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FNEGE 3, HCERES B, ABS 2; International audience; Pre-digital organizations were established before the digital and collaborative economy. Faced with this new economy, they are carrying out organizational transformation projects that involve significant changes in tasks, working conditions, and employee well-being. A positive emotional climate can support these digital transformations. Companies have therefore developed specific change management practices focusing on happiness at work to support these digital transformation programs of work practices. This research explores the role of happiness management as a change management practice for digital transformation. Using a multiple case study method, it illustrates how happiness management practices are enacted in three French pre-digital organizations from different industries. It identifies characteristics of happiness management mobilized differently by each organization. Some combinations of these characteristics and employees' control perceptions are shown to lead to a positive emotional climate which in turn affects the success of digital workplace transformations.

In the introductory paper of this special issue on new ways of working (NWW) the editors first reflect on the meaning of the ‘new’, finding inspiration in Hannes Meyer's essay “The New World” (1926). The ‘new’ is always relative, of course, closely associated with technological innovation, in our case digitalization, and integrates spatiotemporal, technological and socio-cultural dimensions of life and organizing. This SI seeks to offer a reflection on and contribution to deeper understanding of ongoing flexibilization, virtualization and mediation of work practices. The authors go on to contextualize and discuss the contributions of the papers included in this special issue, focussing on significant technological, spatiotemporal, organizational and individual developments associated with new ways of working. Finally, they reflect on the possible relevance of the recent Covid-19 pandemic for the future of work, arguing that this pandemic accelerated NWW in many ways and – given the many paradoxical NWW dynamics and developments – that there could very well be unexpected and adverse consequences, including a turn away from formal ways of working.

CNRS 2, FNEGE 2, HCERES A; International audience; Management research is increasingly using fiction as an insightful way to analyze complex organizational dynamics. Focusing on user appropriation of Knowledge Management Systems, we describe how we used the popular Astérix, a well-known French cartoon to better understand KMS appropriation. We came to use this approach in an action research project in a large French construction firm initially designed to help Chief Knowledge Officers address KMS non-use. After our first findings showed paradoxical cultural issues, and based on the idea that culture is central to sensemaking and appropriation, we used the notion of the cultural metaphor to help better understand the cultural aspects associated with KMS appropriation. These results contribute knowledge in three different areas. First, we underline the role of cultural metaphors in information systems appropriation. Second, we enrich the literature on the role of fiction in management by illustrating the role of cultural metaphors. Third, we report on how this can be used in an action research project to help better understand KMS appropriation issues, which has the potential of leading to practical managerial action.

The focus of this edited volume is first enunciated, in the context of the Organizations, Artefacts and Practices Workshop Series, together with its intended readership. This is followed by a short literature review of the literature on New Ways of Working (NWW) in order to position the contribution of the volume, compared to recently published books. This book is divided into five parts, NWW and the Sharing Economy, NWW and Collaborative Spaces, NWW and Telework, NWW Organizational Spaces and finally Organizational Aspects of NWW; and each chapter is briefly outlined.

This volume focuses on new ways of working, and explores implications of these new practices with a particular emphasis on the place occupied by technology, materiality and bodies within contemporary working configurations. It draws together an international range of scholars to examine diverse subjects such as: the gig economy, social media as a work space, the role of materiality in living labs, managerial techniques and organizational legitimacy. Drawing on global perspectives, from France to Nigeria, this book presents a fascinating examination of the many new ways people are working, and relating to their work. Part of the esteemed Technology, Work and Globalization series, this book is valuable reading for scholars working on organizational studies, ethnography, technology management, and management more generally.

