Call for Papers

Technologies are changing at a rapid pace and are increasingly developed and deployed for use around the globe (Word Economic Forum, 2023). On one hand, emerging technologies can improve communication and facilitate information flow, making valuable resources more readily available across national boundaries. On the other hand, the spread of emerging technologies at unprecedented rates may have unintended consequences that disadvantage certain regions, countries, and employees (e.g., Wolff, 2021; Goldberg, 2023). In this sub-theme, our goal is to bring into conversation scholars from around the globe, across the macro to micro spectrum, to dialogue about how emerging technologies are changing work and organizations in different national contexts and the implications of that reality.
 
At the macro level, there are open questions about the scaling of technology ventures and how it varies between the Global North and the Global South. Weiss et al. (2021) examine the growth of technology ventures in Africa, considering the impact of the continent's social, political, and rapidly evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem on the scaling process. In another example, Cameron et al. (2023) find that one of the reasons that Silicon Valley headquartered gig companies are able to scale in the Global South is because of gig workers developing their own workarounds, and bearing the time, money, and coordination costs these workarounds require. Relatedly, numerous countries are now implementing varied policies to mitigate the potential unintended consequences of emerging technologies. China and Italy (Martindale, 2023), for instance, have enacted measures to temporarily or permanently prohibit the usage of specific AI. While these regulations are meant to safeguard a given population another result is the subsequent unequal access to technologies that are rapidly becoming indispensable (e.g., Joyce et al., 2021; Mollick & Euchner, 2023).
 
At the meso level of analysis, there are also important questions about how multinational firms engage with technologies from abroad. Värlander and her colleagues (2016), studied the spread of innovation practices from a US-based firm to satellite locations in China and India finding that the US-based practices often required recontextualization to fit within these new cultural contexts. With the advent of AI and Generative AI technologies, we anticipate an acceleration of questions regarding their development. An on-going question is how organizations will reckon with the fact that the data for large language models (LLMs) are trained on is generally English, and from dominant culture groups in the Global North (e.g., Okerlund et al., 2022). What does this mean for their strategies, activities, and decision making in the development, deployment, and use of emerging technologies? And, just as importantly, much of the work that that undergirds these models is done by workers in precarious arrangements in the Global South (Gray & Suri, 2019; Rahman et al., 2024).
 
At the micro level of analysis, it is crucial to understand how workers interpret and use technologies differently across geographical contexts. Early research has suggested that technologies developed in one location may be built based on cultural models that do not translate well to different cultural contexts (Leidner & Kayworth, 2006; Chen et al., 2009; Hinds et al., 2011). Katharina Reinecke and her colleagues, for example, have established that commonly used technology can be less understandable, engaging, and usable for people from non-Western countries and those who deviate in their values and language from the average developer in the location in which the technology is envisioned (e.g. Reinecke & Bernstein, 2013; Sturm et al., 2015.) Collaboration and knowledge sharing systems developed in the West, for example, may embed norms for collaboration and information sharing that are not shared and therefore disadvantage those from non-Western cultures. Relatedly, research has shown that how individuals share knowledge in online platforms (Moser & Deichmann, 2020), contribute to Wikipidia (Pfeil et al., 2006), and seek knowledge from distant colleagues (Ardichvili et al., 2006) is affected by national cultural norms.
 
Despite these glaring national and cultural differences, Hinds and colleagues (2011) note that global research is sparse and what has been claimed to be research on global work is rarely global. Over a decade ago, they called for management scholars to “put the global in global work”. Yet too often global means the Global North which misses the Global Majority and opportunities to build theory from other cultural contexts (Chen et al., 2009; Thomason & Gibson, 2024). Similarly, as Thelen (2018) notes, geographic and cultural variations mean that tensions that workers experience “mobilize different actors, inspire the formation of different coalitions, and shape the terms on which conflicts [...] are framed and fought” (p. 939).
 
To add complexity, as researchers, we frequently lack the proper approaches to examine how technology is understood and employed in various contexts, as our “methodological toolbox” predominantly reflects a Western perspective. For instance, widely recognized theories and related measures like the Technology Acceptance Model have demonstrated efficacy in Western countries (e.g., Switzerland and the US) but encountered limitations in Asian ones (e.g., Japan; Straub et al., 1997). Studying the work of global teams and global workers requires in-depth ethnographies that span organizational and geographical boundaries, posing distinctive challenges for researchers (Hinds & Cramton, 2012).
 
