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Boundary objects in information science
Abstract
Boundary objects are abstract or physical artefacts that exist in the liminal spaces between adjacent communities of people. The theory of BOs was originally introduced by Star and Griesemer in a study on information practices at the Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology but has since been adapted in a broad range of research contexts in a large number of disciplines including the various branches of information science. The aim of this review article is to present an overview of the state of the art of information science research informed by the theory of BOs, critically discuss the notion, and propose a structured overview of how the notion has been applied in the study of information.
... Th ES that standardizes the formats of data and information and modularizes the subparts of a functionality to attend to departmental demands [39] can serve as a common platform across a firm [39], [40]. Different departments thus can use the same ES to achieve their distinct task demands, and at the same time, maintain their interconnections [40], and share information and knowledge. ...
... Th ES that standardizes the formats of data and information and modularizes the subparts of a functionality to attend to departmental demands [39] can serve as a common platform across a firm [39], [40]. Different departments thus can use the same ES to achieve their distinct task demands, and at the same time, maintain their interconnections [40], and share information and knowledge. ...
... However, as the ES becomes a common platform, it also reinforces operation stability and can run the risk of incurring rigidity [11], [40]. This creates inertia that forces firms to stick with existing ES and attendant resource investments [35], [38]. ...
Nowadays enterprise system(s) (ESs) have become a pervasive digital platform and are widely utilized by firms. However, uncertain environments require firms continuously adapt their ES. ES adaptation involves the postimplementation changes of an ES to meet changing business needs. How firms adapt their ES to facilitate organizational agility remains an understudied issue. Drawing from the literature of organizational mindfulness, this article holds that firms need to foster organizational mindfulness—a firm's willingness and capacity to capture and refine discriminatory details about its environments—to facilitate ES adaptation and organizational agility. We build and test a model based on 138 responses of Taiwanese manufacturing firms. Our findings demonstrate that organizational mindfulness can help firms to achieve better ES adaptation and organizational agility. Specifically, organizational mindfulness can facilitate not only ES adaptation but also entrepreneurial and adaptive agility that is the offensive and defensive dimensions of organizational agility. ES adaptation is mainly related to entrepreneurial agility. This article contributes to the agility literature by proposing and testing a model of how organizational mindfulness affects ES adaptation and organizational agility.
... The CSWC literature has used the boundary object concept to study online collaborative tools. Boundary objects were introduced by Star and Griesemer in 1989 and are defined as abstract or physical "things" that reside in the interfaces between organizations or groups of people (Huvila et al., 2017(Huvila et al., : p. 1807). They are seen as "both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites" (Lee, 2007: p. 309). ...
... Boundary objects have been a popular concept in the past three decades. In their literature review, Huvila et al. (2017) found that Star and Griesemer's 1989 article -the first one to cover the concept explicitly. Star and Griesemer (1989) assessed that boundary objects are these "things" that act as translation devices, having different meanings across various social worlds, while adopting a structure "common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable" (p. ...
... Even when the boundary object is well understood by an homogenous community within a network, it could still impede the common understanding and innovation within the ecosystem. For instance, Huvila et al. (2017) studied the CSCW field, where the community considers Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) as boundary objects serving coordinating functions (p. 15). ...
Summary (English)
Purpose: This thesis aims to better understand how individuals working in a virtual organisation can co-create effectively using online collaborative tools, while mitigating the challenges.
The research objectives: Identify the most important co-creation activities from a virtual organisation; Define the scope of the open source culture of Space Decentral and explore how it influences aspects of governance and knowledge management; and, Review the gaps in managing activities collaboratively within virtual organisations.
Design/methodology/approach: This research uses the literature on the concepts of boundary objects and open source in a cocreation environment to analyze online collaborative tools. Data were collected from conversations and documents found on chat platforms and websites related to the case study called Space Decentral. This material was analyzed through netnography, a relatively new research technique related to ethnography, and text-mining / collection and management of documents from the web. The founding members of Space Decentral wanted to create an open and virtual space agency.
Findings: The study of a virtual organisation seems to have led to a different sequence of the co-creation stages and activities established by Frank Piller and Joel West’s 2014 co-creation framework. Members of Space Decentral focused, first, on the Collaborating co creation stage and, then, the Defining one - which is the launch of the co-creation process which seeks to address the problems(s) of engaging external partners in the co-creation effort. Overall, the analysis found recurring themes.They were open source; governance and decision-making; and, leveraging external knowledge - especially within the blockchain community such as Aragon and Ethereum, which include programmers and miners as well. What we found is that online collaborative tools could not “cope” during Space Decentral growth or evolution, especially beyond the structuring of the governance and decision-making framework.
Practical implications: The role of virtual organisations as a managerial agency must shift to include both the management of knowledge and expertise, in addition of the management of their online collaborative tools.
Résumé (Français)
Objectif : Cette recherche vise à mieux comprendre comment les individus travaillant dans une organisation virtuelle peuvent co-créer efficacement à l'aide d'outils collaboratifs en ligne, tout en atténuant les défis.
Les objectifs de la recherche : Identifier les activités de co-création les plus importantes d'une organisation virtuelle; définir la portée de la culture open source de Space Decentral et explorer comment celle-ci influence les aspects de la gouvernance et de la gestion des connaissances; et, examiner les lacunes dans la gestion collaborative des activités au sein des organisations virtuelles.
Conception/méthodologie/approche : Cette recherche utilise la littérature sur les concepts d'objets frontières et d'open source dans un environnement de co-création pour analyser les outils collaboratifs en ligne. Les données ont été recueillies à partir de conversations et de documents trouvés sur des plateformes de discussions et des sites Web en lien avec l'étude de cas appelée Space Decentral. Ce matériel a été analysé de manière netnographique, une technique de recherche relativement nouvelle en lien avec l’ethnographie, en plus de l’exploration, la collection, et la gestion de texte sur le web. En quelques mots, les membres fondateurs de Space Decentral souhaitaient créer une agence spatiale ouverte et virtuelle.
Constats : L’étude d’une organisation virtuelle semble avoir conduit à une séquence différente des étapes et des activités de co-création du cadre de Frank Piller et Joel West en 2014. Les membres de Space Decentral se sont d'abord concentrés sur l'étape de « collaboration », puis sur celle de la « définition » - qui est le lancement du processus de co-création et cherche à résoudre les problèmes impliquant des partenaires externes dans la co-création. Dans l'ensemble, l'analyse a révélé des thèmes récurrents. Ils étaient l’influence de la culture open source; la gouvernance et la prise de décision; et, le fait de tirer parti des connaissances externes - en particulier au sein de la communauté blockchain comme Aragon et Ethereum, qui incluent également des programmeurs et des « mineurs » de blockchain. Ce que nous avons découvert, c'est que les outils collaboratifs
en ligne ne pouvaient pas "faire face" à la croissance ou à l'évolution de Space Decentral au-delà de la structuration du cadre de gouvernance et de prise de décision.
Implications pratiques : Le rôle des organisations virtuelles en tant qu'agence managériale doit intégrer à la fois la gestion des connaissances et de l'expertise, en plus de la gestion de leurs outils collaboratifs en ligne.
... In a study of interdisciplinary collaboration from information science as described through the perspective of boundary objects, concrete examples include i) informational artefacts; ii) their related practices; and iii) the epistemological premises of artefacts, practices and their intersections (Huvila et al., 2017). Huvila et al. (2017) claimed that boundary objects negotiate meaning and help to understand and articulate the connections and disconnections between communities, cultures and information infrastructures. ...
... In a study of interdisciplinary collaboration from information science as described through the perspective of boundary objects, concrete examples include i) informational artefacts; ii) their related practices; and iii) the epistemological premises of artefacts, practices and their intersections (Huvila et al., 2017). Huvila et al. (2017) claimed that boundary objects negotiate meaning and help to understand and articulate the connections and disconnections between communities, cultures and information infrastructures. The empirical data in the current study exemplify a variety of informational artefacts from a makerspace, a variety of practices related to the artefacts and different concepts and understandings from a variety of professions. ...
... Drawing on the boundary object model visualised in the three forms of interplay-i) informational artefacts; ii) their related practices; and iii) the concepts of epistemological premises of artefacts, practices and their intersections (Huvila et al., 2017)-the current study demonstrated how the makerspace had challenges in coordinating studies and how to make it professionally relevant, but still, the course created a shared space for people with different motivations; there were coincident boundaries. ...
To enhance research based interdisciplinary collaboration, the theoretical perspective of ‘Boundary Object’ was used in this article to analyse how Makerspace is a shared site of collaboration in an elective course. The study explores in practice the transitional space between institutionalized and research based higher education in relation to the free maker movement. This was driven by a pedagogical need to study how student motivation related to personal and professional interest can be maintained in a free space of learning in a formalised coursework. The theoretical model of Boundary Object was suitable to visualize a triad of interplay by i) informational artifacts; ii) their related practices; and iii) the concepts of epistemological premises of artifacts, practices, and their intersections. The study shows these concepts in a real-life context of establishing an elective course at a University and how the makerspace concept has both challenges and potential in coordinating interdisciplinary studies and how to make it professionally relevant. Despite some challenges the elective course was created as a new shared space for people with different motivations. The study demonstrate how such an elective course can contribute positively to student life, seen in a both professional and social perspective; it can strengthen inclusion, a feeling of belonging, study enjoyment and interdisciplinarity skills in a professional setting. These qualities form a value based conceptual framework, with success criteria that can enable essential student skills for the 21st century; creativity and collaboration for sustainability.
... The next section provides a brief overview of blockchain technologies, including the contextual origin of the technologies and the proposed motives for their creation. Following this, we present a boundary object (BO; Huvila et al., 2016;Star and Griesemer, 1989) perspective that treats the development of blockchain as a community-spanning system of behaviours, operating within and across distinct techno-political social worlds (De Domenico and Baronchelli, 2019;Gikay and Stanescu, 2019;Golumbia, 2015). The research method is presented which details how qualitative data are gathered and analysed from five key social worlds, specifically users, cryptographic researchers, protocol developers, corporate architects, and regulators. ...
... A BO is described as an abstract or physical artefact existing 'in the liminal spaces between adjacent communities of people' (Huvila et al., 2016: 1) or, alternatively, as 'things that exist at junctures where varied social worlds meet in an area of mutual concern' (Clarke and Star, 2008: 121). The concept emerged as sociologists attempted to understand cooperative design processes that took place between actors in different 'social worlds', that is, groups that would otherwise have limited direct interaction (Huvila et al., 2016;Jacob, 2005). Researchers found amalgamated groups of individuals usually work towards a common goal without necessarily sharing consensus on project specifics (Kaplan, 2017;Star and Griesemer, 1989). ...
... Yet, this required different collaborating social worlds establish some common mode of operation, enacted through effective communication, cooperation, and, most importantly, the reconciliation of differences as and when they emerge. Such reconciliation requires effort by all involved -due mainly to internecine divergences of opinion, or ideology that manifest throughout the project timeline (Ciborra and Andreu, 2001;Huvila et al., 2016;Kaplan, 2017;Star and Griesemer, 1989). ...
Blockchain systems afford new privacy capabilities. This threatens to create conflict, as different social groups involved in blockchain development often disagree on which capabilities specific systems should enact. This article adopts a boundary object perspective to make sense of disagreements between collaborating social worlds. We perform a case study of privacy attitudes among collaborating actors in Monero, a cryptocurrency community that emphasises privacy and decentralisation alongside a set of values sometimes described as anti-establishment, crypto-anarchist, and/ or cypherpunk. The case study performs a series of interviews with users, developers, cryptographic researchers, corporate architects, and government regulators. Three novel and important findings emerge. The first is that none of the social worlds express a desire to monitor routine transactions, despite the obvious business and tax-collection value of such data. The second is that regulators are happy to postpone active involvement, based on the flawed assumption they can impose privacy-related regulation later, once risks have become clear. Such regulation may not be possible as protocols and rulesets currently being coded into the system may be impossible to amend in the future (unless they can obtain either developer or network consensus). The third is that regulators assume methods for overseeing extraordinary transaction are necessary to avoid widespread, near-effortless money laundering. Yet, each of the other social worlds is operating under the assumption that this trade-off has already been accepted. These findings demonstrate subtle power transitions and changes in privacy attitudes that have implications for research on blockchain, management, and boundary objects in general.
... A autora também destaca o papel das ontologias, colocando que elas são "mais expressivas que as taxonomias [e por isso] têm sido usadas como base para a elaboração de modelos conceituais, facilitando o entendimento não ambíguo de conceituações de comunidades afins" (Campos, 2018, p. 485). Huvila et al (2017), em um artigo de revisão de literatura, buscam investigar o estado da arte das pesquisas em ciência da informação que se utilizam da teoria dos objetos de fronteira nos estudos de informação. ...