Collaborative work practices are being transformed through the growth of co-working in urban third spaces, makerspaces, fab labs, incubators, accelerators and digital labs. This paper is based on a 2-year project carried out by a network of academics and practitioners interested in new work practices in the collaborative economy, focusing particularly on collaborative workspaces. We concentrate on the relationships between collaboration and these new work practices according to three levels, individual, community and societal, highlighting their spatial and temporal dimensions. Our results indicate that: boundaries between waged employment and entrepreneurship are not rigid; individuals not only suffer from stress in traditional organisations but also of boredom; new collaborative practices imply rethinking their own competences and prospects, often leading to fundamental life changes; co-working communities can provide collective meaning, crucial to supporting these transformations; they can be orientated towards practice, professional identity, and emotional support to address loneliness and sense-making; public discourses about entrepreneurship and innovation and territorial policies are not clearly linked to innovative practices in collaborative spaces. We conclude that there is need for better coordination between public actors and collaborative communities which should be seen at the heart of economic, educational, industrial and cultural policies targeting the city, aiming at collaborating and sharing.

This introduction opens with a short overview of the Organization, Artefacts and Practices workshop series and previous volumes in the series. It then provides a brief evaluation of the current scholarly treatment of managerial techniques within four major themes: managerial techniques for managers, techniques in practice, managerial work, and innovation and technology. Next, it addresses materiality in management and extends its discussion into managerial techniques to show how material treatment of managerial techniques has contributed to their conceptualization and critical assessment. Having outlined the main strands of academic work within materiality of managerial techniques, the chapter closes with an overview of all contributions in this volume.

International audience; La thèse réalisée dans le cadre d’un Doctorate in Business Administration, appelé DBA (Doctorat en administration des affaires), exige que les doctorants établissent des choix parmi un large éventail de méthodes et d’outils de recherche pour concrétiser ce projet. Déterminer, choisir, mettre en œuvre et contextualiser les méthodes et outils de recherche sont autant d’étapes cruciales pour la réussite du travail de recherche et de la thèse de DBA.Les 25 chapitres de cet ouvrage ont été préparés à l’attention des candidat(e)s de DBA afin de les guider et de les orienter dans le choix de méthodes et d’outils de recherche. La première partie pose la question du choix des méthodes de recherche, la deuxième s’intéresse aux méthodes de recueil des données, la troisième aux méthodes d’analyse des données, et la quatrième partie porte sur la contextualisation des méthodes. Rédigés pour rendre les contenus accessibles et favoriser leur appropriation par les lecteurs, les chapitres proposent les fondements et les ressources permettant de guider les choix d’ordre méthodologique.Ce livre s’inscrit dans la collection Business Science Institute afin de produire des ouvrages pour guider le travail académique des doctorants dans le parcours de formation scientifique de DBA. Le premier livre collectif paru en 2015, La création de connaissance par les managers, visait à établir les balises principales de ce nouveau rôle assumé par les managers en situation de pratique : celui de producteur de nouvelles connaissances. Le deuxième livre collectif paru en 2017, Le projet de thèse de DBA, visait à guider la réflexion au sujet de l’élaboration de la proposition du projet de la thèse de DBA.

Literature Reviews (LR) are particularly useful for demonstrating the coherence and cumulativeness (or lack thereof) of MIS research and for developing avenues for further research. Most top-tier journals now publish LRs, and many have even begun devoting specific sections to them. Our starting point is that LRs are not epistemologically neutral, and three approaches commonly underlie literature reviews: positivism (identifying the concepts, theories and models closest to the phenomenon that is being explained); interpretivism (identifying the various concepts and theories expressed by various actors and grouping them into multiple perspectives); and critical approaches (identifying both the underlying assumptions and conditions of the production of theories and their effects). We suggest a fourth approach to LRs underpinned by the philosophy of critical realism (CR) and argue that it can enable the (re)interpretation of existing literature through the identification of underlying generative mechanisms. These generative mechanisms provide a common denominator to enable the synthesis of concepts and theories in new ways, helping to bridge previously thought to be incompatible theories, and contributing to a more cumulative view of academic knowledge. We illustrate the value of a CR-based literature through its application to the topic of IT Strategic Value in the MIS and strategic management literature; we show how the identification of four generative mechanisms and three core agencies can support a more integrated view of IT Strategic Value. We then discuss the implications of the use of generative mechanisms and propose guidelines from a CR perspective for carrying out literature reviews.

