sequencing techniques (See e.g. Sabherval and Robey 1995) Limitations: rough granularity and ad hoc nature of process models; no recognition of the material, poor analysis of affordances; no visual models, no tool support, Benefits: performative, idea of formal analysis of sequences as to allow their comparison

33 Develop using method engineering i a process modeling (visual) notation that can be used to capture process modeling steps as they are enacted Develop formal meta model model of the process genes, i.e. activities, their properties and relationships as they are observed Use computer tool to capture, verify process models and generate task sequence representations for sequence analysis

34 Process metamodel Develop a formal meta model Formal process description Use the metamodel based tool to capture process Formal sequence analysis Carry out sequence analysis

35 T T i L A partial tentative t ti metamodel 1,1 d e Activity Is carried out Actor c 1,m 1,m o m 0,m 1,m 0,m 0,m A 0,1 f p Involves o 1,m 1,1 1,1 s e Tool Individual d 1,m 0,m 0,m 1,1 1,1 Virtual Material Design object Group

36 A visual enacted td process model dl

37 A string ti representation tti of design activities iti Activity Location Time Actor: group Design x Michigan Shnaghai Design object Tool Design team x architecture Cad/CAM Review Affordance Activity Location Time Actor: Design Tool Affordance individual object Design y Michigan Designer x architecture Cad/CAM Modification Feed into string sequence analyzer to analyze a) differences between subsequences b) Differences / distances between whole subsequences c) Observe which tasks/ sequences are virtually entangled d) Compare why/ how differences in sequences relate to the Level of entanglement

38 Sequence analysis assumes All sequences could be made similar and what is the effort of making them similar Effort measured by the The number of deletions, substitutions and additions needed to make the strings equal The cost of making the operations Seeks the minimum cost set of operations Several methods and algorithms (dynamic programming) to do so with different set of constraints and input parameters

39 Main Mi research challenges hll Appropriate generic vocabulary that is essential / theoretically grounded to describe similarities and differences between processes (especially virtuality, design objects etc) Structure and granularity of processes, and their string representations Combining different levels of analysis Risks in data collection Appropriateness of available sequencing techniques to do the job

40 Focus on organizational control : allocation and exercise of rights to make decisions about the structure or the process of the design; environmental volatility : design parameters, architectural principles and the level of uncertainty related to design decisions. To what extent these factors explain differences in observed process structures and the level of effort to make them similar? il

41 Figure 1. Types of Project Based Organizations Power Structure Less Centralized More Centralized Env vironmen ntal Volati ility Less Volatile More Volatile Stable Networked Stable Hierarchical Organization Organization (Mortenson) (Parker-Hannifin) Dynamic Networked Organization (Ford IT) Dynamic Hierarchical Organization Intel network architecture)

42 Stable hierarchical organizations: ations virtuality emphasized by the need to render design efficient through formal factory like process enforcement; decisions traceable, formalized, codified, etc. using version control, project mgtm tools, computer based process templates and so on. Stable hierarchical organizations : task sequences highly structured with less iteration and high level of virtual enactment Example fluid control engineering gin Parker Hannifin

43 Stable Networked Organization: local decision making, does not require more physical interactions in order to get on the same page and come to consensus when perspectives may differ. Stable Networked Organization: interplay between physical and virtual methods of working and organizing meeting physically to discuss organizational routines, working virtually to accomplish tasks, but coming back together again for realignment and clarification; virtual capabilities involve rolling edge, heterogeneous tools, collaboration tools and work spaces, and less factory like process template Example: Construction engineering at Mortenson

44 Dynamic Hierarchical Organization: local, l hierarchical decision making; and efficient localized process forms Dynamic Hierarchical Organization: local design teams have strong and formally enforced virtual capabilities for design control (software tools, distributed tools); yet their enforcement and integration difficult at global level; significant amount of using virtual collaboration tools across different design units Example: Intel network product architectures

45 Dynamic Networked Organization: challenges to coordinate and control both local and global design decisions and outcomes Use of extensive and global standardized design capabilities low; most virtualization happens at the level of individuals, coordination relies of physical and virtual communication tools Example Ford IT (enterprise group)

46 Table 2. Traits, Balance, and Interplay Organizational Trait Balance of Materiality Frequency of Interplay Stable Virtual Less Dynamic Physical More Hierarchical Virtual Less Networked Physical More

47 Study involves series of longitudinal process focused case studies around key elements (Langley 1999, Yin 2003, Eisenhardt 1989). Each case study will involve first a longitudinal diachronic analysis of the evolution of the patterns of virtualization (measured using the new notation we develop) (Barley & Tolbert 1997). We will also explore the reasons for their emergence as an oscillating movement from one form of intertwining to another and their diffusion across different projects. The study covers all issues outlined above using structured interviews, document analysis, observations and archival research.

48 Expected contributions i Clear or stir the mess around virtuality and materiality Offer concrete ways to analyze entanglement and impact of virtualization Innovative way of integrating SE research on modeling, ethnographic field work and organizational process studies Involves high risks but may offer significant insights

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