How Artefacts Do Leadership: A Ventriloquial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 089331892199807
Author(s):  
Jonathan Clifton ◽  
Fernando Fachin ◽  
François Cooren
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Human Actors

To date there has been little work that uses fine-grained interactional analyses of the in situ doing of leadership to make visible the role of non-human as well as human actants in this process. Using transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction as data, this study seeks to show how leadership is co-achieved by artefacts as an in-situ accomplishment. To do this we situate this study within recent work on distributed leadership and argue that it is not only distributed across human actors, but also across networks that include both human and non-human actors. Taking a discursive approach to leadership, we draw on Actor Network Theory and adopt a ventriloquial approach to sociomateriality as inspired by the Montreal School of organizational communication. Findings indicate that artefacts “do” leadership when a hybrid presence is made relevant to the interaction and when this presence provides authoritative grounds for influencing others to achieve the group’s goals.

The Map and the Territory

Transfers ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Kristina Skåden
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
International Association ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
System Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Actors

In transnational history of traffic, transport, and mobility, historians have been arguing for studying organizations as “transnational system builders” in the establishment and modification of transnational infrastructure. Emphasis has been placed on examining human actors. Here, I argue that the role of material objects, the nonhuman actors, should also be taken into account by investigating how a particular map matters. The major research issue is, therefore: How can we understand and analyze how the Nazi regime put the map Deutschlandkarte displayed at the exhibition Die Strasse (Munich, 1934) into play? In addition, how did the map figure in transnational system building during and after the seventh International Road Congress arranged by the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses? Insights from transnational history in the fields of traffic, transport, and mobility as well as material cultural studies, critical mapping, and actor-network theory inform this article.

Mapping Messiness: The Informational Film Archive and Actor-Network Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Archival Practices

This chapter offers Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a toolkit for analysing the often messy and complex networks and relationships involved in the production and distribution of useful cinema. Stressing that ANT is employed in the book as a way of thinking rather than as an explicit framework, the chapter briefly outlines the key principles of ANT and relates them to documentary and informational filmmaking. In particular, the chapter discusses the potential of ANT for rendering visible or audible the many non-human actors in any instance of filmmaking, and for revealing how facts are constructed in documentary and related genres. The institutions, individuals, networks, technologies and other actors involved in mid-twentieth-century Danish informational filmmaking are then mapped. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of the archive and the researcher in the network of any given film, explaining how contemporary archival practices, especially digital technologies, are creating new dispositifs for historical informational film.

scholarly journals ICT - an ally and an alien The role of ICT in Swedish popular adult education organisations

Seminar.net ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunilla Jedeskog ◽  
Inger Landström
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Information And Communication Technology ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Network Interaction ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Human Actors

This article is focused on Swedish folk high schools and study associations as organisational settings (and not explicitly at teaching efforts and educational activities). It concerns results from a research project about introducing and implementing information and communication technology (ICT) in these value based organisations. Our research has mainly been conducted through interviews with people engaged on different organisational levels. In this article empirical results are analysed in relation to actor-network theory (ANT). Human and non-human actors are linked together in a web of relationships referred to as an actor-network. Interaction among actors, contradictory roles of ICT and relations to essential values in these organisations are discussed.

The symmetry principle and the concept of time in actor-network theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mykhailo Akulov
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Symmetry Principle ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Human Actors

The article addresses some problems of interpreting the symmetry principle and the concept of time in actor-network theory (ANT). The relationships between human and non-human actors constitute the basis for one of the key theses in ANT, which is the principle of generalised symmetry. However, the principle of symmetry does not seem to be strictly observed in many works by ANT proponents. This is also true for relationships between heterogeneous actors, as well as for the link between space and time. A series of discussions on the role of actors and the very concept of actor in ANT can be noticed in the writings of both the main architects and followers of actor-network theory (B. Latour, J. Law, A. Mol, A. Hennion, etc.). The analysis of ANT texts suggests that, first, assumptions about relativity are partial and incomplete; second, the actors do not have an equal ontological status.

scholarly journals The Role of Built Environment in Collective Learning: The Case of Rumah Sahabat Salman

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-313
Author(s):  
Agus S Ekomadyo ◽  
Andhika Riyadi ◽  
Salim Rusli ◽  
Rakhmat F. Aditra
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Research Result ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Collective Learning ◽  
Technical Approach ◽  
Technical Object ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Islamic Values

The built environment relates to the important value of an environment as part of the learning process. Collective learning refers to the process of knowledge creation that continue through the association movement among human actors and technical object. By taking the case of Rumah Sahabat (RuSa) program, this paper maps and identifies the role of built environment in collective learning using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach. RuSa is a program of Salman ITB mosque to train students as cadres by facilitating them rent houses in the nearby settlement. Students, in turn, have to serve and deliver Islamic values to the local communities. The assembly of RuSa program is mapped into three moments: RuSa trainees teach Quran to the children in the local mosque; children bring home the homework and discuss them with their parents; RuSa trainees and local citizens developed the “Reading Terrace” in community main hall. The research result shows that the socio-technical approach can guide the development of built environment to improve and sustain the learning since it depends on human and non-human actors involved.