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 world of work is changing. A century after moving from an agriculture-centered world to an Industrial one, from self-employed workers to salaried employees, our modern economies are slowly transitioning towards a new model: based on simultaneous collaboration and competition, the boundaries of contemporary organizations are blurring; information technologies are allowing individuals and companies to set base away from cities; shared working spaces are triggering new forms of collaborations between individuals and corporations.This White Paper aims at diagnosing key institutional tensions related to new work practices in the city, and putting forward questions and general propositions likely to overcome these tensions. The idea is to analyze how new collaborative communities and collaborative logics (of coworkers, hackers, makers, fabbers, and teleworkers) and more traditional collective activity and modes of decision making (of the city and corporations in the city) can jointly contribute to the co-production of harmonious new ways of life and new ways of working. Reinventing joint public policies, corporate strategies and citizenship appear here as a key stake where usual dichotomies between private-public, collaborative-non-collaborative economy, traditional citizens and hacktivists need to be overcome.We thus identify in this document a set of controversies around four strong political issues both for the city and the field of management, linked to the emergence of collaborative spaces:o Topic 1. Space, territories, and public policy on collaborative communities in the city;o Topic 2. Collaborative communities and their roles in education in the city;o Topic 3. Business models and their communication in the context of collaborative spaces and collaborative communities;o Topic 4. Collaborative spaces and their roles in innovation and entrepreneurial dynamics at the level of the cityBeyond our controversies, we underline three paradoxes which should be at the heart of new questions for policy-makers, hacktivists, actors of collaborative movements, and citizens (distinctions which may become less and less relevant in the years to come):o Social versus economic orientations of both the city and the collaborative communities it can host;o Critical/revolutionary versus more incremental relationships between cities, organizations, societies, collaborative communities, and new work practices;o Local territory (district/proximate area) grounded versus broader city-oriented or connectivity related issues about collaborative movement and new work practices.To balance these tensions, we elaborate seven general areas of questions and propositions for all stakeholders:o The generalization of infra-organization (physical collaborative platforms);o The emergence of “ ‘inclusive lab’ labels” (elaborated and managed by collaborative communities themselves);o A renewed academic presence in the city and in the country-side (with more virtual, distributed and ‘experiential’ logics);o Ephemeral and mobile labs managed jointly by public, collaborative and private stakeholders;o “Open open” innovation in public and semi-public spaces of the city;o Rise of mega-spaces for creativity in the city;o Development of a global infrastructure for coworkers, mobile workers and teleworkers.These are directions we see as particularly promising to manage the tensions, paradoxes and stakes explicated by our controversies.We hope that these questions and propositions will inspire both academics, politicians, hacktivists and entrepreneurs for future collaborations on the study and joint transformation of public policies, corporate strategies, and citizenship.

International audience; The theme for the 2014 IFIP WG 8.2 working conference was ‘Information Systems and Global Assemblages: (Re)Configuring Actors, Artefacts, Organizations’. The motivation behind the choice of the conference theme has been the increasing appreciation of notions of emergence, heterogeneity and temporality in IS studies. We found that the conference provided an opportune occasion for inviting scholars interested in exploring these notions, their relevance and promise for IS studies. The concept of the ‘assemblage’ [1], already referenced in IS studies, as will be discussed below, and with significant popularity in other fields, such as anthropology, geography and cultural studies, provided the stepping stone for approaching the heterogeneous, emergent and situated nature of information systems and organization. In particular, we opted for highlighting the ‘global assemblage’[2] as a metaphor to talk about challenging yet often creative tensions that emerge as global imperatives (geographical, intellectual, procedural and others) interact with local arrangements of actors, artefacts and organizations. Here ‘global’ does not mean universal or everywhere, but mobile, abstractable, and capable of recontextualization across diverse social and cultural situations.This book provides a collection of contributions by scholars who responded to our invitation, adding depth and breadth to our understanding of the concept and its value for IS studies. At the same time, some contributors chose to discuss emergence, heterogeneity and situatedness in different terms, drawing upon alternative theoretical traditions and concepts. The result has been an engaging and stimulating mix of ideas that points towards the ‘multiple’ trajectories - current and future - of this exciting stream of research.

