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In this paper we propose a methodological tool that seeks to contribute to the empirical study of practices in organization studies. There is a need for innovating and improving analytical tactics for theorizing about practice, particularly for helping connect localized social interactions to broader contexts. We propose the “temporal bracketing of discourses” tool and provide a detailed example that empirically illustrates its application. RESUMEN En este artículo proponemos una herramienta metodológica que busca hacer una contribución al estudio empírico de prácticas en estudios organizacionales. Existe la necesidad de innovar y mejorar las tácticas analíticas para teorizar la práctica, en particular para ayudar a conectar las interacciones sociales localizadas con contextos más amplios. Proponemos la estrategia analítica temporal bracketing para los discursos e incluimos un ejemplo detallado que ilustra empíricamente su aplicación. RESUMO Neste artigo, propomos uma ferramenta metodológica que busca contribuir para investigações empíricas da perspectiva da prática em estudos organizacionais. Existe a necessidade de inovar e aprimorar táticas analíticas para teorizar a prática, particularmente para ajudar a conectar interações sociais localizadas em contextos mais amplos. Este artigo propõe o “temporal bracketing” de discursos e inclui um exemplo detalhado que ilustra empiricamente a sua aplicação.

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the benefits generated by the use of new technologies by nonprofit organizations, with focus on how these artefacts can improve their ability to achieve their social mission.Design/methodology/approachTo understand the potential use of technology by a nonprofit organization, the concept of affordance was applied. The authors propose a processual model of affordances’ interdependences that enrich the extant literature. Six nonprofit organizations in two Brazilian regions were deeply investigated using a multiple case study method.FindingsThe authors identified new sub-categories of technology affordances, which are not just related to nonprofit but that could be also applied to other types, including for-profit. Sub-categories of affordances seem to play different roles in the actualization process. The authors are not proposing determinist connections among sub-categories, but they argue that they sustain some sub-categories precede or create the condition for others to emerge.Originality/valueNonprofit organizations lack theoretical and empirical investigations on management in general and on technology management in particular. In its turn, the technology field does not pay much attention, both in terms of research and practice, to the specificities of the third sector where the nonprofit organizations operate. This process model of potential uses of new technologies that might favor nonprofit organizations contributes to the cross-fertilization between two distinct fields: third sector and technology management.

Although social innovation has gained increasing importance in recent decades due to its promise of promoting social change, critical scholars have identified a number of gray areas, notably numerous perspectives that fail to deeply question the conditions that maintain social inequalities and exclusion, and that are marked by the absence of the voices of those living in the so-called “peripheries.” Through the example of The Agency, we propose an alternative to hegemonic ways of understanding social innovation, one based on the Latin American concept of tecnologia social, which embodies a decolonial view. We make three contributions to the social innovation literature, thereby enriching the North-South debate. First, we illustrate a process of sociotechnical reconfiguration—an interplay of methodological tools, artifacts and discourses—which is central to the conception and implementation of a tecnologia social. Second, we show how a tecnologia social operates through a cumulative layering process of decolonizing the imaginary, challenging the colonial relationship between center/periphery and positioning deprived young people as actors who reinvent their repertoires and territories. Third, we introduce a debate linking the anthropophagic approach to epistemic justice, a valued theme in decolonial thinking. In doing so, this article contributes to the literature by proposing applicable and positive outcomes to critical and decolonizing thinking.

Mise au Jeu is a Quebec-based social intervention organization that has been putting on forum theatre – in the Augusto Boal tradition of the theatre of the oppressed – for over 20 years. We investigate how such a non-profit organization creates spaces where members of a deprived communities can elaborate counter-narratives to deconstruct dominant narratives, thereby helping them to make sense of situations of oppression they are living and to act to promote social change. By unpacking counter-narrative strategies and their enabling mechanisms, our study contributes to the narrative tradition in two principal ways. First, while extending Deetz’s work on dominant narratives, we enrich existing understanding of the disruptive power of counter-narratives in situations of social exclusion by bringing to bear the theatrical principles and techniques of Augusto Boal, a missing voice in extant narrative literature. Second, we propose a reflexive discussion related to the political conceptualization of counter-narratives.