Ephemerality as Data Prevention: Values for an Ethics of Ephemeral Mobile Media

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-435
Author(s):  
Sarah Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Shared Values ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Data Retention ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Response Data ◽  
Human Actors

Mobile media is a chief driver of digitizing locational information, geotags, and photos that are produced and collected as we communicate with and exist within our networks. But when these data are stored and recorded—in quantities that far exceed any of our abilities to manage—mobile technology denies our ability to actively forget. This article argues that digital ephemerality via mobile applications (i.e. Snapchat, Signal, Confide, and Facebook Messenger Secret) has emerged because of the granular possibilities for data retention enabled by mobile devices. Together these applications move towards a practice of preventing data from being stored and shared. In response, “data prevention” is proposed as an ethical framework for ephemeral mobile media, and is theorized with an eye toward the distributed agency inherent to networks. This ethics is positioned within a framework of distributed agency across stakeholders that draws most directly from actor–network theory, and three commonly articulated values—trust, transparency, and privacy—are proposed. These values help to define a system of networked practices within ephemeral mobile media that requires consideration of both human and non-human actors. Building sustainable ephemeral technologies necessitates aligning shared values amongst divergent stakeholders. The article concludes by motioning to LIMITS research, where data prevention might be included, linking and further intensifying shared values across technical and social concerns.

scholarly journals What makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’? The de-scription of anthrozootechnical agencements

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 761-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Doré ◽  
Jérôme Michalon
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Dairy Farm ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Human Animal

Questions concerning animals’ role in society have received little attention from Organization Studies. This article develops and tests some theoretical and methodological propositions aimed at contributing to the elaboration of an analytical framework for interpreting our organized relations with animals and furthering our understanding of what makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’. First, examining the role of animals in the ‘non-human turn’ that has been emerging, especially with the Actor–Network Theory and the Symmetrical Anthropology project, it adresses the limits of the ‘non-human’ category to analyze situations of coordination of collective action involving animals. It then develops the concept of anthrozootechnical agencement to envisage the role of animals in the course of action through the lens of their relational properties and applies the notion of script to propose an operational formulation of the specifically organizational trials to which these particular agencements are subjected. Based on three case studies (the role of the leash in the organization of human–dog relations, the management of wolves’ return to France, and the production of milk on a dairy farm), this article shows that two main types of operation make human–animal relations ‘organizational’: first, the organization of anthrozootechnical relations is constituted by and constitutive of the combination of three types of specifically organizational test to which these particular agencements are subjected (the performance test, the coherence test, and the dimensioning test); second, the work of organizing anthrozootechnical relations then consists in elaborating, executing, and transforming heterogeneous scripts that are never strictly indexed on the nature (human, animal, technique) of the entities they concern.

scholarly journals Discursive Contextures of Science: Euro/West-Centrism and Science and Technology Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Embryonic Stem ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Knowledge And Practice

Science and Technology Studies (STS) by the very act of showing the multiplicity, contingency, and context-dependence of scientific knowledge and practice, provincialized modern science. Postcolonial interventions within STS have pursued this goal even further. Nevertheless, Euro/West-centrism continues to inflect not only scientific practices and lay imaginaries, but also sociological and historical analyses of sciences. In this article, drawing on my own training within STS – first under J.P.S. Uberoi, who was concerned with structuralist analysis of modernity and science, and thereafter under Andy Pickering, when we focused on material agency and temporal emergence and extensively engaged with Actor Network Theory - I emphasize the continuing role of Euro/West-centric discourses in defining the “self” and the “other” and in impacting epistemological and ontological interventions. More broadly, building on a concept of Michael Lynch’s, I call for excavation and analysis of discursive contextures of sciences. In the second section of the article, through a brief analysis of embryonic stem cell therapy in a clinic in Delhi, I show how with shifting transnational landscape of technoscience certain discursive contextures are being “deterritorialized” and left “stuttering.”

scholarly journals Art&science. Autoetnografia artystki realizującej projekty w laboratoriach biologicznych

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Karolina Żyniewicz
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Actor Network

The aim of the text is to present the use of the analytical autoethnographic method in studying the “art&science” phenomenon. It is attempt to show that the role of the artist can combine with the role of the ethnographer. The objects of study are the multilevel relations emerging during the realization of artistic projects in biological laboratories. These relations concern both humans (the artist, the scientists) and non-humans (laboratory organisms, equipment). On the basis of actor-network theory, the author presents how the liminal status of ethnographic research is modified when it connects with art. The form of conducting the research is both an example of activity in the art and science field and a new methodological proposal for the study of science and technology.

The Impact of Network of Actors on the Information Technology

2011 ◽  
pp. 234-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiko Iyamu ◽  
Arthur Tatnall
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
It Strategy ◽  
Web Portal ◽  
Computing Environment ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Impact

Organisations’ reliance on Information Technology (IT) is rapidly increasing. IT strategy is developed and implemented for particular purposes by different organizations. We should therefore expect that there will be network of actors within the computing environment, and that such network of actors will be the key to understanding many otherwise unexpected situations during the development and implementation of IT strategy. This network of actors has aligned interests. Many organizations are developing and implementing their IT strategy, while little is known about the network of actors and their impacts, which this paper reveals. This paper describes how Actor-Network Theory (ANT) was employed to investigate the impact of network of actors on the development and implementation of IT strategy in an organisation. ANT was used as it can provide a useful perspective on the importance of relationships between both human and non-human actors. Another example: design and implementation of a B-B web portal, is offered for comparison.

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