... Os autores identificam, na Ciência da Informação, que a teoria dos objetos de fronteira é utilizada em pesquisas da Organização do Conhecimento; nas práticas de informação, ou seja, busca, recuperação, uso, compartilhamento e curadoria da informação; nos estudos de documentação; na informática social, que significa examinar tecnologias de informação e comunicação em contextos sociotécnicos; e no trabalho cooperativo apoiado por computador, ou seja, artefatos informativos como formas sociomateriais (Huvila et al, 2017). ...
Nesta pesquisa, a ciência é vista a partir de sua complexidade, considerando seu aspecto multidimensional como defendido por Edgar Morin e López-Huertas. Infere que organizar um conhecimento multidimensional, como a Bioética, deve levar em conta o fenômeno, as teorias, os métodos e os objetos de fronteira. Organiza o conhecimento multidimensional da Bioética formalmente numa ontologia para atender às necessidades informacionais dos pesquisadores e contribuir para o desenvolvimento científico da área. Recorre a metodologia de construção de ontologias SABIO para elaborar uma ontologia de referência do domínio multidimensional da Bioética. Seleciona as fontes de informação que sustentam a aquisição do conhecimento a partir da metodologia de revisão sistemática da literatura. Utiliza a ontologia de fundamentação de John Sowa para dar suporte ao desenvolvimento da ontologia de referência de domínio. Sustenta a construção dos conceitos em uma visão lógico-pragmática pautada nas teorias da Ingetraut Dahlberg e de Charles Sanders Peirce. Elabora a ontologia de referência a partir de quatro Subontologias que se relacionam entre si. Cada subontologia se subdivide em classes e subclasses permitindo uma integração entre elas. Aponta que a representação de um domínio multidimensional deve considerar o fenômeno, as teorias, os métodos e os objetos de fronteira. A construção dos conceitos deve considerar a tríade signo-referente-interpretante, utilizando a teoria do conceito da Dahlberg e a visão pragmática e semiótica de Peirce.
... In this research, each live streamed video (i.e. not a pre-recorded video) and embedded chat room interactions through RPAN was viewed through a transdisciplinary conceptual lens of an informational 'boundary object' (Star, 2010) that brings together people and their various reactions from all walks of life to understand di erent perspectives on a social issue through an entertaining audiovisual video or virtual meme (Huvila et al., 2017;Makri, 2020;Miller, 2020;Tim et al., 2017). Boundary objects are also conceptualized as tangible yet malleable forms of information that are used and interpreted in di erent ways by di erent communities (Miller, 2020, p. 60). ...
... Each video with its own chat room, categorized by Reddit developers, broadcasted from a community subreddit reflecting particular audience interests such as live music, comedy, video gaming, cooking, exercising and personal monologues. In this research, each live streamed video and embedded chat room interactions through RPAN was viewed through a transdisciplinary conceptual lens of an informational 'boundary object' (Star, 2010) that brings together people and their various reactions from all walks of life to understand di erent perspectives on a social issue through an entertaining audiovisual video or virtual meme (Huvila et al., 2017;Miller, 2020). 'In contrast to other types of analytical notions, the inbetweenness of the concept of boundary object makes it a valuable analytical device for examining ensembles of people, information, and technology that are ever-shifting and multi-sited. ...
This paper presents the findings from a project which aims to broaden our understanding of how people experienced social livestreaming videos on Reddit's Public Access Network (RPAN) as digital informational boundary objects in the context of the global pandemic. A digital ethnography research approach revealed in-depth narrative-based outcomes showing how RPAN streamed videos as digital informational boundary objects were experienced by its streamers as a form of live therapy, promoting personal and social resilience to cope with the restrictions from the global pandemic and to recover and heal from some of its effects. Data analysis identified six forms of RPAN livestreaming therapeutic information experiences: Exploring self-identity; Self-improvement; Positive vibing; Vicarious wanderlust; Mental health connections; and Inclusive social distancing. This study has significant implications for understanding livestreamers' informational and mental health experiences and impacts of livestreaming in the context of the global livestreaming ecosystem, social change and regenerative post-pandemic futures.
... The creation of exosomatic forms of information (Bates 2018) strongly suggests that new boundaries are forged in these interactions between parents and young people and has implications for how the embodiment of information may function in this context. These documents are boundary objects, or physical artifacts that allow for mutual understanding among family members who may not share the same cognitive models of gender (Huvila et al. 2017). Parents say that the creation and maintenance of these boundary objects allows for information about gender to be exchanged among family members without bringing attention to, or highlighting, the emotional component of the exchange. ...
... In other words, children do not want to and should not have to manage their parents' emotions about their gender, and this goal is met through the creation of boundary objects that help facilitate information exchange without emotion. This finding extends our understanding of how boundary objects function outside of workplace contexts; it also adds an affective dimension to our understanding of boundary objects as a theoretical construct (Huvila et al. 2017). ...
... Previous studies on boundary objects fall into two main streams: (1) properties that boundary objects are supposed to have; and (2) dichotomized in-use versus non-use of boundary objects (e.g., Barrett & Oborn, 2010;Levina & Vaast, 2005). Properties that have been associated with effective boundary objects include modularity, abstraction, accommodation, standardisation, tangibility, accessibility, timeliness, and concreteness (Bechky, 2003;Huvila et al., 2017;Leonardi et al., 2019;Star, 1989). These properties have been further associated with particular types of boundary objects. ...
... For instance, application databases and knowledge repositories usually share a common syntax to afford easy transference, whereas objects, models, and maps support the transformation of knowledge from one form to another (Carlile, 2002). 'In-use' boundary objects (i.e., objects that people significantly interact with and through which they develop a shared identity) can be highly effective, whereas those that are not used (i.e., merely 'designated,' neglected, or only superficially used) may be ineffective for knowledge sharing (Huvila et al., 2017;Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2015;Levina & Vaast, 2005). ...
Virtual teams face the unique challenge of coordinating their knowledge work across time, space, and people. Information technologies, and digital artefacts in particular, are essential to supporting coordination in highly dispersed teams, yet the extant literature is limited in explaining how such teams produce and reproduce digital artefacts for coordination. This paper describes a qualitative case study that examined the day-to-day practices of two highly dispersed virtual teams, with the initial conceptual lens informed by Carlile's (2004) knowledge management framework. Our observations suggest that knowledge coordination in these highly dispersed virtual teams involves the continuous production and reproduction of digital artefacts (which we refer to as technology practices) through three paired modes: ‘presenting-accessing’ (related to knowledge transfer); ‘representing-adding’ (related to knowledge translation); and ‘moulding-challenging’ (related to knowledge transformation). We also observed an unexpected fourth pair of technology practices, ‘withholding-ignoring,’ that had the effect of delaying certain knowledge coordination processes. Our findings contribute to both the knowledge coordination literature and the practical use of digital artefacts in virtual teams. Future research directions are discussed.
... Det finnes en hel del forskning på tverrfaglighet og forskningsbibliotek (se f.eks. Bøyum et al., 2017;Gullbekk, 2016;Huvila et al., 2017;Mack & Gibson, 2012;Palmer, 1996;Star, 1989;Steger et al., 2018), men relativt få har utført empiriske analyser av tverrfaglig forskningsstøtte og bibliotekpraksiser forstått som boundary objects. I artikkelen viser vi hvordan kombinasjonen er en fruktbar tilnaerming for å forstå hva som kjennetegner tverrfaglig forskningsstøtte, og hvordan de som gir og mottar støtten opplever denne. ...
... LIS, STS, BO, tverrfaglighet og bibliotekpraksiser I LIS-feltet kan diskusjoner om BOs spores tilbake til tidsskriftet Library Trends, slik Huvila et al. (2017) påpeker, spesielt utgave 45(2) fra 1996: Navigating Among the Disciplines: The Library and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Huvila et al. hevder sentrale begrep i LIS som omhandler tilgang til informasjonssystemer og kunnskapsorganiseringer med fordel kan analyseres som BOs. ...
It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinary research is required for adequately addressing global challenges. This article explores what interdisciplinary research implies for research libraries assisting such work, and for researchers receiving support. The main research question is: In what manner is interdisciplinary research support shaped and constructed as a result of contact and collaboration between researchers and the research library? Along with document studies, 15 semi-structured interviews have been conducted involving academic staff at the University of Oslo (UiO) and librarians at the UiO research library. Theoretical insight from the fields of Library and Information Science and Science and Technology Studies are combined using Boundary Objects (BO) as an analytical concept. In analysing empirical data, two dual-level competencies and library practices are identified: those that are technical and librarian, and those that are academically-professional and socio-emotional. In the junctions between these, interdisciplinary research support appears as a boundary object characterized as SubjectSocioTechnical. Collaboration and support for interdisciplinary research call for a complex of competencies, primarily because various support practices must be tailored to fit researchers’ disciplines and needs.
... This mapping exercise lasted between 30 and 45 minutes, and participants were not given any instructions or restrictions on where to walk. Before the participants began walking, the first author engaged the group through directed storytelling [52] to elicit memories and anecdotes that relate to the ongoing transition of the town into Bitcoin Beach. The goal of this 1-hour warm-up exercise was to have a baseline indicator of their individual and shared perceptions of change and to set the tone for the walking exercise by bringing to the fore aspects of material culture and the built environment that are relevant to the participants. ...
Value-based frameworks are widely used to guide the design of algorithms, yet their influence in mediating users’ perception and use of algorithm-driven technologies is vastly understudied. Moreover, there is a need to move research beyond a focus on human-algorithm interaction to account for how the values these frameworks promote – algorithmic values – become socialised outside the boundaries of the (human-algorithm) interaction and how they influence everyday practices that are not algorithmically mediated. This paper traces the entanglement of algorithmic values and everyday life by mapping how residents of the Salvadorian town of El Zonte perceive the top-down transition of the town into "Bitcoin Beach" through value-driven transformations to diverse aspects of their material culture and built environment. This approach advances empirical research on the impact of algorithms by acknowledging the myriad ways in which those who won’t or can’t (afford to) interact with algorithm-driven technologies are impacted by the value-based outcomes of their programming and provides novel insights for critically examining the role of algorithm-driven technologies in shaping sustainable futures.
... These properties are especially relevant in environments involving multidisciplinary teams, where it is necessary to work on the relationship between social and scientific aspects in conceptual models [31], [32]. Even, its usefulness extends to contexts where interactions between the physical and the digital occur, as it facilitates the understanding of how these interactions influence the respective positions within a shared framework [33], [34]. ...
The emerging Human-Centric Networks (HCN) paradigm shifts the passive role of individuals to an active one, intertwining the uncertainty of network resource usage with human dynamics, which are difficult to analyze and predict. This phenomenon implies an increase in reciprocal interactions between Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSS) and human activities, presenting the challenge of efficiently allocating network resources while taking into account qualitative human uncertainty. In this study, we propose a conceptual model that addresses and quantifies such uncertainties. The proposed model is characterized by its adaptability to various CPSS applications, facilitating its integration into existing applications and future innovations. The adaptability of the model is based on the application of the sociological concept of Boundary Objects (BO), which allows for the structuring of system components and the generation of a reference architecture that facilitates systematic problem solving. To evaluate the model, we propose a use case related to a Vehicle for Hire (VFH) application operating within a 5G network slice. The integration of the proposed model with the OMNET++ simulation framework has allowed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model in intricate computational environments and have shown its capacity to incorporate previously overlooked elements that are essential for the optimal allocation of resources in CPSS. This study proposes a methodology for comprehending and mitigating the consequences of human uncertainty, emphasizing the significance of a multidisciplinary approach to resource allocation in sophisticated technological systems.
... In Star and Griesemer's case, standardized methods of data generation were implemented to secure the quality and integrity of data collected by actors from multiple social worlds (e.g., hunters, amateur collectors, and nature preservationists), and several boundary objects were created to enable cooperation between these social worlds. Since the original 1989 article, the notion of boundary objects has proven to be a fruitful and generative concept through which to analyze cooperation in multiple domains, including information science (for a review, see Huvila et al. 2017), education (for a review, see Akkerman and Bakker 2011), and healthcare (e.g., Berg and Bowker 1997;Islind et al. 2022;Østerlund 2008;Zhou et al. 2011). Several studies have since elaborated upon our understanding of the concept, analyzing, for example, how the creation of boundary objects in itself can be a process that creates boundaries (Lee 2007). ...