This case examines the major challenges faced by Productions Jeun’Est (PJE) and Prodigium, a social enterprise working in the cultural sector. The profits generated by Prodigium’s activities in the entertainment field are invested in the PJE training program that aims to increase the social inclusion of vulnerable youth by training them to be technicians in the cultural market. By studying this case, students are expected to understand the elements of a social business model, to analyze the role of the different elements forming a social innovation and to evaluate the challenges of planning its transfer to another context. This case examines the main challenges faced by Productions Jeun’Est (PJE) and Prodigium, a social enterprise operating in the cultural sector. The profits generated by Prodigium’s activities in the entertainment field are invested in the PJE training program, which aims to increase the social inclusion of vulnerable youths by training them to be technicians in the cultural market. By studying this case, students are expected to understand the elements of a social business model, analyze the role of the different elements forming a social innovation, and evaluate the challenges of planning its transfer to another context.

This chapter aims to present a case study on an innovative experience involving a solidarity fintech called Palmas e-Dinheiro, and its role in promoting both financial inclusion and local development in poor territories in the Northeast region of Brazil. The development of Palmas e-Dinheiro is strongly connected to the historical movement of community banks in the country. We start by presenting the context that has characterized the 20 years since the creation of Banco Palmas in 1998, including a description of the solidarity tools developed during this period to launch the e-Dinheiro mobile payment platform and support the operations of community banks. We conclude by describing the expansion of the e-Dinheiro platform, including its adoption by more than 80 community banks around the country and the creation of Banco Mumbuca in 2013, which currently has more than fifty thousand users and represents the largest e-Dinheiro operation.

RESUMO Os espaços de trabalho compartilhados, conhecidos como coworking , são ambientes de trabalho que se disseminaram com rapidez nos últimos anos, e distinguem-se como um novo modelo de trabalho. O objetivo deste artigo foi analisar práticas e relações em ambientes de coworking a fim de se compreender como ocorrem e como contribuem para construir espaços de interação social. Para tanto, foi conduzido um estudo de caso único, realizado em profundidade, cujos dados foram coletados a partir de técnicas de inspiração etnográfica, incluindo intensa observação participante, entrevistas semiestruturadas e análise documental. O estudo de campo teve duração de 25 dias, ao longo dos quais utilizou-se dos métodos de observação direta e entrevistas, realizadas com 40 associados do espaço escolhido. Os resultados identificaram três níveis de relações que suportam um espaço de trabalho que vai além do compartilhamento. Em cada nível foram identificadas práticas que favorecem a construção de um espaço de interação social: práticas de autogestão, práticas de negócios cooperados e práticas comunitárias. Por fim, lança-se a chamada a uma reflexão em compreender o que de fato significa construir um espaço social dentro de um espaço de trabalho.

In this article, we argue that citizenship conceived within a context of neoliberal rationality helps explain the emergence of what we term the ‘citizen as consumer’. We define the citizen as consumer as someone who relates to the state and the public realms from the private perspective of consumption. We ask how this emergent neoliberal citizen is configured in peripheral countries that are regarded as exemplifying ‘weak’ citizenship. To respond to this question, we consider the protests that occurred in Brazil in 2013 as an empirical illustration. Our main objective is to rethink the citizen/state relationship in consumer studies, employing a dialectical analysis to understand how the better-known consumer-citizen movement, in which the consumer acts as a citizen and gives birth, under a neoliberal rationality, to a movement that somehow disrupts these roles such that the citizen starts to act as a consumer. The Brazilian protests provide insights that advance debate on the scope and limits of the hybridisation between citizens and consumers and on the transformations in the relationship between citizenship and politics.