In order to explore scientific writing in Information Systems (IS) journals, we adopt a combination of historical and rhetorical approaches. We first investigate the history of universities, business schools, learned societies and scientific articles. This perspective allows us to capture the legacy of scientific writing standards, which emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, we focus on two leading IS journals (EJIS and MISQ). An historical analysis of both outlets is carried out, based on data related to their creation, evolution of editorial statements, and key epistemological and methodological aspects. We also focus on argumentative strategies found in a sample of 436 abstracts from both journals. Three main logical anchorages (sometimes combined) are identified, and related to three argumentative strategies: ‘deepening of knowledge’, ‘solving an enigma’ and ‘addressing a practical managerial issue’. We relate these writing norms to historical imprints of management and business studies, in particular: enigma-focused rhetorics, interest in institutionalized literature, neglect for managerially grounded rhetoric and lack of reflexivity in scientific writing. We explain this relation as a quest for academic legitimacy. Lastly, some suggestions are offered to address the discrepancies between these writing norms and more recent epistemological and theoretical stances adopted by IS researchers.

We present a reflexive retrospective account of a UK government research council funded project deploying knowledge management software to support environmental sustainability in the construction industry. This project was set up in a form typical of a Mode 2 research programme involving several academic institutions and industrial partners, and aspiring to fulfil the Mode 2 criteria seen as transdisciplinarity and business relevance. The multidisciplinary nature is analysed through retrospectively reflecting upon the research process and activities we carried out, and is found to be problematic. No real consensus was reached between the partners on the 'context of application'. Difficulties between industry and academia, within industry and within academia led to diverging agendas and different alignments for participants. The context of application does not (pre-)exist independently of institutional influences, and in itself cannot drive transdisciplinarity since it is subject to competing claims and negotiations. There were unresolved tensions in terms of private vs. public construction companies and their expectations of ICT-based knowledge management, and in terms of the sustainable construction agenda. This post hoc reflexive account, enables us to critique our own roles in having developed a managerial technology for technically sophisticated and powerful private industrial actors to the detriment of public sector construction partners, having bypassed sustainability issues, and not reached transdisciplinarity. We argue that this is due to institutional pressures and instrumentalization from academia, industry and government and a restricted notion of business relevance. There exists a politically motivated tendency to oppose Mode 1 academic research to practitioner-oriented Mode 2 approaches to management research. We argue that valuing the links between co-existing Mode 1 and 2 research activities would support a more genuine and fuller exploration of the context of application.

PurposeThis paper seeks to offer a retrospective look at an intellectual journey in and out of using actor‐network theory, which the author drew on to carry out an in‐depth case study of the troubled implementation of a computerised reservation system in a major transport company. The application of some key ANT concepts, i.e. human and non‐human actors, symmetry and translation, is reflected upon, highlighting their benefits and limitations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper's aims are accomplished through a confessional account of how it was done, rather than a normative post hoc justification. Some empirical evidence is provided to illustrate the difficulties and problems encountered in travelling back and forth between theory, methodology and data.FindingsIn particular, ANT was very useful in focusing the paper on how to look at IS success and failure symmetrically and how social and technical distinctions are socially constructed, for instance in the conception and application of yield management software. Formulating a series of translations to encompass a large number of actors is shown to have provided some explanatory capacity. But a limitation is how to relate local and global actors, which is also a matter of power relations and politics.Originality/valueThe paper explains why, as a late and unplanned reaction to this, but also in contradiction with ANT principles, it ended up complementing ANT with Clegg's theory of power to bridge that gap. The paper concludes with a discussion of where the difficulties lie in using ANT and how it can be misused in IS research; the author argues that this is due to a lack of exposure to post‐structuralism in IS research, compared with other management‐related disciplines; and that recent efforts by scholars in the science and technology studies field to combine constructivist approaches such as ANT with critical social analysis should be considered.