In this paper, we analyze the efforts of a public healthcare business intelligence unit to implement and disseminate their data products and thus make the healthcare organization more data-driven. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a healthcare business intelligence unit (the BIU) whose mission is to improve healthcare efficiency and quality by making data and data analyses available to healthcare managers and staff. Their primary products consist of a data warehouse and Data Reports, both providing curated and daily updated data for healthcare staff to analyze and visualize. We conceptualize these Data Reports and the data warehouse as boundary objects through which cooperation around data between various users is achieved. Our focus is on the BIU’s efforts to introduce and promote the use of boundary objects to healthcare staff while providing them with the competencies to use them in practice. Efforts that we conceptualize as collaborative boundary work through which a new joint field of working with data is created between the BIU and healthcare staff. Based on the analysis of the ethnographic fieldwork, we point to three important aspects in creating this new joint field: Mobilizing interest, building local capabilities, and propagating data locally. The paper makes three contributions: It adds to our understanding of how new joint fields can be cultivated through collaborative boundary work to make healthcare data-driven; it contributes to the emergent field of data work studies; and finally, it adds to the largely normative literature on business intelligence and self-service business intelligence through an ethnographic analysis of its efforts to make healthcare data-driven.
... From the BO theory perspective addressed in RQ2, AFC tools might exist between the adjacent communities of researchers and fact-checkers by involving the latter in the process when it comes to assessing the performance and the usability of the tool, for instance because this is likely to help improve it (Miranda et al., 2019). This implies a transfer of knowledge from one professional community to another, although the computational process results from a work of interpretation (Huvila et al., 2017). The social aspects of fact-checking also play a role in the adoption of the technological artifact, including in terms of its perceived advantages (Fox, 2011). ...
Fact-checking is a time-consuming process that automation can potentially make more efficient. This study provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary state of the art that considers a holistic and sociotechnical approach to studying automated fact-checking (AFC) from a journalistic perspective. It identifies how AFC tools, as boundary objects, connect with their end users. The findings highlight that most research in AFC focuses on providing technological solutions to solve the multidimensional social problem of information disorder, and they also indicate the promise of human-machine teaming. This suggests that the cursor can be moved from a technological point of view toward a social one, provided that a relationship of confidence is established between the communities -developers and fact-checkers/journalists involved from either side of the tool. Although the conditions of use of a technological artifact are multifaceted, the reliability of the results that it provides participates in building such a trust-based relationship.
... , a paper that focused on communication and user participation in archival contexts. Another important work wasHuvila et al. (2017), in which the use of the theory of boundary objects in LIS is reviewed. Huotari's research focuses on «information and knowledge management, human information behaviour and practices, and information literacies in different contexts including everyday life, work, and health»(Känsäkoski et al., 2021). ...
This paper contributes to global knowledge of the study of information behaviour by offering a map of European research during the 21st century from quantitative and qualitative points of view. From a quantitative point of view, we detail the countries and institutions whose researchers have published results. From a qualitative point of view, we describe the researchers and areas of study at the main European research centres. The results show that there is no common research area, but rather isolated researchers or small leading research groups, generally from northern Europe, who worked in this area during the first years of the 21st century.
... The field of knowledge boundaries and boundary objects has been significantly developed by Star (1989) and Star and Griesemer (1989), who established the initial concept of boundary objects in the context of cross-discipline Museum collections, with significant definitional contributions following from Wenger (1998Wenger ( , 2000 and Carlile (2002Carlile ( , 2004. From these foundations, scholars (see for example the literature reviews of Trompette andVinck, 2009 andHuvila et al, 2017) have explored the application of boundary and boundary object concepts in a wide range of domains and cases over recent decades, of which the project management context represents only a minor fraction. ...
Purpose
Effective project learning can prevent projects from repeating the same mistakes; however, knowledge codification is required for project-to-project learning to be up-scaled across the temporal, geographical and organisational barriers that constrain personalised learning. This paper explores the state of practice for the structuring of codified project learnings as concrete boundary objects with the capacity to enable externalised project-to-project learning across complex boundaries. Cross-domain reconceptualisation is proposed to enable further research and support the future development of standardised recommendations for boundary objects that can enable project-to-project learning at scale.
Design/methodology/approach
An integrative literature review method has been applied, considering knowledge, project learning and boundary object scholarship as state-of-practice sources.
Findings
It is found that the extensive body of boundary object literature developed over the last three decades has not yet examined the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning and boundary-spanning capacity. Through a synthesis of the dispersed structural characteristic recommendations that have been made across examined domains, a reconceptualised schema of 30 discrete characteristics associated with boundary-spanning capacity for project-to-project learning is proposed to support further investigation.
Originality/value
This review makes a novel contribution as a first cross-domain examination of the internal structural characteristics of concrete boundary objects for project-to-project learning. The authors provide directions for future research through the reconceptualisation of a novel schema and the identification of important and previously unidentified research gaps.
... By studying various dynamics in organizational and social contexts, researchers who refer to the approach of social informatics are able to identify and understand the often paradoxical results of the use and adoption of information technology(Lamb R., Sawyer S., 2005;Oltmann S. M., Rosenbaum H., Hara N., 2006). Social informatics certainly does not exclude from its investigations, but rather is fully aware of it, the material properties of information technologies(Huvila I., Anderson T. D., Jansen E.,McKenzie P., Worrall A., 2017;Kling R., 2007).This recognition and awareness of the materiality of technology deviates from social constructivist approaches, which in fact deny the technology agency considering it as open to boundless interpretative flexibility(Sawyer S., Jarrahi M.H., 2014). ...
The debate on the socio-materiality of practices is still in an unstable balance between the "social" and the "material", between an interpretation of practice as an object of change (privileging human beings) or an agent of change (privileging its action on human (Gherardi S., 2017b, p. 39) beings). Socio-materiality (with or without hyphen) is a key concept in research and studies based on organizational and labor practices, because it is a theory that "illuminates the relationship between social practice and materiality in an organization" (Orlikowski W.J., 2007; Leonardi P.M., 2013). In this article we will refer to various hypotheses on the usefulness of the concept of "sociomateriality" in analyzing and describing the relationship between man and matter, between human and technological, between social and material as well as reflections on the theme of practices in philosophical thought.
... In generale, l'informatica sociale enfatizza gli studi consapevoli del contesto e degli usi in ambiti organizzativi e sociali(Fichman P., Sanfilippo M.R., Rosenbaum H., 2015).Invece di focalizzarsi esclusivamente sull'artefatto tecnologico, l'informatica sociale esamina il modo in cui le persone e le tecnologie dell'informazione interagiscono(Sawyer S., Rosenbaum H., 2000) Studiando varie dinamiche in contesti organizzativi e sociali, i ricercatori che si rifanno all'approccio dell'informatica sociale sono in grado di identificare e comprendere i risultati spesso paradossali dell'uso ed adozione della tecnologia informatica(Lamb R., Sawyer S., 2005;Oltmann S. M., Rosenbaum H., Hara N., 2006). L'informatica sociale non esclude certo dalle sue indagini, ma anzi ne è pienamente consapevole, le proprietà materiali delle tecnologie dell'informazione (Huvila I., Anderson T. D., Jansen E.,McKenzie P.,Worrall A., 2017;Kling R., 2007). ...
The debate on the socio-materiality of practices is still in an unstable balance between the "social" and the "material", between an interpretation of practice as an object of change (privileging human beings) or an agent of change (privileging its action on human (Gherardi S., 2017b, p. 39) beings). Socio-materiality (with or without hyphen) is a key concept in research and studies based on organizational and labor practices, because it is a theory that "illuminates the relationship between social practice and materiality in an organization" (Orlikowski W.J., 2007; Leonardi P.M., 2013). In this article we will refer to various hypotheses on the usefulness of the concept of "sociomateriality" in analyzing and describing the relationship between man and matter, between human and technological, between social and material as well as reflections on the theme of practices in philosophical thought. Parole chiavi Incarnazione, fenomenologia, apprendimento basato sulla pratica, conoscenza sensibile; sociomaterialità Introduzione Fin dall'inizio la svolta della pratica, definita in precedenza come "il ritorno della pratica" (Miettinen R., Samra-Fredericks D., Yanow D. , 2009; Gherardi S., 2017b), ha reso evidente che una "teoria della pratica unificata non esiste" e che, inoltre, "regnano disaccordi sulla natura dell'incarnazione, sulla pertinenza della tematizzazione quando si analizzano le pratiche, sul tipo di entità che mediano l'attività e se queste entità sono rilevanti per le pratiche come qualcosa di più che semplici intermediari tra gli esseri umani" (Schatzki, T. R., 2001, p. 11) 1 In quei primi studi molta dell'attenzione degli autori è andata verso lo sforzo di identificare gli elementi che compongono una pratica ed alcuni approcci sono stati anche denominati "teoria della pratica basata su elementi" (Morley J., 2017, p. 82). L'inserimento ed incorporazione degli elementi materiali nelle pratiche sociali è stato, di fatto, uno sviluppo molto importante nelle teorie della pratica sociale (Reckwitz A., 2002; Schatzki T. R. , 2002; 2010; Shove E., Pantzar M., Watson M. , 2012), ed in proposito Reckwitz ha osservato che "gli" artefatti "o" cose "[…] partecipano necessariamente alle pratiche sociali proprio come fanno gli esseri umani" (2002, p. 208) 2. Reckwitz (2002a) ha individuato e definito gli elementi di una pratica come attività fisiche e mentali, oggetti o materiali e competenze, conoscenze e abilità condivise; Shove et al. (2012) li hanno identificati in 1 cit. in (Gherardi S., 2017b, p. 38) 2 ibidem
... To do so, BOs allow highlighting the information most relevant for the task (Arias & Fischer, 2000). They support the negotiation of meanings across different domains (Huvila et al., 2017). ...
During the front end of innovation, teams embody abstract meanings into product concepts. The literature on Innovation of Meaning suggests that focusing on a single product‐user interaction supports this process. This Moment of Meaning facilitates the development of shared meaning and knowledge. We explore how the Moment of Meaning acts as a Boundary Object to support the innovation process.
We study six Innovation of Meaning projects in different companies to explore how the Moment of Meaning supports the transition from abstract meaning to a concrete solution. Attending company meetings and workshops, we collected extensive qualitative data on the usage of the Moment of Meaning.
We identify four uses of the Moment of Meaning. Depending on its degree of abstraction and perspective, it represents a Metaphor, a Product Vision, a Core Feature or an Experience Concept. Our study sheds light on the reification of meanings in early stages of innovation. Also, we highlight the potential evolution of Boundary Objects over time. To managers, we provide actionable knowledge on how a simple boundary object could ease the transition from an innovation strategy to a concrete product concept.
... Furthermore, boundary objects have been found to be particularly effective in facilitating innovation activities when several objects are used in parallel, providing a "boundary infrastructure" [69,71]. As such, an SL or another smart city project could produce a combination of boundary objects, such as area maps (of the existing infrastructure), visual representations and narratives of use cases, and a roadmap for the project. ...
To address major threats to the sustainability and quality of life in urban settings, many municipalities have started exploring routes toward smarter cities to, for example, lower their energy consumption and carbon footprint. These explorations, in the form of living labs or other pilot projects, often suffer from major problems in scaling up the initial try-outs. In this study, we identify the mechanisms that facilitate the diffusion of smart city solutions, which are developed with public funds but typically lack dedicated resources to spur the diffusion of these solutions within the same municipality as well as toward other municipalities. We introduce the construct of embedded replication potential, defined as the capacity of an original project to be either scaled up locally or replicated elsewhere. Subsequently, empirical findings from a study of smart lighting projects in several municipalities in northwestern Europe serve to develop a checklist-based tool for assessing the embedded replication potential of an initial project. This tool can also be used to assess the replication potential of other smart city projects.
... The emergence of recognisable structures for specific types of social documents was investigated in [9]. Figure 1 depicts the main concepts of the Social Document Ontology [33]. [33] A social document itself is an abstract entity, a composition of items, that cannot be dissolved without the loss of meaning [10], reflecting the dynamic and changing nature of boundary objects [34]. In ECS, users collaborate in workspaces (spaces), which serve as repositories for social documents. ...
When implementing Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS) in companies, one key objective is to facilitate delayering of formal organisational hierarchies. Boundary objects mediate collaboration between members from different social groups (i.e. hierarchical levels). In ECS, collaboration is mediated by social documents. Thus, we turn our attention to these social documents and conceptualise them as boundary objects in ECS. We then apply Social Collaboration Analytics to investigate the mediating role of social documents in a selected ECS in an interactive MS Power BI dashboard. Our findings show that different social documents mediate different types of collaboration across hierarchy levels.