In 2004, I published a book chapter that marked a first moment in my qualitative research journey. The methodological piece was a result of a challenge imposed by my doctoral committee for my thesis proposal defense two years prior, who invited me to ‘rigorously’ sustain the quality of a qualitative research project conducted under the premises of critical-interpretivism. This challenge indeed was a gift, as it provided me an opportunity, very early in my academic career, to deeply reflect about the meaning of doing qualitative research. Now, around fifteen years later, the invitation to write a thinkbox again represents a timely opportunity, as I found myself again reflecting … not on the dilemmas of doing non-mainstream qualitative research, but on the researcher's role itself. More precisely, I am seriously thinking about the role of distance and engagement to the value of the knowledge we produce with our academic work. In this essay, I redraw this entire journey—from 2004 to 2018—with the intent to nourish the dialog with my peers about the engagement of the academic community with transforming society for the better, and to provide some guidelines to doctoral students seeking to truly engage with transformational research.

This essay revisits the historical development of a concept – tecnologia social – as one avenue for discussing alternatives to post-development, arguing that the Western-based historical path of te...

The understanding of conflicts represents an important topic in organization studies. One might argue that, although different perspectives have been assumed, most of them end by attempting to ‘dom...

Based on a reflexive and critical analysis of the citizen protests that pervaded Brazilian cities in June 2013, in this article we argue that a significant part of the demonstrators’ dissatisfactio...

This paper investigates the development of an electronic platform by a local government with the goal of increasing citizens' participation in public decision-making process, particularly the modality known as participatory budgeting. The local government of Belo Horizonte, a Brazilian municipality, decided to use web-based technologies to create a project called digital participatory budgeting (DPB), whose purpose was to include new segments of the population -particularly the middle class and youth - in the process of prioritizing the allocation of investments in the city's public works. The project was launched in 2006 and repeated in 2008 and 2011. Intriguingly, however, citizen participation decreased significantly. This study seeks to understand why citizens' participation decreased over time, despite the availability of a cutting-edge, user-friendly and iterative web-based platform to help connect citizens to the process. The theoretical approach is based on social representation theory (SRT) and the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) of 101 documents and 19 interviews. This combination of SRT and CDA helps in understanding how people gave meaning to a new social object - the digital participatory budgeting - through their voices. Simultaneously, this approach represents a skillful approach to uncovering power imbalances signaled by "silences". The results suggest that deviations in the social representation process, namely, trivialization and reification, help us to understand the process through which citizen participation decreases. Therefore, governments seeking to improve eParticipation should, without neglecting the technical aspects, pay more attention to the social representational processes that characterize their web-based initiatives. We investigate the role of social representations in processes of public decision-making participation.The theoretical approach is based on social representations theory.The methodology is based on critical discourse analysis.Trivialization and reification in the social representation process helps to explain why participation decreases.Our results emphasise the explanatory role of discursive practices.

Respective literatures on sustainable business models (SBMs) and the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) share the assumption that organizations can contribute to value creation for both business and society. The premise of a win–win solution for multiple stakeholders relies mostly on market-oriented solutions, giving little attention to the role that government programs and regulations may have in promoting such initiatives. At best, literature considers government as an obstacle to the development of SBMs in the BOP context. In this paper, we challenge that view by presenting the case of the Ecoelce project, an SBM developed in the BOP context of Northeastern Brazil. We show that this project transformed a coercive pressure from the Brazilian government into a strategic opportunity and a source of shared value. We argue that the mobilization of native capability was key in this process.

