Turn to the material: Remote diagnostics systems and new forms of boundary-spanning

نویسندگان

  • Katrin Jonsson
  • Jonny Holmström
  • Kalle Lyytinen
چکیده

To learn and adapt, organizations engage widely in Information Technology (IT)-mediated boundary-spanning. This involves making sense of a swath of peripheral information made available by digital means so as to expand local knowledge. Prior research on boundary-spanning has paid scant attention to material differences between IT systems in enabling or constraining such activity. In this article, we argue that material features do matter: features afforded by IT systems have a significant impact on the form and content of boundary-spanning. We analyze material features and related affordances provided by remote diagnostics systems – a family of ubiquitous IT systems. These features allow remote diagnostics systems to collect, store, and continuously analyze data about the state of machinery and related production processes across space, time and organizational boundaries. Organizations use these systems to determine when maintenance intervention is needed, or to improve their production processes. Often, these systems are run by external service providers at remote sites, which become the new ears and the eyes of a focal organization’s production processes. Building on a longitudinal multi-site case study of two organizations, we explore the impacts of remote diagnostics systems on boundary-spanning. We observe that material features afforded by the remote diagnostics led the organizations to change their boundary-spanning in contradictory ways. On one hand, they reinforced existing boundaries. On the other hand, they crossed or cut down others, or created new ones. This suggests that the material features of these systems, when combined with new knowledge creation and sharing practices, within and 1471-7727/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2009.07.001 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 (0) 90 7869387. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (K. Jonsson), [email protected] (J. Holmström), [email protected] (K. Lyytinen). Information and Organization 19 (2009) 233–252

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Information and Organization

دوره 19  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2009