... But also, aero planes and airports and other feats of engineering. [Huvila et al., 2016]: activities, archival standards, community information, concepts, digital literacy, documents, genre, information services, metaphors, methods, policies, repositories and digital libraries, room / space, standards, visual representations Source: Compiled by authors based on references presented in the columns above. ...
The book contents scientific research and professional observations in the field of contemporary foreign language teaching, held on the Round Table "Business Lingua - Relevant problems of Foreign Language Teaching and Multilingualism", Svishtov, Bulgaria. 15th of October, 2021
... The same applies to personal notetaking while listening to a lecture that clearly is an exercise of taking (oral) information through making written notes, that is, information. Further, the perspective of making and taking opens for an inquiry on what happens to and with information in the diverse trading zones (Galison, 1997) between different communities, how informational boundary objects (Huvila et al., 2017) are created and used, how boundary work (Gieryn, 1999) is enacted, and how, for instance, knowledge is absorbed (Vasconcelos et al., 2018) and resituated through various means (Morgan, 2014) in different situations. ...
Information behavior theory covers different aspects of the totality of information‐related human behavior rather unevenly. The transitions or trading zones between different types of information activities have remained perhaps especially under‐theorized. This article interrogates and expands a conceptual apparatus of information making and information taking as a pair of substantial concepts for explaining, in part, the mobility of information in terms of doing that unfolds as a process of becoming rather than of being, and in part, what is happening when information comes into being and when something is taken up for use as information. Besides providing an apparatus to describe the nexus of information provision and acquisition, a closer consideration of the parallel doings opens opportunities to enrich the inquiry of the conditions and practice of information seeking, appropriation, discovery, and retrieval as modes taking, and learning and information use as its posterities.
... However, formal language (Lucas, 2019) and passive anonymous voice (Huvila, 2017) can be similarly effective. Østerlund and Crowston (2013) note that some degree of transparency regarding the history of documents facilitates their use as boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989;Huvila et al., 2017) i.e. allows members of diverse communities to understand where they are coming from. Considering the diversity of accounts of information making in the studied corpus of archaeological reports it seems likely there are different views of how and to what extent it can and should be done. ...
Purpose
Sharing information about work processes has proven to be difficult. This applies especially to information shared from those who participate in a process to those who remain outsiders. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of how professionals document their work practices with a focus on information making by analysing how archaeologists document their information work in archaeological reports.
Design/methodology/approach
In total 47 Swedish archaeological reports published in 2018 were analysed using close reading and constant comparative categorisation.
Findings
Even if explicit narratives of methods and work process have particular significance as documentation of information making, the evidence of information making is spread out all over the report document in (1) procedural narratives, (2) descriptions of methods and tools, (3) actors and actants, (4) photographs, (5) information sources, (6) diagrams and drawings and (7) outcomes. The usability of reports as conveyors of information on information making depends more on how a forthcoming reader can live with it as a whole rather than how to learn of the details it recites.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on a limited number of documents representing one country and one scholarly and professional field.
Practical implications
Increased focus on the internal coherence of documentation and the complementarity of different types of descriptions could improve information sharing. Further, descriptions of concepts that refer to work activities and the situation when information came into being could similarly improve their usability.
Originality/value
There is little earlier research on how professionals and academics document and describe their information activities.
... Analyzing the spectrum of theoretical extensions of BO, Huvila et al. [143] identify the tendency from the exercise of control over other communities to acceptance of one interpretation of the concept and the evolution towards tolerance of internal change within the object [144,145]. The EJ example indicates the process of interpretations and translations in one community (i.e., academic) that transforms knowledge into differentiated views and ideas that expand into an agency of activists [146]. ...
The concept of energy justice (EJ) has gained importance in discussions about energy transitions, mainly due to a growing number of researchers working on the social implications of greenhouse gas emission reductions. At the moment, EJ is defined as a framework for discussing fairness in energy systems and operates as an umbrella term to signify various concerns related to energy development across diverse groups to enable communication. Thus, we call EJ a boundary object (BO) and discuss its further evolution into a standard, or its dissolution into several locally specific concepts. This study provides a systematic review of the literature that applies the concept of EJ: how its features developed and how it gained popularity in academic publications to mid-2019. We present a bibliometric overview of the number of occurrences of the concept across the literature using the Scopus and WOS databases (N = 182) and, using VOSviewer software, we describe similarities between research topics to which the concept was related. By mapping out its diverse thematic and geographic applications, we review the critical trends and claim that EJ can address real-life challenges. We submit that it will have more practical power once it starts being used more broadly to build cooperation among scholars, policymakers, activists, and grassroots movements.
... Taking forms as varied as frameworks, conceptual definitions, or physical repositories [20,21], boundary objects are essentially structures that act as interoperable agents across domains and audiences [22], sharing a characteristic ability to "not suppose an epistemological primacy for any one viewpoint" ( [20] p. 389) while allowing multiple disciplinary practitioners to participate in their construction and use. As methodological free agents, boundary objects not only effectively re-center problem solving at the level of interdisciplinary ecosystems rather than within the domain of a single discipline, but their pluralistic and dynamic nature provides entry to a range of emergent and diverse perspectives while still allowing participants to fully maintain their disciplinary independence, This makes boundary objects well suited to support the democratization of behavioral design as a mechanism for scale, and particularly relevant to the disorienting dilemmas common to complex problems that require multiple complementary disciplines to solve [23]. ...
Behavioral design’s preference for bespoke, contextualized solutions to behavioral challenges allows it to solve targeted problems with precision, but also makes it difficult to systematically capture and apply lessons from successful interventions. This state of “bounded scalability” is traditionally framed as a generalizability challenge to scaling solutions; however, it may be better characterized as an interoperability challenge, which requires new methodology to democratize who gets to participate, and supports learning in addition to problem solving. Deploying boundary objects—artifacts and concepts that can effectively translate content across disciplinary contexts—as a means to achieve interoperability can lower the bar to sharing and applying effective intervention outcomes, while also raising the floor for less formally trained practitioners. In particular, the boundary objects known as pattern languages that support both analytic and synthetic activities may help interdisciplinary collaborators and non-professionals more effectively participate in behavioral problem solving.
... Gasparini [8] refers to the concept of openness, that allows tools to be adapted to specific purposes. The adapted version can then be captured, and the newly formulated tools serve as boundary objects [26] connecting social innovators, designers, and librarians and their communities. The second and third research questions were "What factors represent obstacles and barriers to increasing the desired competencies and skills for designing social innovations in libraries when designing an incubation program?" and "What factors in designing an incubation program support the acquisition of the desired competencies and skills to design social innovations in libraries?" ...
Promoting social innovations in libraries requires a new approach to designing innovation programs. In order to provide the effective learning program on social innovations for libraries, the Research through Design methodology was selected as a tool for setting the program for the needs of participants as well as for providing scalable approach to designing innovation programs aimed at increasing the innovation competencies of librarians. Design thinking and the design process are a suitable basis for incubating new socially innovative services. However, the design process needs to include the subsequent phases of the social innovation life cycle, such as demonstrating the impact, its successful presentation or scaling. For a higher social impact, it is necessary to strengthen the importance of participatory community network mapping as a key input in solving community problems and the role and future direction of the library. When designing, it is necessary to integrate all these components into one whole, and when facilitating, it is necessary to pay attention to all these parts. Four runs of the incubation program are described as well as their results, outputs, and learnings from the whole designing process. Gasparini's concepts of openness, dialogical spaces and temporality have proven to be applicable also for designing the incubation programs for public libraries. Within the incubation programs attention should be paid both to user-oriented and inner organizational social innovations.
... The subjective elements are context-centric and generative to new interpretations. In other words, these elements are varied and fluid across communities and contexts and can serve as boundary objects (Huvila et al., 2017). These elements are a source of equivocality where interpretation of information and its meaning can be manifold and conflicting (Feinberg, 2017). ...
We present a model of information that integrates the two competing perspectives of information by emulating the Chinese philosophy of Yin-yang. The model embraces the two key dimensions of information that exist harmoniously: information as 1) objective and veridical representations in the world (information as object), and 2) socially constructed interpretations that are a result of contextual influences (information as subject). We argue that these two facets of information complement one another through two processes, which we denote as forming and informing. While the information literature has historically treated these objective and subjective identities of information as incompatible, we argue that they are mutually relevant and that our understanding of one actually enhances our understanding of the other.
... The idea of 'boundary objects' (Star and Griesemer 1989; Star 2010) and ecosystem services as boundary objects that potentially bridge the natural and social sciences (Steger et al. 2018;Huvila et al. 2017) are essential to understanding the transdisciplinary digital social innovation context. Boundary objects, in this book, are defined as tangible yet malleable forms of informational waves that are used and interpreted in different ways by different communities. ...
In the Anthropocene age there is a need for unifying the relationships between people, planet and technology, their interactions, experiences and impacts across ecosystems. In response to this need, this book introduces unifying bridging concepts informational waves and transdisciplinary resonance towards producing shared understanding. This book also presents emerging methods for transdisciplinary projects focusing on moments, paradoxes and dialogues for digital social innovation and sustainable development partnership goals for improving quality of life.
Shared understanding is about how people from different fields and perspectives are communicating, curating, embodying, intuiting and reflecting on shared responsibilities within social ecologies. As a guide to co-designing for information experiences that create meaningful moments of shared understanding, the author illuminates essential transferable, lateral mindsets and soft skills: knowing the gaps through imagination, creativity, listening and noticing, and bridging the gaps through problem emergence, multiple stakeholders, informed learning and personal change.
... Boundary objects enhance communication among groups and help them to access knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible. The boundary objects are considered to be connectors between different groups and within communities and allow them to improve their practices by sharing knowledge (Fong et al., 2007;Huang and Huang, 2009;Huvila et al., 2017;Impedovo and Manuti, 2016). ...
The investigation reported in this paper intended to explore the research on knowledge management in higher educational institutions in South Asian countries. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify, select and retrieve relevant scholarly literature, by following a detailed protocol and a systematic data extraction strategy. The findings of the study showed that limited research on knowledge management in the context of higher educational institutions was conducted in both theoretical aspects and practical implementations, denoting an imperative to conduct more research in this area. The findings also disclosed that multiple factors affect the knowledge management practices among primary higher educational institution agents: faculty, administrative staff, and information professionals. As the result of the analysis of the literature review findings, a conceptual framework is proposed, which is expected to provide a good foundation for future research as well as pave the way towards more successful knowledge management implementations in the higher educational institutions in South Asia and beyond.
... The central position of Star's works in literature on BOs makes it appropriate to review existing theory and assess whether Star's dominance is preventing authors from questioning and expanding on her findings. Star's features of BOs were reiterated by later studies in the field and her terminology used to interpret findings (Huvila et al., 2017). Star's work (1989) identifies three attributes of successful BOs. ...
Boundary objects are tools used to transfer knowledge across organisational and functional divides. Where boundaries can create challenges for organisational learning and knowledge management, boundary objects can be an effective tool for overcoming them through translation and communication. Much of the project work in today’s large infrastructure organisations is carried out by cross-functional teams under pressure to deliver project objectives on time and within budget and it is crucial for staff to access meaningful information and knowledge from experts in the organisations involved in projects and from other areas of the business. Understanding the features that make boundary objects effective can improve organisational learning and better inform decision-making, eventually improving organisational performance. This paper assesses whether the features of boundary objects found to be effective in biological and manufacturing environments are valid in project-based industries, particularly construction. The findings suggest that, by maximising the efficacy of boundary objects, large construction organisations can address the knowledge-sharing issues literature has identified as arising from the complex and temporary nature of construction projects. This article contributes to theory by identifying three new features of boundary objects, in addition to those listed by Leigh Star, that are used effectively in the organisation under scrutiny. The findings also demonstrate that all of the features in Star’s theory contribute to knowledge transfer in a project-based environment, although not all are as effective compared to other industries.
... d as relevant within an IE (p.15). Judgements about information value are normative (Jaeger & Burnett, 2010), leading to reliance on group "insiders" and distrust of "outsiders" (Chatman, 1996). Scholars have also considered the role of objects such as policies, prototypes and forms in building shared understanding across organizational boundaries (Huvila et. al, 2017;Meyer et al., 2015;Veinot, 2007). However, the material aspects of information acceptance remain largely unarticulated. ...