Empirical research suggests that financial inclusion initiatives - such as facilitating access to financial resources or providing microcredit - are alone not enough to lower socioeconomic disparities. In this article, we adopt a critical stance as a guide for our empirical investigation. Our aim is to propose a financial education framework, tailored to low-income micro-entrepreneurs, that embraces new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and seeks to improve financial inclusion and social emancipation. This empirical study was conducted in an Amazonian municipality in Brazil where recent access to ICTs has brought about important and varied socioeconomic changes. Results show that ICT-supported and tailored critical financial education can play a dual role: on the one hand, access to financial education might decrease the effects of generative mechanisms on global/local tensions, triggered by standardized ICT applications; on the other hand, such access might increase financial inclusion and social transformation through the integration of guiding principles into financial education programs. RESUMO Pesquisas empíricas sugerem que iniciativas de inclusão financeira - tais como o acesso a recursos financeiros ou o fornecimento de microcrédito - não são, por si sós, suficientes para reduzir as disparidades socioeconômicas. Neste artigo, adotamos uma abordagem crítica para guiar a nossa pesquisa empírica. Nosso objetivo é o de propor um quadro teórico para a educação financeira orientada a microempreendedores de baixa renda, vinculado às novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TICs), com o propósito de ampliar a inclusão financeira e a emancipação social. Este estudo empírico foi realizado em um município da Amazônia brasileira no qual o recente acesso às TICs resultou em significativas e divergentes transformações socioeconômicas. Os resultados evidenciam que a educação financeira crítica orientada por TICs pode desempenhar um duplo papel: por um lado, o acesso à educação financeira pode reduzir os efeitos provocados por mecanismos geradores de tensões globais-locais, desencadeados pelo uso de aplicações padronizadas de TICs; por outro lado, tal acesso pode aumentar a inclusão social e a transformação social por meio da incorporação de princípios norteadores, integrados a programas de educação financeira. RESUMEN La investigación empírica sugiere que las iniciativas de inclusión financiera -tales como la facilitación del acceso a recursos financieros o la concesión de microcréditos- solas no son suficientes para reducir las disparidades socioeconómicas. En el presente trabajo, adoptamos una postura crítica como guía de nuestra investigación empírica. Nuestro objetivo es proponer un marco de educación financiera, a la medida para microempresarios de bajos ingresos, que abarca las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) y busca mejorar la inclusión financiera y la emancipación social. El estudio empírico se llevó a cabo en un municipio amazónico Amazonas del Brasil, donde el reciente acceso a las TIC ha producido cambios socioeconómicos importantes y variados. Los resultados muestran que la educación financiera crítica a medida, respaldada por las TIC, puede desempeñar un doble papel: por un lado, el acceso a la educación financiera podría disminuir los efectos de los mecanismos generadores de tensiones globales/locales, disparados por aplicaciones TIC normalizadas; por otro lado, este acceso podría aumentar la inclusión financiera y la transformación social, a través de la integración de principios rectores en los programas de educación financiera.

The study seeks to analyze how the self-employed are inserted in the context of financialization and how this insertion enables financial capital accumulation. We initially adopted the concept of n...

Although a number of microfinance initiatives have improved financial inclusion in various regions of developing countries, the transferability of their foundations from one context to another is still a challenge. This study proposes an innovative process-based model targeting the initial stages of the transfer process that links three interconnected categories: local contextual conditions, transferring practices, and initial developmental consequences. The results were produced through a longitudinal study of the implementation of three community development banks on the periphery of Sao Paulo based on a highly successful Brazilian model known as Banco Palmas. In addition to the process-based model, our findings contribute to the microfinance and bottom of the pyramid (BOP) literatures, showing a cross-fertilization that has been insufficiently explored.

In 2004, I published a book chapter that marked a first moment in my qualitative research journey. The methodological piece was a result of a challenge imposed by my doctoral committee for my thesis proposal defense two years prior, who invited me to ‘rigorously’ sustain the quality of a qualitative research project conducted under the premises of critical-interpretivism. This challenge indeed was a gift, as it provided me an opportunity, very early in my academic career, to deeply reflect about the meaning of doing qualitative research. Now, around fifteen years later, the invitation to write a thinkbox again represents a timely opportunity, as I found myself again reflecting ... not on the dilemmas of doing nonmainstream qualitative research, but on the researcher’s role itself. More precisely, I am seriously thinking about the role of distance and engagement to the value of the knowledge we produce with our academic work. In this essay, I redraw this entire journey—from 2004 to 2018—with the intent to nourish the dialog with my peers about the engagement of the academic community with transforming society for the better, and to provide some guidelines to doctoral students seeking to truly engage with transformational research. © 2018 Departamento de Administrac¸ao, Faculdade de Economia, Administrac ˜ ¸ao e Contabilidade da Universidade de S ˜ ao Paulo – FEA/USP. ˜ Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