We discuss the introduction of an information system where the dominant coalition claimed project success. While the key users did not use the system as intended and the project goals were not achieved, the project committee reported success to the top management board. Using a multi-methodological approach, we can follow how different stakeholders attributed different meanings to the system introduced over time. The rhetorical tools used are analysed using a narrative methodology. We draw on the social construction of technology and use the concept of relevant social groups to understand the different interests influencing the organisational dynamics. We complement this approach by employing the concepts of organisational power and cultural fit between the new system and the different subcultures. We found that this multiple approach explains well how the acceptance of the new software processes was interpreted differently within the organisation, and also by the software supplier. Although limited, our case study reveals the process of socially constructing the success or failure of an information system using this multiple research approach. We compare our results with the literature on IS failures and we consider the value of combining constructionist and critical approaches through a narrative methodology.

Government, major information and communications technology (ICT) companies, and educational institutions in the United Kingdom currently claim that ICT skills training offers inclusion into the new economy. We focus on a private–public training initiative and its impact on the socially excluded, specifically lone women parents. Narrative data from four United Kingdom educational sites participating in this computer network engineer training program highlight a systemic paradox: that ICT skills development initiatives designed to support lone women parents are simultaneously working in opposition to broader policy goals such as work–life balance and ironically serve to reproduce the participants' classification as socially excluded. The assumptions underpinning the model of social inclusion driving the ICT skills training course are analyzed critically using the concepts of community of practice, classificatory systems, and marginalization. Our findings suggest that ICT training courses and initiatives should be accompanied by changes in pedagogic practice that accommodate the more wide-ranging needs of those targeted for inclusion, as well as changes in employment settings. We conclude by exploring the implications of this for government policy formation, business vendor qualifications, the design of ICT skills training initiatives, and our understanding of the role of ICT skills in overcoming the digital divide.

The contributions to this book have explored, each in its own way and in different contexts, the material bases of regulation. They have focused on how organizational and societal practices are regulated through material artefacts that inscribe procedures and rules of conduct, thus vicariously replacing textual norms, linguistic instructions or direct supervision. The book outlines an emerging organizational landscape where an increasingly large share of regulative power is conveyed through the functional operation of standards, material artefacts and technical devices rather than through the establishment and the enforcement of formal rules. What seems to emerge is a new ecology of regulation whose distinctive feature is that regulative outcomes partly are achieved through social values and customs, partly are enforced by legal norms and formal authority, and partly are carried out by the material and functional artefacts brought about by technology (in particular digital technology, see Aroles and McLean, Chapter 9).

This book examines the multiple ways in which rules and regulation are entangled with the materiality of artefacts, practices and organizations. It continues the exploration of the theme of materiality in organizational and management studies, following from two previous volumes on Materiality and Space (de Vaujany and Mitev, 2013) and Materiality and Time (de Vaujany et al., 2014). This third volume addresses the following questions: How are organizations regulated through material practices? What are the relationships among norms, rules, practices and artefacts? What are the links between material artefacts and organizational control? Do regulations conveyed through artefacts have any specificity? How do organizations standardize their products, services and infrastructures to embed themselves materially in global markets?

This article identifies a gap in the inclusion of the postmodern concept in critical information systems (IS) research. Starting from the three critical tasks, insight, critique, and transformative definition, we argue that the second task of critique has been less commonly addressed. Filling that gap can begin by exploring how critical management studies have used both critical theory and postmodernism. The authors draw on Alvesson and Deetz’s (1996) argumentation that these two bodies of literature can complement each other and cohabit. There is no need for a unitary critical position, but there is currently an imbalance in critical IS research, as Habermassian approaches have remained untouched by a poststructuralist critique. Postmodern approaches are more cautious on transformative definition, and they are well suited to the task of critique. They have also been applied to examine modernist themes such as performativity and managerialism, which relate to underresearched and undercritiqued modernist concepts in IS.