The materiality of information environments, and its role in information behavior, has received little attention. We present an ethnographic study involving 156 hours of observation and 28 patient interviews in outpatient hemodialysis facilities. Using an extended “Semiotic Framework for Information Systems Research,” the findings show that objects, spaces, and bodies were integral to 6 sociomaterial layers of facility information environments: the physical, empiric, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and social world. Objects of importance in the information environments included dialysis machines, instruments, records, paper documents, televisions, furniture, thermostats, lighting, and personal possessions. Spatial features, including compartmentalization, displays, distance, proximity, and spatially‐grounded routines, also constituted information environments. The information environments were also shaped by patient immobility, bodily discomforts, and orientation to bodily states. Each sociomaterial layer introduced enablers and constraints to information access, flow, and acceptance; these combined to construct patients primarily as passive recipients of information rather than active seekers and producers of information. A sociomaterial perspective and related focus on objects, spaces, and bodies offers a lens for professional information practice. We contribute information environment design guidance to facilitate such practice and stress that the value of certain sources and types of information can be materially encoded in an environment.
... While frequently a topic of study in other fields, liminality has been little researched in information science. Recently, some work has been done on using liminal space to explore boundary objects (Huvila et al., 2017) and the transitional experiences of refugees (Lloyd, 2017;Lloyd et al., 2017). ...
Purpose
Transitions – as a focus of study – have been missing from information behaviour research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of transitions – their characteristics and influences, the related concept of liminality and Transitions Theory – and what it can contribute to the field of information behaviour. This exploration includes the application of liminality and Transitions Theory to an empirical study of participants making the transition from doctoral student to early career academic.
Design/methodology/approach
In addition to an extended literature review, this paper reports on a qualitative study that used constructivist grounded theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Early career academics were followed for a five- to seven-month period and data were collected using interviews and “check-ins”. Transitions Theory and liminality were used to guide the analysis.
Findings
Three important findings were highlighted: the complicating effects of being in a liminal space on information behaviour; the changing information needs of those undergoing a transition; and the importance of comparison as a way of using information to understand new situations. A revised model of Transitions Theory (Meleis et al. , 2000) is also proposed, to incorporate information behaviour.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates that by examining information behaviour over longer periods of time and by making transitions a focus of research, new understandings and insight can be gained into what information individual needs, how they find, share and use that information. This research demonstrates that information behaviour research adds important elements to the study of transitions and, conversely, that transitions (and Transitions Theory) add important elements to the study of information behaviour.
Heritage is a dynamic concept, being constantly redefined by those that value it. Modern approaches to heritage bring focus to participatory processes that put communities at the centre of the heritage discourse. For migrant communities, these participatory processes can show the tension of integration versus identity, as migrants integrating into their host country can maintain, adapt or loose connections to their cultural identity. Digital storytelling platforms can offer space for exposing such tensions. In this paper, storytelling is adopted as a practice to engage three communities of migrants (with different socio-cultural contexts) on their relation to heritage. Through workshops, participants created 78 stories (accessible through a Digital Storytelling platform), which were thematically analysed. Using the concept of boundary objects, we discuss how participant's stories reflect heritage discourse and how they are entangled within the wider social, economic, and environmental context.
Background:
Promoting positive psychologies that promote resilience such as a growth mindset could be beneficial for young, unemployed adults, as many lack the self-esteem and self-efficacy to cope with job search adversity. These young people may be reached at scale through the web-based delivery of self-administered positive psychology interventions. However, past studies report unsatisfying user experiences and a lack of user engagement. A gaming-based experience could be an approach to overcoming these challenges.
Objective:
Our research objective was to explore how young, unemployed adults experience a positive psychology intervention designed as a game to extract learning and principles for future intervention research and development.
Methods:
To respond to the research question, a team of researchers at the University of Stavanger worked with designers and developers to conceptualize and build a gaming-based intervention. Feedback from the users was collected through formative usability testing with 18 young adults in the target group. Retrospectively, recordings and notes were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis to extract learnings for the purposes of this paper.
Results:
A total of 3 themes were identified that pinpoint what we consider to be key priorities for future gaming interventions for unemployed young adults: adaptation to user preferences (eg, need for responding to user preferences), empathic player interaction (eg, need for responsiveness to user inputs and a diverse set of interaction modes), and sensemaking of experience and context (eg, need for explicit presentation of game objectives and need for management of user expectations related to genre).
Conclusions:
Feedback from end users in usability-testing sessions was vital to understanding user preferences and needs, as well as to inform ongoing intervention design and development. Our study also shows that game design could make interventions more entertaining and engaging but may distort the intervention if the game narrative is not properly aligned with the intervention intent and objectives. By contrast, a lack of adaptation to user needs may cause a less motivating user experience. Thus, we propose a structured approach to promote alignment between user preferences and needs, intervention objectives, and gameplay.
New data-intensive research paradigms and surging volumes of research data have amplified the need for more effective systems of data curation, management, and sharing. This methodological paper focuses on the development and implementation of a workshop protocol aimed at enabling researchers in various sub-disciplines of data-intensive fields to achieve consensus about data-sharing and reproducibility practices. As such, it addresses a key gap in our understanding of how researchers from those sub-disciplines negotiate and reach consensus on disciplinary practices, which is crucially important to the design of research-data infrastructure and data-management support services. Specifically, we first convened a design-thinking workshop, attended by 17 principal investigators from the field of data-intensive health science, which simulated the identification and solution of real-life research problems in a multidisciplinary context. A key plank of our methodology is its use of boundary-negotiating artifacts as a conceptual model to delineate and analyze the artifacts (e.g., Post-its and other notes) that were created and used during the workshop. This approach provided insights into the development and evolution of common practices in the participants’ workplaces. Then, to validate and extend our methodology, we applied the workshop protocol to two additional case studies, respectively involving 30 academic librarians and 13 criminologists. The results confirm the potential applicability and adaptability of our approach to even more data-intensive disciplines, and provide insights that should be valuable to a range of stakeholders including but not limited to national funders, memory institutions, and research establishments.
Scientific collaboration is a distinct iteration of information creation as a process. It aims to form willful relationships between scientists to achieve the shared objective of new information creation with the end goal of knowledge production. Findings of an exploratory study investigating barriers that hinder effective scientific collaboration and strategies to cope with these obstacles are reported. A qualitative and interpretive methodology is leveraged to analyze data collected from 14 in-depth interviews with researchers who work in a cross-disciplinary scientific research center. The results indicate that domain disparity and motivation and engagement are the strongest hindrances to effective collaboration. Researchers adopt active and constant learning as an approach to mitigate barriers, lower affective distress, and improve collaboration processes. Malleable boundary objects can facilitate collaboration by adjusting to research aims but may also contort projects, manifesting as a barrier to new information creation.
This study aims to present and discuss potentials of the evolution of cloud computing from the point of view of innovation and its adoption from the organizational prism. For such, disruptive innovation is adopted as a characteristic in the origin and dissemination of this computational concept to the market. The potential in changing the habits of users in terms of resources for storing data and information is the main reason for this characterization, especially in the impact on information management in organizations. Cloud computing has had some questioning until it’s consolidation as a computer model, some of these have not yet entirely resolved but a factor that has not prevented its spread because the benefits stand out. In the organizational environment, this aspect is perceived by the possibility of reducing the investment in support of Information and Communication Technologies in detriment of conventional support, that is, investment in the own data center. This study is characterized as exploratory and adopts bibliographic research as a method, the study results in the proposal of a model that combines cloud computing and information management. The study shows that cloud computing can be an effective alternative for information management, provided that full knowledge of users' information needs is considered, which is a critical success factor for the correct management of data resources and information. and organized in the cloud.
Keywords:
Cloud Computing; Information management; Innovation; Technology; Digital Transformation
While (critical) information literacy (IL) acknowledges the political, economic, and social forces that shape complex information environments, library user experience (UX) typically centers efficiency and ‘seamlessness,’ ignoring the power structures and values that condition learning. In this paper, we explore the tensions between IL and UX values and practices, with the aim of starting a conversation about how these two related fields can become more closely aligned.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge about how valid research data in biodiversity citizen science are produced through information practices and how notions of credibility and authority emerge from these practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected through an empirical, interview-based study of the information practices of 15 participants active in the vicinity of the Swedish biodiversity citizen science information system Artportalen. Interview transcripts were analysed abductively and qualitatively through a coding scheme by working back and forth between theory and data. Values of credibility, authority and validity of research data were unfolded through a practice-oriented perspective to library and information studies by utilising the theoretical lens of boundary objects.
Findings
Notions of credibility, authority and validity emerge through participant activities of transforming species observations to data, supplementing reports with objects of trust, augmenting identification through authority outreach and assessing credibility via peer monitoring. Credibility, authority and validity of research data are shown to be co-constructed in a distributed fashion by the participants and the information system.
Originality/value
The article extends knowledge about information practices in emerging, heterogeneous scholarly settings by focussing on the complex co-construction of credibility, authority and validity in relation to data production.
Archaeological collections are crucial in heritage studies and are used every day for training archaeologists and cultural heritage specialists. The recent developments in 3D acquisition and visualization technology has contributed to the rapid emergence of a large number of 3D collections, whose production is often justified as the democratization of data and knowledge production. Despite the fact that several 3D datasets are now available online, it is not always clear how the data – once stored – may be engaged by archaeology students, and the possible challenges the students may face in the learning process. The goal of the Dynamic Collections project at Lund University is to develop a novel 3D web infrastructure designed to support higher education and research in archaeology. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, all teaching at Lund University moved online, reinforcing the urgency for such an infrastructure. By letting a group of students test an early version of the system as part of their online teaching, we were able to study how they used and interacted with an archaeological collection in 3D and explore the intersection of digital methods and pedagogy in archaeology. This article presents the preliminary results from this experiment.
This chapter introduces the reader to the emerging concept of informational waves—how information can be experienced externally while producing for impact across transdisciplinary spaces, how people interact with universal signs of life, sustainable resources—approaches, objects and concepts—outside of close human relationships as an information and learning context (how they interact within human relations is explored in Chapter 10.1007/978-981-15-7372-9_4). Social-ecological information experiences such as life moments, movements, self and audience awareness, relatable information, balanced critique and holistic approaches are also discussed. Two ways of producing informational waves are introduced—curating and embodying. This chapter concludes with a commentary on science fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s story The Last Question in relation to quantum information and artificial intelligence’s impact on the universe.
A systematic literature review is carried out, detailing the research topics and the methods and techniques used in information science in studies published between 2000 and 2019. The results obtained allow us to affirm that there is no consensus on the core topics of information science, as these evolve and change dynamically in relation to other disciplines, and with the dominant social and cultural contexts. With regard to the research methods and techniques, it can be stated that they have mostly been adopted from social sciences, with the addition of numerical methods, especially in the fields of bibliometric and scientometric research. Resumen Se realiza una revisión sistemática de bibliografía que analiza los temas de investigación y los métodos y técnicas utilizados en la Ciencia de la Información que han sido recogidos en revisiones y estudios publicados entre 2000 y 2019. Se han revisado 36 trabajos. Según los resultados obtenidos no hay un consenso sobre los temas nucleares de la disciplina, ya que éstos evolucionan y cambian dinámicamente en relación con otras disciplinas y con los contextos sociales y culturales dominantes. En relación con los métodos y técnicas de investigación, puede afirmase que en su mayoría han sido adoptados del campo de las ciencias sociales, a los que hay que añadir los métodos numéricos, especialmente en las áreas de bibliometría e informetría.
Purpose
The focus of this paper is on the mediating role of medical records in patient care. Their informative, communicative and constitutive facets are analysed on the basis of a case study in an African University teaching hospital.
Design/methodology/approach
A practice-oriented approach and the concept of boundary objects were adopted to examine medical records as information artefacts. Data from nonparticipant observations and interviews with physicians were triangulated in a qualitative analysis.
Findings
Three distinctive practices for information sharing – absorbing by reading, augmenting by documenting and recounting by presenting – were identified as central to the mediating role of medical records in the care of patients. Additionally, three information-sharing functions outside the immediate care of patients were identified: facilitating interactions, controlling hegemonic order and supporting learning. The records were both a useful information resource and a blueprint for sustaining shared practices over time. The medical records appeared as an essential part of patient care and amendments to them resulted in changes in several other work practices.
Originality/value
The analysis contributes to research on documents as enacting and sustaining work practices in a workplace.
Everyday life often requires a great deal of work to manage the multiple domains that comprise it (e.g., paid work, family care, household maintenance, body and health management, leisure, education, social life, and community or religious involvement). This “boundary work” includes the ongoing categorization of life domains, the establishment and negotiation of boundary permeability, and the crossing of boundaries. The boundaries between the domains of everyday life are negotiated differently by different people and by the same person over time as life circumstances change. Information Science research tends to dichotomize “everyday life” and workplace information practices. Scholars seeking to understand the character of everyday life information practices must attend to the informational work required to (a) place, maintain, and challenge boundaries among life domains, and (b) orchestrate the bridging or crossing of those boundaries. This paper uses the example of keeping track of municipal waste collection to explore the informational work of managing, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in everyday life. Some participants recorded “garbage day” in centrally-located personal information management (PIM) tools shared with household members. By doing so, they integrated the task of waste disposal into an everyday life with other household members that included multiple domains, including paid work. Others’ approaches categorized waste collection as separate from the inside life of the household. The study provides evidence that participants engaged in boundary work within their non-work lives, beyond simply establishing boundaries between work and home.