This paper explores how large-scale social-driven collaborations might grow in scale and help promote political change. We present the results of a qualitative investigation of a complex platform where multiple and hybrid collaborations co-exist and where civil society plays a central role. Based on a longitudinal comparative case study, we draw a processual model describing micro-practices and pathways of engagement. We show that the emergence of these collaborations requires a new type of convener, one that is able to manage the interplay between the sharing/co-creation of abundant resources and the coordinated decentralization of informal authority. Our study extends existing debates on the role of resources and authority, showing the complementarity between possession and practice perspectives of power. Finally, we identified synergies between collaboration and social movement literatures, particularly showing that large-scale collaborations could be mobilized to refine social movement agendas and achieve more purposive collective action.

Integrative presentation on sociomateriality in management and organizational studies. We are at Paris-Dauphine University on a warm afternoon of May 2011. A small group of scholars and PhD students are currently occupying two rooms to start a new and informal experience together. Their wish is to create an occasion for discussing, from a multidisciplinary perspective, a number of emergent topics and their interconnection with technology and practices "in the context of organizing." Among the emergent topics, some terms appear prominent, like material, materiality, sociomateriality, and performativity. This first meeting sowed the seeds for the launching of a series of annual workshops under the name OAP: Organizations, Artifacts, and Practices. The purpose of this introductory article is to present the OAP community to the RAE readers in order to initiate a dialogue and eventually integrate Latin American voices in the so-called materiality turn. publishersversion published

The case explores the emergence and strategies put in place by a network of cultural collectives to connect people and develop their objectives as well as explore the possibilities of devising better business models. It describes the emergence and evolution of a new way to promote the cultural industry.

The case provides an opportunity to understand how tecnologia social – a South American concept that might be seen as an equivalent to social innovation – can help promote social change. To illustrate the potential of social technologies, the case of Agencia de Redes is presented. The case is intended for use at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Its purpose is to promote the discussion of the South American concept of tecnologia social, as well as to analyse of one particular tecnologia social using a conceptual model to understand the mechanisms that might promote social change.

Mise au Jeu is a Quebec-based organization of social intervention which has been doing forum theatre, in the Augusto Boal’s tradition of Theatre of the Oppressed for over 20 years. In this article,...

Finding ways to downscale microfinance is one of the current challenges facing commercial banks, especially in developing countries. As banks have a poor knowledge of microfinance, operating in this market will require capacity-building, innovative business models and new technological architectures. This paper discusses how one particular architecture – the Brazilian model of correspondent banking (CB) – is helping banks cope with these challenges. Since the model was created, in 2000, it has allowed banks to downscale financial services outside their traditional branches and establish successful partnerships with local microfinance institutions (MFIs). The authors focus on one particular case involving a partnership between an accredited MFI (Banco Palmas) and two major banks (Banco do Brasil e Caixa Econômica Federal), to make the argument that the Brazilian CB model represents an innovation at the “meso level”, defined by Helms (2006) as the infrastructure comprising a network of service providers necessary to the operation of MFIs.

This paper discusses the adoption of a pluralist theoretical framework - one that is also multiparadigmatic - for conducting and publishing information system IS research. The discussion is illustrated by a single case study involving the Australian cotton industry. The theoretical framework is informed by three sociological theories, each with its particular paradigmatic assumptions: structuration theory as a meta-theory, and diffusion of innovations and gender relations as lower-level theories from notionally opposing paradigms. Theoretical pluralism helped to produce rich findings, illuminating both the social nature of women farmers' roles, the materiality of the cotton farming context, the characteristics of the decision support systems in use and the recursive way in which human agency and institutional pressures shape each other. Because users of so-called divergent paradigms often face criticism based on the incommensurability issue, one of the main contributions of this paper is to discuss the value of a pluralist and multiparadigmatic theoretical framework in dealing with complex IS social phenomena.

