Data are no longer simply a component of administrative and managerial work but a pervasive resource and medium through which organizations come to know and act upon the contingencies they confront. We theorize how the ongoing technological developments reinforce the traditional functions of data as instruments of management and control but also reframe and extend their role. By rendering data as technical entities, digital technologies transform the process of knowing and the knowledge functions data fulfil in socioeconomic life. These functions are most of the times mediated by putting together disperse and steadily updatable data in more stable entities we refer to as data objects. Users, customers, products, and physical machines rendered as data objects become the technical and cognitive means through which organizational knowledge, patterns, and practices develop. Such conditions loosen the dependence of data from domain knowledge, reorder the relative significance of internal versus external references in organizations, and contribute to a paradigmatic contemporary development that we identify with the decentering of organizations of which digital platforms are an important specimen.

Organizations Decentered: Data Objects, Technology and Knowledge / Alaimo, Cristina; Kallinikos, Ioannis. - In: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE. - ISSN 1047-7039. - 33:1(2022), pp. 19-37. [10.1287/orsc.2021.1552]

Organizations Decentered: Data Objects, Technology and Knowledge

Alaimo, Cristina
;
Kallinikos, Jannis
2022

Abstract

Data are no longer simply a component of administrative and managerial work but a pervasive resource and medium through which organizations come to know and act upon the contingencies they confront. We theorize how the ongoing technological developments reinforce the traditional functions of data as instruments of management and control but also reframe and extend their role. By rendering data as technical entities, digital technologies transform the process of knowing and the knowledge functions data fulfil in socioeconomic life. These functions are most of the times mediated by putting together disperse and steadily updatable data in more stable entities we refer to as data objects. Users, customers, products, and physical machines rendered as data objects become the technical and cognitive means through which organizational knowledge, patterns, and practices develop. Such conditions loosen the dependence of data from domain knowledge, reorder the relative significance of internal versus external references in organizations, and contribute to a paradigmatic contemporary development that we identify with the decentering of organizations of which digital platforms are an important specimen.
2022
Digital technology, organizational form, organization and management theory, organizational processes, practice, information technology and systems, organization communication and information systems, digital transformation
Organizations Decentered: Data Objects, Technology and Knowledge / Alaimo, Cristina; Kallinikos, Ioannis. - In: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE. - ISSN 1047-7039. - 33:1(2022), pp. 19-37. [10.1287/orsc.2021.1552]
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
orsc.2021.1552.pdf

Open Access

Tipologia: Versione dell'editore
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 1.08 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.08 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri
Pubblicazioni consigliate

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11385/213163
Citazioni
  • Scopus 56
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 37
  • OpenAlex ND
social impact