A link is made between the problematic introduction of a new computerised reservation system (CRS) at French Railways in 1993 and the high-speed train technological innovation, the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse) successfully introduced in 1981. Both are about modernising railways and one interesting factor is that French Railways chose to purchase a computer system from American Airlines in 1989. The strategic role CRS played in the US airline industry in the 70s and 80s partly explains this choice. But emulating the competitive advantage American Airlines gained with the same computer system through yield management and electronic control of distribution channels proved more difficult in the French context due to differences between rail and air transport modes, US air and European rail market structures and regulation regimes. The new computer system is closely related to the high-speed trains through differentiated pricing and yield management. Some price differentiation, together with compulsory reservation, was first introduced in French Railways on the TGVs in 1981. Yield management and quota management, heavily used in airlines, was made possible through the new CRS implemented in 1993 but proved problematic. Revisiting the TGV project helps understand the CRS implementation difficulties by recognising the French notion of rail transport as a public service and its associated social, cultural and political dimensions; how this led French Railways to conceive of TGV technology as a way to prevent rail transport decline; how the existence of the TGV shifted the focus from road/rail to air/rail competition; and how the subsequent link between the TGV and the new airline computer system, in particular through yield management, had detrimental effects. It was interpreted as imposing commercial principles on the whole French rail network and as an attack on French Railways’ public service mission. The import of new tools such as CRS and yield management did not lead to a direct adoption but an adaptation of these management models to a specific national context.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate the contribution that historical awareness may add to the field of information systems (IS) research. Despite the offerings from the study of history, the IS community has not developed a strong tradition of historical research (Land, 2010; Mitev & de Vaujany, 2012; see also a special issue on history in IS research, Bryant et al., 2013). Arguably, the adoption of historical sensitivity and awareness is especially pertinent in a field that is often driven by the “awesome potential” of advanced information and communication technologies. All too frequently, we lose sight of some of the difficulties that are being posed as we are seduced by new technology, and the field of IS especially can suffer from presentism (see Hartog’s chapter in this book). The acquisition of a historical consciousness may enable the evaluation of these changes within their historical context and origins. Quite often superficial changes are focused upon by the management consultancy “change industry”, and so concepts and themes are often repackaged several years later (Westrup, 2005), with little awareness as to how these recent trends compare with similar developments in the past.

Purpose – This paper investigates how Information Systems (IS) researchers apply institutional theoretical frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to explore the operationalization of meta-theoretical frameworks for empirical research which can often present difficulties in IS research. The authors include theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects to explore modalities of use and suggest further avenues. Design/methodology/approach – After an overview of institutional concepts, the authors carry out a thematic analysis of journal papers on IS and institutional frameworks indexed in EBSCO and ABI databases from 1999 to 2009. This consists of descriptive, thematic coding and cluster analysis of this textual database, this combined qualitative and quantitative method offers a unique way of analyzing how operationalization is carried out. Findings – The findings suggest three groups of publications which represent different methodological approaches and empirical foci: “descriptive exploratory approaches,” “generalizing approaches,” and “sociological approaches.” The authors suggest that these three groups represent possible patterns of the use of “meta” social theories in IS research, reflecting a search for disciplinary legitimacy. This helps us analyze papers according to how they use and apply theories. The authors identify the “organizing vision” and the regulatory approach as two institutionalist “intermediary” concepts developed by IS researchers. Furthermore, the authors find that institutional theoretical frameworks have been used in “direct,” “intermediary” or “combined” conceptualizations. The authors also confirm the dynamism of the IS institutional research stream, as evidenced by the increase in number of articles between 1999 and 2009, and identify a maturation process of the IS field in investigating a social theory. Originality/value – The evolution the authors identify in the application of institutional theoretical frameworks in the IS field reveals conformity in methodological, theoretical and empirical terms. By identifying these patterns, it becomes possible to understand institutional reasons for their existence and legitimacy; and to propose other avenues of exploration in future IS research, such as combining different theoretical lenses in institutional frameworks. The methodological contribution is to provide an innovative methodology which helps describe categories and levels of institutional theoretical frameworks used, leading to the identification of gaps and proposing further avenues of research.

This edited book concentrates on the materiality of artefacts, practices, and organizations and on their historical dimensions. The book combines the recent scholarly interest on sociomateriality with a deep fascination with time and a secular perspective. It adds a time dimension that complements the spatial focus of the first book on “Materiality and Space” published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.