The focus of this article is the emerging phenomenon of citizen participation in civil society movements at the municipal/city level. In various parts of the world, ordinary citizens have been engaging in social movements so as to more purposively engage with and exert influence on public policies regarding important issues like the improvement of quality of life and sustainability of their cities. The overall goal of the article is to understand a network called the ‘Latin American network of cities’, which in 2011 linked more than 50 Latin American cities, including Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima, Quito and Rio de Janeiro. One of the most important components is a movement located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, called Nossa Sao Paulo, which mobilizes citizens representing more than 600 organizations of varying types. From a management perspective, this study describes and analyses the means employed by Sao Paulo civil associations to create a space for debate and action that leads not only to adoption of common pr...

Although interest in the use of grounded theory methods has been increasing over the last decade, Urquhart, Lehmann, and Myers (2010) take note of the criticism that, in fact, such use has not yet produced higher levels of theory development in IS research. Along these lines, the current essay intends to make two main contributions. The first is to respond to the recent call for more studies developing grounded theorizing in IS research by providing a detailed description of the application of grounded theory methods in an emergent research area that combines IS and sustainability. The second, to extend current interpretations of grounded theory's basic characteristics by focusing on one important element: researchers' creativity. We argue that the role of researchers' creativity and imagination in the implementation of grounded theory methods has rarely been emphasized and should be the subject of further reflection. Although imagination is, from our perspective, inherent and crucial to any cognitive or intellectual process, the fact of being frequently neglected in IS research precludes its mobilization as a more purposeful influence in the process of building new theories.

Presentation of the forum on social applications and impacts of the use of information and communication technology in Latin America.

KariGhana Alliance is a social business operating in the shea industry since 2012. One of the first objectives of the KariGhana Alliance was to bring together women working in the informal shea sector, in order to improve their economic and social situation, as well as their health. In order to be financially sustainable, the company has met with a team of consultants who suggested creating a social balanced scorecard (SBSC). SBSC could serve as an efficient tool to meet the company’s goals: 1) improve the women’s quality of life and 2) to achieve the company’s break-even.

Two important phenomena in the financial sector have drawn attention in recent years: on the one hand, microcredit is growing and earning renown as a powerful instrument for income generation and poverty reduction in a number of developing countries; on the other hand, correspondent banking (CB) outlets have risen to prominence as a main channel for the distribution of financial services to the low- income population, with particular success in Brazil. This paper argues that information and communication technology (ICT) applications have the potential to help these two movements, until now tracing parallel paths, to converge. We apply an emergent conceptual framework that combines three theoretical lenses: social shaping of technology, structurationist view of technology and contextualism. The result is an original reading of the possible combinations of CB and microfinance in Brazil and the expectation that the multilevel framework might help to understand similar complex phenomena in other Lati...

Veiling Holambra in Brazil is the largest flower company in Latin America. This case features analysis of strategy and implementation regarding the role and positioning of Veiling Holambra in national and international flower markets. By using advanced information technologies (IT), Veiling Holambra connects local Brazilian flower supply to Brazilian and international demand. Flowers being perishable products, a wider reach for Veiling Holambra requires focusing on faster logistical and distribution processes and systems. The case pays special attention to the difference between global supply chains and global demand chains in the flower industry. Supply chains produce flowers, stock them, and put them on sale in flower auctions. Demand chains produce flowers on order and distribute them directly to customers (wholesalers, retailers). The case helps explain the fundamental differences between these two chain systems, stimulating a reflection about under which conditions each chain system works better. The case also describes the potential role of IT electronic models in promoting local development.