Globally, grey literature is common. Large quantities of openly available grey literature have been generated since the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is a primary source of information used in many public policy and decision-making contexts, at all jurisdictional levels. In fact, public decision making and policy development would seriously falter today in the absence of such literature. Moreover, in some jurisdictions, legislation mandates transparent governance processes in which current research must be fully open. This lengthy experience with open practices in the production and use of grey literature offers insights to the open science movement. In this paper, based on over fifteen years of interdisciplinary research, we demonstrate how open practices in the production and use of grey literature in marine environment science policy contexts could inform open science initiatives. The results from our numerous case studies about information use in decision-making processes, at local to global levels, address two conference themes, namely, the application of open science principles in promoting grey literature, and obstacles and challenges to such open access. Information pathways in coastal and ocean management are complex and involve many actors (including researchers; managers; policy analysts; members of industry, professional associations, community groups, and non-governmental organizations; politicians; and citizens generally). Open grey literature offers numerous advantages in these settings, as an extensive variety of information needs, types, and formats are prevalent. Open grey literature can also be distributed without restriction by individuals and organizations. It can now be shared globally with ease, which is particularly beneficial to developing countries often unable to afford commercial information sources. However, while produced and used widely, grey literature also presents challenges that open science also encounters. Openness, i.e., open access, does not ensure awareness and it does not automatically equate to usability by a wide variety of audiences. Because grey literature is assumed to be largely accessible, often limited attention is focused on promoting awareness or communicating information in broadly understandable terms. Furthermore, the massive quantity of literature can contribute to its seeming invisibility. The multiplicity of formats and content can result in perceptions of limited value of grey literature. Even though the information may be rigorously peer-reviewed, in today's information-saturated environment, open-access may be equated with uncertain quality. Our research on the use and influence of grey literature in marine environmental decision making highlights the benefits and challenges of open access information. Thus, our findings may be particularly informative to current efforts to advance open science principles globally.
Data Stewardship wird besonders im Bezug auf die FAIR Data Principles und die Einführung der European Open Science Cloud als Begriff weitläufig verwendet, der im weitesten Sinne alle anfallenden Aktivitäten im Forschungsdatenmanagement beschreibt. Forschungsdatenmanagement kann als soziotechnisches System angesehen werden, in dem unterschiedliche Akteure in Beziehung treten und zusammenwirken müssen. Die Akteure entstammen dabei unterschiedlichen Sozialen Welten, die an ihren Schwellen aufeinandertreffen und Grenzbereiche (Boundaries) bilden. Unterschiedliche Methoden der Grenzarbeit (Boundary-Work) können angewendet werden, um Kollaborationen zwischen Akteursgruppen zu ermöglichen und zu optimieren. In dieser Arbeit wurden Theorien zu Kollaborationen in soziotechnischen Systemen und des Agierens an Boundaries aus der Technik- und Wissenschaftssoziologie auf das Anwendungsfeld des Data Stewardships übertragen. Hierfür wurden begriffliche Entwicklungen und Ausprägungen des Konzeptes Data Stewardship nachvollzogen und bestehende theoretische Ansätze zu Methoden und Aufgaben von Boundary-Work auf die Domäne Data Stewardship angewendet. Diese Arbeit ermöglicht eine neue Perspektive auf Data Stewardship Aktivitäten und die Rolle von Data Stewards. Sie zeigt, dass Data Stewardship als ein Zusammenspiel unterschiedlicher Akteure eingebettet in soziale Geflechte angesehen werden kann. Data Stewards müssen dabei über infrastrukturelle oder forschungsgetriebene Zielsetzungen hinaus vermittelnd auf einer sozialen Ebene agieren und dafür entsprechende Kompetenzen mitbringen.
Managing collections means ensuring that the data about them are useful, available, and accurate. In addition to the technical aspects of data management, there are layers of political and social structure that direct the construction and use of collections data. The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) employs a set of data standards that allows us to gather electronic cataloging data from a wide community of archaeology researchers who are depositing collections at our institution. Though met with initial resistance, these standards have facilitated publication in Open Context as linked open data. Furthermore, institutional discussions concerning Creative Commons licensing and the cultural sensitivity of collections data were precipitated by publication, highlighting the role of social agreement in data management. We found that successful employment of data standards must take into account the needs of the various stakeholders and further their interests. Standards will be most useful and successful when they are lightweight, are supported by training and documentation, and exist as part of a system that allows for more than one way to characterize the collections.
The connections and contexts surrounding information shared in social settings must be accounted for, and this is particularly true for online communities that are information‐centric. This article presents a mixed‐methods study of LibraryThing and Goodreads, which have characteristics of information‐centric online communities and social digital libraries, with attention to their roles as boundary objects, users' information values, and information behavior, and other boundaries and boundary objects at play. Content analysis of messages, a survey of users, and qualitative interviews show LibraryThing and Goodreads help establish community and organizational structure; support sharing of information values; and facilitate the building and maintenance of social ties. Translation of meanings and understandings within and between communities is a key activity in these roles. Online communities and social digital libraries should highlight translation processes and resources; provide user profiles and off‐topic spaces and encourage their use; take a sociotechnical approach to tailor technology and community features to the right audiences; and facilitate the establishment of shared structure, values, and ties and the work of boundary spanners. Further implications exist for research on and theorizing of information‐centric online communities, boundaries, and boundary objects as part of the sociotechnical infrastructure surrounding online information sharing.
Documents play a central role for many organizational processes. Current conceptualizations of documents predominantly engage with documents in two different ways. One sees documents as things with specific properties, and a second sees documents as medium enabling communication across different groups of actors. What is currently not well understood is how documents are perceived either as thing or as medium. This chapter engages with this issue by drawing from Fritz Heider’s epistemology of thing and medium, a concept stemming from social and media theory. According to Heider things are uniform and medium are multiform. Applying this concept to documents we argue that documents as things are perceived as uniform, whereas documents as medium are perceived as multiform. We exemplify the application of this conception of documents in the context of Gantt charts and the concept of boundary objects.
Purpose. Information sharing is a relatively unexplored part of the information behaviour. The aim of this paper is to examine the research on the concept, as it appears in other bodies of literature and to draw out the key variables that appear to influence information sharing in different contexts. Methods. A literature review was carried out using the Scopus database, to identify the contexts and perspectives under which information sharing, information exchange or knowledge sharing has been discussed. Findings. A small number of key variables regularly appear in the information sharing literature. Some are limited to a particular context, e.g., sharing patient data in health care organizations, while others appear to have more general applicability. Four variables are identified that appear to be relatively common: trust, risk, reward (or benefit), and organizational proximity. Conclusion. The analysis presented could be employed both to guide an investigation into information sharing in organizations and to offer guidance to organizational management on the circumstances under which information sharing may take place readily, versus those circumstances under which sharing must be either negotiated or difficult to achieve.
Our point of departure is that the relationship between social science, cooperative working and technology is not as much a matter of differences in understanding, as it is a matter of how to accomplish change. This chapter outlines an approach to design of CSCW where change is addressed in terms of ''expansion of the work practice''. To facilitate the change process as a process of expansion, scenarios are used as springboards. Creation and use of scenarios are supported by a conceptual ''toolbox''. The foundation for this toolbox is an understanding of the design process as ``abductive thinking'' consisting of idea generation and systematic reflection, and an understanding of design tools inspired from activity theory. As design processes may involve different communities of practice, we discuss the role of scenarios as boundary objects.
Despite increased study of social contexts within information science, it is still unclear if and how digital libraries support and facilitate collaboration, communities, and other social contexts. This poster presents a study that will examine the role of the LibraryThing and Goodreads digital libraries, as social phenomena and boundary objects, in information behaviors and activities taking place within, between, and across multiple existing and emergent communities. The study will focus on the two key phenomena of communities and collaboration, under a theoretical framework drawing from Star’s boundary object theory, Strauss’s social worlds perspective, and Burnett and Jaeger’s theory of information worlds. Data will be collected from the two cases using a sequential, multi-phased mixed methods design employing content analysis, a survey, and interviews. The study should have significant implications for digital library research and practice and for related research on social networking, social media, and social Web services.
This paper presents findings on the roles that two digital libraries and virtual book club communities, LibraryThing and Goodreads, play in the existing and emergent communities of their users. Informed by social informatics and sociotechnical theory and research, it improves our understanding of the phenomenon of information value and how shared information values are translated, cohered, and converged as users interact. LibraryThing and Goodreads play significant roles, but perfect coherence and convergence is not necessary in most cases; understanding differences and being willing to negotiate and translate around them allowed for continued use of the sites and for continued community existence and emergence. Translation was a significant factor in allowing common ground and social ties to be established, leading to greater information and knowledge sharing. Similar to maintaining "a real friendship," these processes are often invisible work, but serve as significant factors in the sociotechnical infrastructure of LibraryThing and Goodreads.
To extend our understanding of conceptual frameworks and epistemological assumptions in classification research. I survey recent reviews and empirical inquiry that features the concept of boundary objects, and discuss their implications for classification research. Further, I discuss the problems posed when predominant discourses concerning classification research inhibit gaining an understanding of classification practices as socially, historically and culturally constructed. I propose a line of inquiry into classification practices in large scale infrastructure that considers locating and describing the particular, situated, socio-material relationships where a standard classification is used in practice.
Engineering sketches and drawings are the building blocks of technological design and production. These visual representations act as the means for organizing the design to production process, hence serving as a "social glue" both between individuals and between groups. The author discusses two main capacities such visual representations serve in facilitating distributed cognition in team design work As conscription devices, they enlist and organize group participation. As boundary objects, they facilitate the reading of alternative meanings by various groups involved in the design process. The introduction of computer-aided design into this visual culture of engineering restructures relationships between workers in ways that can hamper the flexibility necessary for these crucial capacities to take place. The data are drawn from a study of the daily practices of engineers engaged in redesigning a turbine engine package. The method is participant observation.
Introduction. This paper reports on an extensive research project which aimed at exploring information sharing activities in a scholarly context. The paper presents and synthesises findings from a literature review and three qualitative case studies. The empirical setting is a geographically distributed Nordic network of design scholars.
Method. The project is characterised by an explorative approach encompassing semi-structured interviews, document studies, and ethnographically oriented participatory observations. Apart from addressing the empirical question of how, where, when, and why the researchers in the network share information, the paper elucidate the reciprocal relationship between information sharing and the wider practice of design research.
Analysis. The research questions are addressed through close reading and interrelated analysis of four previous studies.
Results. When scholarly information sharing takes place organizational structures are sometimes complemented, or substituted, by flexible communities of practice such as those in the investigated network. Information sharing appears as a means to reach collective understanding, also regarding issues that stretches beyond the immediate information practices, for instance about how to act as a design scholar.
Conclusions. This research clarifies and provides examples of how information sharing is embedded in and intertwined with a range of other activities, such as writing, reading and information seeking. It also presents information sharing as a contributor to the enactment of a discipline.
Research collaboration is increasing in general and interdisciplinarity has gained a
prominent position in contemporary research. It is against this background that the overall
aim of this thesis is to increase understanding of information sharing in interdisciplinary
practices. The study object of information sharing is explored in the interdisciplinary field
of design research. One conceptual and three empirical studies are reported in the thesis.
The empirical studies are all focused on the specific case of a Nordic network of design
researchers.
In accordance with the thesis’ practice-based approach and in order to acknowledge the
mobile and contingent character of the study object, the exploration oscillates between
three nested and interconnected frames. It is shown how information sharing works as a
contributor to the development, maintenance and shaping of practices in 1) design
research as it is conducted in the Nordic network; 2) in the field of design research; and 3)
within interdisciplinary research.
Study I presents a review of the Library and Information Science literature on information
sharing. It is shown that previous studies have tended to focus either on people,
information or context for sharing. The present project has explored these aspects in
concert. On the basis of study I, the following empirical studies have resulted in the
identification of not only interests, discourse, histories, and futures, but also trust
dimensions and material objects as fundamental aspects to consider in the understanding
of scholarly information sharing.
In study II, the focus is on how information sharing facilitates a collective understanding
which underpins not only information practice but also the wider practice of design
research. The study demonstrates how information sharing-activities are intrinsically
intertwined with other information related activities such as information seeking and use.
