Organisational differences?
Hi everyone, I wonder if anyone can lend some literature to the impression I have from interviewing a series of software engineers that their work in technology organisations is more valuable that the work of other parts of the organisation - e.g., "management", marketing, facilities, etc. Thanks a bunch, Elizabeth Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD Student Department of Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/ e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk
Ahem - I should have said that this seems to be the perspective of the engineers, not necessarily my perspective! On 16 Oct 2006, at 09:34, Elizabeth Van Couvering wrote:
Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can lend some literature to the impression I have from interviewing a series of software engineers that their work in technology organisations is more valuable that the work of other parts of the organisation - e.g., "management", marketing, facilities, etc.
Thanks a bunch,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD Student Department of Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/ e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk
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Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD Student Department of Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/ e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk
My dissertation research has been looking at many of these same issues in the context of video game development companies in the US and India. I've found several different veins of work useful for thinking about it (see below). I think the biggest aspect is that epistemic violence is done on all sides. I'm actually giving a talk at GDC (Game Developers Conference) looking at "corporate geomorphology" which is just a fun (you have to be funny/have fun in GDC talks) way of talking about and thinking about fault lines in an organization. The point seems to be that we (all of us) are disciplined as a part of our disciplinary training to judge what counts and doesn't count as knowledge. That's the way it works, in many respects this is a necessary component. What we forget is how to come back together and make new knowledge in between disciplines (the inter part of interdisciplinary). Engineers, managers, artists, designers, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, ... are all guilty of this. Cheers. Casey Boundary Objects Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Epistemic Cultures / Faultlines / Practice Centered Study Knorr-Cetina, K. D. (1983). The Ethnographic Study of Scientific Work: Towards a Constructivist Interpretation of Science. In K. D. Knorr-Cetina & M. Mulkay (Eds.), Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science (pp. 115-140). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Traweek, S. (1988). Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Traweek, S. (2000). Faultlines. In R. Reid & S. Traweek (Eds.), Doing Science + Culture: How Cultural and Interdisciplinary Studies are Changing the Way We Look at Science and Medicine (pp. 21-48). New York, NY: Routledge Press. Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Forsythe, D. E. (2001). Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Organizational Studies - While I have a less full understanding of this material it certainly is useful. Still working out how precisely it fits together in my work. Another poster mentioned this, and I tend to agree, mostly. Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Barley, S. R. (1996). Technicians in the Workplace: Ethnographic Evidence for Bringing Work into Organizational Studies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(3), 404-441. Chris Kelty & Gabriella Coleman - Gabriella Coleman's dissertation is very good, and captures very well the recursive public of Debian F/OSS developers. It's just one perspective, but if you take those ideas and contrast them with the publics of other epistemic communities, you get some interesting stuff falling out. It uses CK's notion of recursive publics pretty extensively. CK's article is also available through Anthrosource for you AAA members out there. Kelty, C. (2005). Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics. Cultural Anthropology, 20(2), 185-214. Coleman, G. E. (2005). The Social Construction of Freedom in Free and Open Source Software: Hackers, Ethics, and the Liberal Tradition. Unpublished Dissertation, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Social Worlds Becker, H. (1984). Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. On 10/16/06, Elizabeth Van Couvering <e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk> wrote:
Ahem - I should have said that this seems to be the perspective of the engineers, not necessarily my perspective! On 16 Oct 2006, at 09:34, Elizabeth Van Couvering wrote:
Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can lend some literature to the impression I have from interviewing a series of software engineers that their work in technology organisations is more valuable that the work of other parts of the organisation - e.g., "management", marketing, facilities, etc.
Thanks a bunch,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD Student Department of Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/ e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk
Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can lend some literature to the impression I have from interviewing a series of software engineers that their work in technology organisations is more valuable that the work of other parts of the organisation - e.g., "management", marketing, facilities, etc.
Hi Elizabeth, Knut Rolland (Dept. of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway: <knutrr@idi.ntnu.no>) now has the author's proofs of his forthcoming article, "Achieving knowledge across borders: facilitating practices of triangulation, obliterating digital junkyards¹¹" (part of a special issue of _Ethics and Information Technology_, made up of articles developed from a faculty workshop at NTNU in 2005 on Bridging Cultures: Computer Ethics, Culture, and ICT,¹¹ sponsored by the Programme for Applied Ethics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), (May Thorseth, Director)). Rolland provides an excellent overview on literature relevant to organizational cultures, with an emphasis on computer science and engineering, and a specific focus on efforts to bridge various cultures within organizations (defined in part as _knowledge_ cultures, because they differ in their assumptions and practices as to what counts as knowledge and how knowledge is to be re-presented). His own case-study documents both a failure and an interesting success in a global organization to foster such culture-bridging collaboration, accompanied by careful analysis of the factors contributing to success / failure. I suspect that if you email him directly, he would be happy to share a version of his article with you. Good luck, and can you share your resulting bibliography with the list? cheers, charles ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies <http://www.drury.edu/gp21> Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Information Ethics Fellow, 2006-07, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org> Vice-President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes <http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php> Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23
Oddly enough, I just got a flier in my mailbox for a book: The Geek Gap - Bill Pfleging and Minda Zetlin "Why business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive" Publisher: Prometheus Books I have no idea about the book, the authors or anything. Just odd to see it at the same time, and I thought I'd send it out. Cheers. Casey On 10/16/06, Elizabeth Van Couvering <e.j.van-couvering@lse.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I wonder if anyone can lend some literature to the impression I have from interviewing a series of software engineers that their work in technology organisations is more valuable that the work of other parts of the organisation - e.g., "management", marketing, facilities, etc.
participants (3)
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Casey O'Donnell -
Charles Ess -
Elizabeth Van Couvering