DOI: 10.12660/gvcasosv5n2n11http://dx.doi.org/10.12660/gvcasosv5n2n11

This paper focuses on local adaptations, referring to the significant or subtle changes local firms make in their local business processes and rules in order to fit with a generic application system, and to the changes they make in the features of a generic application system. Local adaptations are therefore bidirectional in nature. Although several studies stress the importance of local adaptations for the overall success of information technologies (IT) used across locations, more research is needed regarding what kind of local adaptations are required for a particular generic application system to work well in particular localities. The nature and extent of local adaptations are still poorly understood. This paper provides a concrete illustration of a historically situated local adaptation: the case of Veiling Holambra. This Brazilian cooperative has imported a generic auction marketplace model from Holland and adapted it to local conditions, to succeed in a globalized and competitive flower market. Using concepts drawn from studies on globalization, cross-cultural implementations, and IT-based organizational change literature, we put forward three propositions that help to explain the success of local adaptations. The results of our case study indicate that the immigration of Dutch people was critical for bringing knowledge of cooperative structure and flower production to Holambra and led to a relatively small design-use gap. The ability to take local, contextual requirements into account without neglecting the ‘generic’ knowledge led to the successful implementation of the generic auction model. This mutual influence was particularly enabled by the Brazilian culture of improvization.

Giddens’s structuration theory is increasingly used as an alternative approach to studying numerous organizational phenomena. However, the applicability of Giddens’s concepts is not without difficulties because of two main challenges. First, structuration theory is complex, involving concepts and general propositions that operate at a high level of abstraction. Second, structuration theory is not easily coupled to any specific research method or methodological approach, and it is difficult to apply empirically. Arguing that structuration theory is a valuable framework for a rich understanding of management, organization and related subjects of inquiry, this paper aims to improve the application of structuration theory in empirical work by drawing on the experience in information technology (IT) research. It identifies patterns of use of Giddens’s theory in publications in the domain of IT, and then describes how IT researchers have attempted to address its major empirical challenges. The paper presents a repertoire of research strategies that might guide students of organization in dealing with three elements that are central to structuration theory: duality of structure, time/space and actors’ knowledgeability.

In this article, strategic management research using structuration theory from 1995 to 2000 is reviewed. I describe and analyse the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of strategy using a structurationist view. I found that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, Giddens’ propositions have been incorporated into other perspectives, the effects of which should be known by researchers looking for theoretical frameworks that avoid dichotomist thinking. The paper draws on the effects that structurationist arguments may produce regarding classical oppositions such as micro/macro and voluntarist/determinist. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using structuration theory are promising avenues of research in the strategic management field. It also suggests that, although other alternatives of avoiding dichotomist logic exist, making a choice among them is more a question of ontological affinity than of making the ‘better choice’ among competing accounts. There are several routes to advance the understanding of the possibilities of human choice.

The purpose of this chapter is to revisit the concept of tecnologia social, social technology in English, from a sociomaterial perspective. In my investigation of South American writings on social innovation, I found a vast and rich literature describing, analysing and theorizing around grassroots social innovations from the perspective of the underlying arrangements among people, artefacts and practices that brings an interesting view to the relationship between technology and society. The term tecnologia social is applied to those sociomaterial arrangements or assemblages whose goal is to promote social transformation. I am talking about a long tradition that seems to have started with Gandhi in India around the beginning of the twentieth century, had numerous but ephemeral trajectories in Europe and North America, and ended by reaching the minds of South American researchers and practitioners of social innovation by the 1960s. There, it has been transformed, blended and remixed, and its impacts have been very prolific.

Empirical research on street-level bureaucracy has been exploring different ways by which public policies have been implemented in areas like health care, education and security, where the role played by discritionarity in the implementation process is often emphasized. In this study, we call for the value of complementing street-level bureaucracy discritionarity with the concept of proximity, brought from microfinance literature, in order to increase our understanding of the SLB/beneficiaries interaction process and its potential positive effects over public policy. To explore this question, we conceived a theoretical lens based on a frame analysis that explores SLB/beneficiaries relational mechanisms (Lotta, 2014; Goffman, 1974) and a methodological design based on a qualitative case study strategy (Stake, 1998). The results allowed us to show how proximity act on relational mechanisms, confirming the relational mechanisms found previously in the literature and pointing to new mechanisms, providing occa...