It is further established that information and communication technologies can be seen as
parts of the arrangements that, together with practices, form the social site in which the
scholars are active.
Study III focuses on trust issues in relation to information sharing. Here, it is
demonstrated that strategies for creating and assessing trust encompass conscious
collective efforts to establish an open and permissive atmosphere within the network,
which is beneficial not only for information practice but also for the practice of design
research. The creation of this atmosphere includes careful selection of suitable locations
for seminars and conferences and the shaping of the material dimensions of workplaces.
Through the explicit inclusion of material dimensions of practice, introduced in study III,
a beginning of a shift of focus took place.
Study IV is fully concentrated on the role of materiality in sociality. Thereby, trajectories of sharing reaching across time and space are identified by studying how scholars interact with multidimensional objects, such as documents. It is thus demonstrated in study IV how material objects used in information sharing activities are contributing to the coordination and shaping of the social practice under study.
Through analysis and discussion of the four studies as a whole, the reciprocal relationship
between information sharing and the area of design research has been elucidated. It is
illustrated that information sharing, as it emerges in an interdisciplinary practice such as
in the investigated network, functions as a unifying force towards the probable goal of
establishing a discipline. Without losing sight of the empirical material, the theoretical
analysis has made it possible to illuminate the connection between activities of sharing
and the enactment of a discipline.
Enterprise transformations are fundamental changes in an organization. Such changes typically affect different stakeholder groups (e.g., program managers, business managers) that exhibit a significant diversity regarding their members’ knowledge, goals, and underlying assumptions. Yet, creating shared understanding among diverse stakeholder groups in transformations is a main antecedent for success. The paper analyzes which properties of enterprise architecture models contribute to syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic capacities which helps to create shared understanding among stakeholder groups involved in enterprise transformation. The differences among stakeholder groups are assessed through the lens of knowledge boundaries, and enterprise architecture models are assessed through the lens of boundary objects. A research model is developed and empirically tested that describes which boundary object properties are required to overcome three progressively complex knowledge boundaries - syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. The findings show which boundary object properties contribute to a respective capacity needed to overcome each of the three knowledge boundaries. Specifically, the results show that for (1) a syntactic capacity, concrete and modular enterprise architecture (EA) models are helpful; (2) a semantic capacity, visual EA model properties are relevant, and (3) a pragmatic capacity, broad stakeholder participation is conductive.
Science-intensive firms are experimenting with ‘open data’ initiatives, involving collaboration with academic scientists whereby all results are published with no restriction. Firms seeking to benefit from open data face two key challenges: revealing R&D problems may leak valuable information to competitors, and academic scientists may lack motivation to address problems posed by firms. We explore how firms overcome these challenges through an inductive study of the Structural Genomics Consortium. We find that the operation of the consortium as a boundary organization provided two core mechanisms to address the above challenges. First, through mediated revealing, the boundary organization allowed firms to disclose R&D problems while minimizing adverse competitive consequences. Second, by enabling multiple goals the boundary organization increased the attractiveness of industry-informed agendas for academic scientists. We work our results into a grounded model of boundary organizations as a vehicle for open data initiatives. Our study contributes to research on public–private research partnerships, knowledge revealing and boundary organizations.
This paper examines the use of cultural probes as a method for fostering collaboration within groups of diverse experts working on creative projects. Using two case examples, we show that probes -- short, oblique, and at times whimsical sets of activity prompts - have boundary object properties that can jumpstart interdisciplinary and cross-functional exchange. The first case explores how social scientists and designers used a smartphone-based scavenger hunt activity to gather insights for a workshop on organizational innovation. The second case examines how artist/scientist pairs utilized probe-like prompts to develop short performances for an arts festival. Drawing together theoretical views on boundary objects and cultural probes, we suggest that designed experiences such as probes can create opportunities for both boundary work and the establishment of common ground, which is increasingly vital in the highly collaborative contexts that define work today.
Purpose
The aim of this article is to provide insights into how knowledge sharing between project teams takes place (if formal channels are not provided) and which cultural antecedents influence this process.
Design/methodology/approach
The author adopts a qualitative research design using a triangulation of methods (interviews, observations, company data and group discussions) to receive detailed results for one case study.
Findings
The findings show that knowledge sharing between project teams takes place even though top‐management did not include these processes in the formal work organization. Project team leaders as well as members share knowledge with other project teams by transferring boundary objects, interchanging team members and directly interacting. Furthermore, this study confirms some elements of a knowledge culture, but also discovers new cultural elements that are favorable and unfavorable to knowledge sharing between teams, such as personal responsibility, intrinsic motivation, top‐management's trust in employees, and output orientation.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the fact that only one case study could be researched with this level of detail, the results provide insights into a research area neglected thus far and show that not all knowledge processes depend on the same cultural antecedents.
Practical implications
Managers and team leaders learn that knowledge sharing between project teams enhances the efficiency of project work and organizational learning.
Originality/value
This study addresses a specific knowledge process, namely knowledge sharing between project teams, and discovers that specific cultural antecedents support and hinder this type of cross‐boundary knowledge sharing process.
The term 'participation' is traditionally used in HCI to describe the involvement of users and stakeholders in design processes, with a pretext of distributing control to participants to shape their technological future. In this paper we ask whether these values can hold up in practice, particularly as participation takes on new meanings and incorporates new perspectives. We argue that much HCI research leans towards configuring participation. In exploring this claim we explore three questions that we consider important for understanding how HCI configures participation; Who initiates, directs and benefits from user participation in design? In what forms does user participation occur? How is control shared with users in design? In answering these questions we consider the conceptual, ethical and pragmatic problems this raises for current participatory HCI research. Finally, we offer directions for future work explicitly dealing with the configuration of participation.
This paper argues that water gradually became, over a period of more than half a century, a critical boundary object between science and governance in California. The paper historicizes 'water', and argues that a series of discrete problems that involved water, particularly the reclamation of 'swampland' in the Sacramento Valley, gradually came to be viewed as a single 'water problem' with many facets. My overarching theoretical aim is to rethink the ontology of the technoscientific state through the tools of actor-network theory. I conclude with the following paradox: the more the technoscientific state forms into a complex gathering – or 'thing' – of which humans are part, the more it is represented and perceived as a simplified and singular actor set apart from those same humans.
Introduction. The concept of boundary is integral for the study of knowledge sharing and information transfer. Given the increasing importance of the digital environment, understanding of boundary must move beyond the geographical or intellectual to include the virtual.
Aim. We argue for understanding boundary as delimitation, for revisiting the different dimensions in which boundaries function, and for investigating how the development of electronic mediation and new modes of interaction and communication affect the role of boundary in the virtual world.
Methods. We propose investigating boundaries within a theoretical framework that encompasses three dimensions: the physical, the epistemological and the virtual.
Results. Each dimension is discussed and operationalized with examples that shed light on the evolving nature of boundaries, on their functionality in different environments, and on their effects on cross-boundary information behaviour.
Conclusions. Reconsideration of the traditional understandings of boundary offers significant implications for the design of interactive and immersive virtual environments.
Proceedings of the Twelfth International ISKO Conference 6-9 August 2012 Mysore, India
Objets fronti_re = s'adaptent pour prendre en compte plusieurs points de vue et maintenir une identité entre eux Cet espace de travail se construit grâce à des objets-frontières tels que des systèmes de classification, qui relient entre eux les concepts communs et les rôles sociaux divergents de chaque groupe professionnel. Les objet-frontière contribuent à la stabilité du système de référence en offrant un contexte partagé pour la communication et la coopération. Les objets peuvent être considérés comme frontière (Star et Griesemer, 1989) en tant qu’ils contribuent à la stabilité du système de référence en offrant un contexte partagé pour la communication et la coopération.
Information about an archaeological investigation is documented in an archaeological report, which makes it the boundary object par excellence for archaeological information work across stakeholder communities such as field archaeologists, heritage managers, and land developers. The quality of reports has been a subject of debate, and recently it has been argued that more emphasis should be placed on making primary research data at least similarly available. This study explores the changing materialities and reciprocal formation of documents and their users with the advent of digitization, and how documents form and lose their status as boundary objects in these processes. The study posits that in order to be functional, a boundary object needs to provide a disclosure that makes it accessible to cognate communities. Further, it shows how assumptions about the functioning of the human and nonhuman (material artifacts) influence the ways in which archaeologists conceptualize the preservation and archiving of archaeological information and the role and potential of different types of digital and paper-based documents. This article is based on an interview study of Swedish archaeology professionals (N = 16) with theoretical underpinnings in the notions of boundary objects, mangle of practice, and disclosure.
Is disseminating information the main purpose of scholarly scientific literature? Recent work in science studies signals a shift of emphasis from conceptual to material sources, from thinking to doing, and from representing the world to intervening in it. Scientific knowledge production is no longer seen as a process of seeking, collecting, organizing, and processing abstract elements, but instead one of assembling the many different material ‘bits and pieces’ of scientific culture in order to make things work. In Deflating Information, Bernd Frohmann draws on recent work in the social studies of science, finding the most significant material in the coordination of research work, the stabilization of matters of fact, and the manufacture of objectivity. Arguing for a ‘deflationary’ account of information, Frohmann challenges the central concept of information studies, thereby laying a foundation for a documentalist approach to emerging issues in the field.
Tne aim or this paper is to develop methodology to determine conceptual overlap between researcn areas. It investigates patterns of terminology usage in scientific abstracts as boundary objects between research specialties. Research specialties were determined by high-level classifications assigned by Thomson Reuters in their Essential Science Indicators file, which provided a strictly hierarchical classification of journals into 22 categories. Results from the query "network theory" were downloaded from the Web of Science. From this file, two top-level groups, economics and social sciences, were selected and topically analyzed to provide a baseline of similarity on which to run an informetric analysis. The Places & Spaces Map of Science (Klavans and Boyack 2007) was used to determine the proximity of disciplines to one another in order to select the two disciplines use in the analysis. Groups analyzed share common theories and goals; however, groups used different language to describe their research. It was found that 61% of term words were shared between the two groups.
Introduction. This paper presents a theoretical framework for examining information practices in socio-material contexts that draws on research in the library and information science and human computer interaction ( human computer interaction) communities. Method. The paper is framed around questions of theorizing computer-mediated information practices. The first part of the paper discusses three important notions of value for library and information science research drawn from human computer interaction and computer-supported, co-operative work research: interaction, embodiment and practice. The second part of the paper translates these theoretical foundations into analytical devices for library and information science research by presenting two approaches ( Jean Lave's "setting" & "arena" and Susan Leigh Star's "boundary objects"), offering two illustrations for each of value for library and information science research. Analysis. Applying these foundations addresses two conditions of human experience essential for library and information science research to acknowledge in the study of information practices in context: 1) the situated, embodied character of human experience; and 2) a socio-material ( and increasingly socio-technical) context brought more actively into our examinations and analysis. Results. Each approach contributes to studying information practices by identifying and analysing the socio-material context in which they unfold. Whether examining the practices of an individual or a group, both the approaches illustrated in this paper draw attention to the social realm in which even seemingly individual practices takes place. Conclusions. Drawing on theoretical traditions like those presented in this paper can help create powerful frameworks for dealing with our contemporary information landscape.
Learn step-by-step how to develop knowledge-based products for international use! Knowledge Organization and Classification in International Information Retrieval examines current efforts to deal with the increasing globalization of information and knowledge. International authors walk you through the theoretical foundations and conceptual elements behind knowledge management, addressing areas such as the Internet, multinational resources, translations, and information languages. The tools, techniques, and case studies provided in this book will be invaluable to anyone interested in bridging the international information retrieval language gap. This book is divided into four sections that address major themes for internationalized information and knowledge: • "General Bibliographic Systems" discusses how bibliographic classification systems can be adapted for specific subjects, the problems with addressing different language expressions, and the future of these systems • "Information Organization in Knowledge Resources" explores knowledge organization and classification, focusing mainly on libraries and on the Internet • "Linguistics, Terminology, and Natural Language Processing" analyzes the latest developments in language processing and the design of information retrieval tools and resources • "Knowledge in the World and the World of Knowledge" addresses the ontological foundations of knowledge organization and classification and knowledge management in organizations from different cultures With this book, you'll gain a better understanding about the international efforts to globalize: • the Dewey Decimal Classification • the Library of Congress Classification • the Universal Decimal Classification • multilingual thesauri • Web directories of education-related resources • human language technology • metadata schemas • the North American Industry Classification Figures, tables, charts, and diagrams elucidate the concepts in Knowledge Organization and Classification in International Information Retrieval. Information educators and practitioners as well as specialists in classification and knowledge organization will find this book valuable for its focus on the problems of-and solutions for-information retrieval for specific linguistic, cultural, and domain communities of discourse.
