Sub-theme 54: Organizing Algorithms: Sociotechnical Crossings in Space and Time
Call for Papers
Algorithms have become integral to organizations and organizing. While tech giants have developed their business models
on the algorithmic sorting and computation of data, government agencies, NGOs, and other organizations are also increasingly
employing algorithms to target and shape behaviors across a range of organizational settings. Algorithms thus increasingly
feature as powerful organizing forces. Yet, algorithms are also subject to new forms of organizing and management. Organizational
practices, ranging from ‘readying’ data for algorithms to the situated (non-)use of algorithms, organize the power and agency
of algorithmic technologies (Andrejevic et al., 2020; Plesner & Justesen, 2021; Ratner & Ruppert, 2019). In this sense,
algorithms are both organizing and organized.
In this sub-theme, we are interested in the specific
ways in which algorithms and organization co-constitute each other, asking how algorithms shape organizational worlds but
also how organizational practices and negotiations shape the role algorithms can play in organizations. This calls for a situated
and sociotechnical understanding of organization, focusing not only on the organizing aspects of algorithms and datafication
but also dis-organizing and unanticipated effects (Ratner & Plotnikof, 2022; Seaver, 2017). Building on traditions
that examine organization as a hybrid achievement with heterogeneous agencies (Dahlman et al., 2021; Latour, 1991), we invite
explorations of how humans and algorithms are relationally configured in joint agencies (Suchman, 2012). Here, an equal focus
on human and technological agencies, and how they are figured together, facilitates investigations of the development and
use of algorithms in various organizational contexts, e.g., health care, music, or finance (Beunza & Millo, 2015; Amelang
& Bauer, 2019; Heimstädt et al., 2021; Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2021).
Examining hybrid and heterogeneous
organizational agencies in a context of datafication and pervasive algorithmic ordering involves detailed accounts of the
conditions of possibility produced by algorithmic reason (Aradau & Blanke, 2022). These conditions include, but are not
limited to, the new types of sequenced justification that form the technical backbone of algorithmic decision-support tools
(Dencik & Stevens, 2021). Another key question for organizational scholars is how algorithmic technologies change organizational
temporalities of anticipation and assessment, with machine learning modelling of big data rendering uncertain futures manageable
in novel ways (Amoore, 2013; Cevolini & Esposito, 2020; Kellogg et al., 2020). Similarly, we should consider the spatial
effects of algorithms and data, exploring to what extent organization is ‘becoming topological’ in a ‘new order of spatio-temporal
continuity’ enabled by algorithmic data processing (Lury et al., 2012).
These algorithmic crossings in space
and time re-actualize classical organizational questions of sociotechnical interrelations for the age of (semi-)autonomous
machines (Leonardi, 2012; Fleming, 2019). As Bader and Kaiser (2019) show, while humans are detached from algorithmic decision-making
in significant ways, they also remain centrally involved in it. Therefore, “human-algorithmic interaction is more important
in understanding the implications of algorithms at work than are algorithms on their own” (Bader & Kaiser, 2019: 667).
Whether beginning from the side of algorithms or from that of organizations, the central concern is relational, what is the
agential space for organizing that emerges in the in-between of humans and technology?
Explorations of these
issues might include but are not limited to:
The co-constitution of algorithm and organization/organizing in processes of developing and using algorithmic technologies
The role (s) of data collection and data management in algorithmic organizing and, conversely, new modes of datafication and algorithmic computation of organizations
Emerging algorithmic temporalities, e.g., relationships between (datafied) pasts and predicted futures or new modes of organizing around uncertain futures
Emerging algorithmic spatialities, e.g., how organization is ‘scaled’ through an increased datafication or new topological dis/continuities generated through data
Configurations of human and technological agency, i.e., how human and machine agencies are joined and separated or relational modes of ordering contained in technological ‘scripts’
Questions of algorithmic power and organization, e.g., how algorithmic models generate new power relations in organization and how these co-exist with previous power relations, e.g., regarding bias, surveillance, authority.
Algorithms and dis/organization, addressing the unanticipated and dis/ordering aspects of the encounter between organization and algorithmic technologies
References
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