In 2007, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems, though not new, were clearly the future. Yet, most medical records in U.S. physicians' offices were on paper. Hing et al. (2007) report that only 29.2% of 2,117 survey respondents had any EMR system and only 12.4% had fully implemented an EMR system (i.e., no part was paper). An earlier study found that EMR use was higher in hospital Emergency Departments (31%) and Outpatient Departments (29%) than in physician practices (17%) (Burt and Hing, 2005), but penetration was low in all areas. Many have studied EMR systems and their use in doctor–patient interactions. Heath and Luff (1996) found that medical practitioners continued to use paper records along with a newly introduced EMR. Other studies (Clarke et al., 2001) have examined the use of an EMR in medical exams and issues an EMR poses in physician–patient interactions (Ventres et al., 2005). Martin et al. (2005) studied the issues involved in the integration and implementation of an EMR system in a large hospital. Workflow changes required by physicians using an EMR have also been discussed (Puffer et al., 2007). Fitzpatrick (2000) studied the implications of the use of paper records for EMR systems from the point of view of the providers. No studies focused on the work of practice management. Practice management deals with the business side of the clinic arranging interactions between the patients and clinical staff and insures payment for those interactions.
A lack of semantic interoperability in the multidisciplinary delivery of health care leads to poor health outcomes. This paper describes research that has lead to the development of an ontology based on SNOMED CT®. The ontology functions as a boundary object to bridge the semantic interoperability gap between members of multidisciplinary health care teams caring for patients with chronic diseases. Overall, there was strong agreement among the clinicians on the usefulness of the boundary object.
Purpose – To present detailed examples of the social construction of understandings, exploring interplay between social and individual sense making.
Methodology/approach – A form of ethnomethodological discourse analysis is undertaken using text from online discussions groups for people with kidney failure. Sense making is theorised using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology (1999) as a starting point. Chatman's Theory of Normative Behaviour (2000) and Pettigrew's Information Grounds (1999) are considered for their potential to theorise social impacts on individual understandings, while a practice theoretic approach (Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b) illuminates dynamics between social and individual sense making.
Findings – Local understandings developed out of repetition with gradual modification of ideas. Meanwhile, generic information such as facts was usually contextualised by descriptions of lived experiences. In this way, specifics were emphasised rather than generalities. However, the detailed, non-prescriptive commentaries provided by individuals gathered into usefully loose (non-specific) fields of possibilities.
Research implications – Information and knowledge manifest as transient and customised. This suggests a need for caution if researchers conceive people as having stable ‘knowledge structures’ which can be mapped by research, and it raises questions about durable incarnations of information.
Practical implications – People must produce flexible understandings particular to their situation. This requires time, reiteration and access to contributions from a range of sources. Provision of generic information during one-off interactions is only a first step towards support of these larger needs.
Originality/value of paper – Extends relational conceptions of information and verb-based metaphors for sense making, by proposing sense making, information and knowledge as transient and customised.
This paper argues that, within the recordkeeping community, perceptions of records are subject to the "prototype" effects identified in recent psychological studies. Archivists and records managers perceive certain records as prototypical, while other records are more distant from their mental prototypes. Prototype effects apply both to item-level records and to record aggregations. Moreover, the boundaries of the record concept are fuzzy, and some records are "boundary objects" shared with other communities. The characterization of records as persistent representations embraces nonprototypical records as well as those more central to the concept.
The National Governors’ Association has been conducting research into federations – why schools federate, their experiences of the process, common barriers, and the lessons learnt along the way. Ellie Howarth reports on some of their findings
Drawing on Susan Leigh Star’s conceptualization of boundary objects as a corpus of actions through which an imaginary context for doing social work emerges, this article examines how two seemingly disparate sites of cultural production can be comparatively brought into conversation with one another. These sites include specific expert communities where actors within the fields of fashion design and livestock husbandry both evaluate and theorize new social possibilities. By attending to how these practices unfold through an experimental rendering of expertise this article employs the notion of a boundary object to comparatively analyzing the speculative practices of these two sites.
Prior research has identified the importance of embodied action in establishing representational infrastructure during disruptions in interdisciplinary work. This study expands on such research by examining meetings of interdisciplinary museum design teams—including educators, designers, researchers, and museum professionals. In these meetings, the museum space (exhibition room) emerges as a boundary object as it is presented through diverse material artifacts including floor-plans and mock-ups. The authors’ analyses identify and describe bodily and discursive practices of place–making and place-imagining that the participants perform as they attempt to maintain continuity across these shifting material forms and occasions.
Documents are evolving as means for structuring and navigating information space, and resources for constructing and negotiating social space.
Countering claims that cyberspace will bring the end of organizations in general and of the firm in particular, this article points to the role organizations play in fostering the production and synergistic development of knowledge. Formal organizations help turn the partial, situated insights of individuals and communities into robust, organizational knowledge. To organize knowledge in this way requires acknowledging the boundaries inevitably erected within organizations through the division of labor and the division of knowledge. Infrastructure for organizing knowledge must overcome these boundaries. Assuming that knowledge is a frictionless commodity possessed by individuals makes communications technologies and social organization curious antagonists. This article argues instead for compatible organizational and technological architectures that respond to and enhance the social production of knowledge.
The authors review a number of approaches to "just for you" service. They suggest that this concept offers opportunities for library and information science (LIS) programs to extend their reach by engaging domain experts who will develop services and architectures grounded in communities of practice. They propose a unifying framework for an extension of LIS education and training and suggest that this be labeled "the ethology of text"—an extension of Nardi's concept of "ecology of text." The proposed framework can improve understanding of domain experts at work, if core elements of existing LIS programs (user needs, relevance, indexing, classification) are revisited, unified, and interpreted in the context of local practice. The paper concludes with some observations on professionalism, which address problems of linking communities of practice to knowledge architectures designed by information professionals outside any specialist domain. Outline suggestions for a curriculum that can enhance the performance of texts at work in a given domain are also provided.
This paper proposes the concept of boundary constructions. An initial framework
depicts subjects shaping objects across enactment phenomena just as,
conversely, objects shape subjects’ interpretations and experiences. Results from
an ethnographic case study within a community of practice highlight the
blurring or dynamic entanglement that occurs between objects and subjects,
thus going beyond conventional dualism. Such dynamics involve a constant flux
or movement of co/reconstructions at the boundary (or social intersection) of
intra-acting subjects. These boundary co/reconstructions are embedded within
effective workplace dialogue, and are thus part of the process of knowing
(or flow of emergent knowledge).
Based on the remanufacturing idea, taking the CH Company for the research case, the forward and reverse logistics processes of the household electrical appliances were simulated and optimized systemically through Flexsim. Through method study technique, the process for recovery, dismantling and remanufacturing of waste TV were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively and the model of production logistics system was built. From this model, the bottlenecks of the total logistics system can be identified, and the corresponding improved program and a comprehensive evaluation can be suggested reasonably. The results indicate that, based on the simulation in this work, the system technical indexes, such as T, Q, C and S, can be improved greatly by optimizing household electrical appliances remanufacturing production logistics system.
Online knowledge sharing activities are flourishing with the advent of social media. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia facilitate knowledge sharing in online communities that extend beyond the constraints of existing organizational boundaries (Qualman 2011). Since the focus of prior research has generally been limited to knowledge sharing within organizations (e.g., Wang & Noe, 2010), it is imperative to better understand its practice on Web 2.0 platforms and in these online communities (Allen 2010). As Vakkayil (2012) contends, the concept of boundaries is informative for understanding knowledge sharing and creation among heterogeneous users with diverse cultural, organizational, socio-economic and spatial backgrounds. In organizational settings, boundaries, such as physical, cognitive, social, and political (e.g., Carlile, 2004), may privilege certain participants, motivations, and modes of participation. However, these boundaries may function quite differently in Web 2.0 environments outside these organizational settings. Although it becomes easier and faster to share knowledge and collaborate online, few studies have investigated how boundaries and boundary-crossing in Web 2.0 environments affect online collaboration, knowledge sharing, and participation. This paper aims to explore the usefulness of employing existing boundary frameworks to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration. To test and modify existing theoretical frameworks of boundaries we analyzed Wikipedia entries about the Japanese nuclear power plant accident triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake in March 2011. This event attracted attention from around the world and is useful for our research because the case involves multiple boundaries and various processes of boundary-crossing. Based on the data and the literature we propose a refined framework for boundaries and boundary-crossing, and by doing so this paper advances our understanding of boundaries for knowledge sharing in online communities and identifies how these boundaries facilitate or hinder equal participation.
This paper examines how the dynamics between design and research interests shape and influence the development of design concepts in collaborative design projects. We introduce the concepts of boundary zones and emergent boundary objects in order to account for how different project stakeholders align their interests and move towards shared project goals. Though the study is of a specific case, namely the collaboration between interaction design researchers and architects to develop interactive com-ponents in a new metro station, we show how the concepts of boundary zones and emergent boundary objects can support the articulation and analysis of the way that design concepts emerge and are shaped through ongoing negotiations and reifications.
This paper analyses and compares the treatment of sexual health in Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval (RVM) using three of Bowker and Star's (1999) infrastructural inversion techniques: practical politics, convergence, and resistance. Our findings reveal that neither LCSH nor RVM offer a holistic representation of sexual health (practical politics), that LCSH's topical representation of sexual health limits access to relevant material (convergence), and that the enhancement of LCSH through user-added content could improve but not replace these systems (resistance).
This 2007 book considers how agencies are currently figured at the human-machine interface, and how they might be imaginatively and materially reconfigured. Contrary to the apparent enlivening of objects promised by the sciences of the artificial, the author proposes that the rhetorics and practices of those sciences work to obscure the performative nature of both persons and things. The question then shifts from debates over the status of human-like machines, to that of how humans and machines are enacted as similar or different in practice, and with what theoretical, practical and political consequences. Drawing on scholarship across the social sciences, humanities and computing, the author argues for research aimed at tracing the differences within specific sociomaterial arrangements without resorting to essentialist divides. This requires expanding our unit of analysis, while recognizing the inevitable cuts or boundaries through which technological systems are constituted.
Prologue Part I. Practice: Introduction I 1. Meaning 2. Community 3. Learning 4. Boundary 5. Locality Coda I. Knowing in practice Part II. Identity: Introduction II 6. Identity in practice 7. Participation and non-participation 8. Modes of belonging 9. Identification and negotiability Coda II. Learning communities Conclusion: Introduction III 10. Learning architectures 11. Organizations 12. Education Epilogue.
Information systems (IS) development is a complex organisational activity involving multiple stakeholders who interact with various artefacts in order to facilitate understanding and cooperation across diverse knowledge domains. A considerable body of work has analysed such artefacts as boundary objects, focusing on their interpretive flexibility across communities of practice. Increasing interest in the materiality of organisational practices directs attention to how such objects result from the performance of sociomaterial relations. This paper draws on these two strands of research to complement the analysis of project-related artefacts as boundary objects with a sociomaterial perspective on such objects and the practices within which they are constituted. The contribution of this combined approach is illustrated using the findings of a longitudinal case study of IS development. We trace the production and use of a prototype, the various people and practices with which it was associated, the multiple sociomaterial configurations that constituted it as a boundary object, and the social and material consequences of its use. The utilisation of sociomateriality as a theoretical lens enables us to further our understanding of how project-related artefacts act as boundary objects, and in doing so, constitute IS development as a sociomaterial practice.
Purpose
– Working toward a symbolic interactionist understanding of information provision by multiple agencies responding to crisis situations, in this paper the authors aim to examine mandated information provision on the part of US law enforcement to survivors of intimate partner violence.
Design/methodology/approach
– The authors conducted a detailed content analysis of 1,793 documents supplied by local law enforcement agencies from over 700 cities from all 50 US states. Documents were coded within a framework that identified 18 information elements corresponding to four emergent situations commonly found within the survivors’ small world, as well as codes to note level of responsibility expressed by law enforcement and affective tone.
Findings
– Law enforcement expressed the greatest responsibility for those information elements related to their immediate purview – generally, how to engage with the police themselves in an initial crisis situation. However, information related to community social services, related to “later” survivor situations was included in the documents almost as frequently, but with less expressed direct responsibility.
Originality/value
– Agencies providing information to survivors of crisis situations are frequently working within an environment that is bounded by overlapping governmental and private actors who may have different norms, agendas, and priorities. Developing a symbolic interactionist model that allows for the co‐existence of these different approaches, and articulates their interaction, can help IS professionals support these actors who may be struggling with minimal preparation for information interactions.