In this sub-theme, we invite papers that grapple with issues of how emerging technologies and their design and use within and across organizations intersect with questions related to the activities, strategies, structures, decision-making processes, and governance of multinational enterprises and the cultural systems in which they are embedded. We invite work that examines the extent to which and how the ways that emerging technologies are designed and deployed contribute to (un)equal access to knowledge and/or in other ways disadvantage certain groups. We encourage empirical, theoretical, and methodological papers with a variety of theoretical lenses (e.g., critical organization theory, socio-materiality, institutional theory, social identity theory, process theory, labour process theory, structuration theory, cultural adaptation, action network theory, Guanxi, karma capitalism etc.) and methodological approaches. Here are some example topics that would fit with this sub-theme:

• How do different cultural backgrounds affect the perception of new technologies and with what consequences? What role does the legacy of colonialism play?

• How does the development of LLMs affect the decision making and operations of organizations around the globe, for example in the Global South vs. the Global North?

• How are new technologies changing practices around equity and inclusion for workers, managers and organizations in different locations around the global, especially digitally-enabled organizing?

• How do existing data-driven interventions, for example, in health, worker wellbeing, information distribution, and policing, address, ignore, and remake constructed categories like national culture?

• How do algorithmic systems operate through, as, or against domination and oppression in different locations around the globe? What are the practices of resistance or refusal used?

• How are algorithmic decision-making systems being incorporated into bureaucratic processes and how does this vary by region/country? How do they obscure or reify race/ethnicity, dominant language and national culture?

• How do workers in different regions of the world interpret and use emerging technologies, such as generative AIs?

• When and how do the cultural beliefs and models (for example, beliefs about collaboration norms) on which new technologies are developed affect users from other cultures and, more broadly, the adoption of these technologies?

• How do 3D printing and other technologies of the 4th industrial revolution change individual competences and roles in organizations and, especially, with what implications for workers in the Global South?

• What new/old theories and methodologies should we use or develop to investigate new technology across geographical boundaries?

• How are new local and global policies are being introduced and what impact are they having on specific regions, industries, and technologies?

References

• Cameron, L., Thomason, B., & Occhiuto, N. (2023): How Platform Work Translates Across Borders, a Multi-National Comparative Ethnography. Paper (work in progress) presented at 39^th EGOS Colloquium in Cagliari (Italy), July 5–8, 2023.

• Chen, Y.R., Leung, K., & Chen, C.C. (2009): “Bringing National Culture to the Table: Making a Difference with Cross‐cultural Differences and Perspectives.” Academy of Management Annals, 3 (1), 217–249.
• Hinds, P., & Cramton, C. (2012): “Studying global work groups in the field.” In A. Hollingshead & M.S. Poole (eds.): Research Methods for Studying Group and Teams: A Guide to Approaches, Tools, and Technologies. New York: Routledge, 105–120.
• Hinds, P., Liu, L., & Lyon, J. (2011): “Putting the global in global work: An intercultural lens on the practice of cross-national collaboration.” Academy of Management Annals, 5 (1), 135–188.
• Goldberg, P.K. (2023): The Unequal Effects of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Gray, M.L., & Suri, S. (2019): Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Joyce, K., Smith-Doerr, L., Alegria, S., Bell, S., Cruz, T., Hoffman, S.G., Noble, S.U., & Shestakofsky, B. (2021): “Toward a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Research on Inequalities and Structural Change.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 7, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023121999581.
• Leidner, D.E., & Kayworth, T. (2006): “A review of culture in information systems research: toward a theory of information technology culture conflict.” MIS Quarterly, 30 (2), 357–399.
• Martindale, J. (2023): “These are the countries where ChatGPT is currently banned.” digitaltrends, April 12, 2023, https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/these-countries-chatgpt-banned/.
• Mollick, E., & Euchner, J. (2023): “The Transformative Potential of Generative AI: A Conversation with Ethan Mollick.” Research-Technology Management, 66 (4), 11–16.
• Okerlund, J., Klasky, E., Middha, A., Kim, S., Rosenfeld, H., Kleinman, M., & Parthasarathy, S. (2022): What’s in the Chatterbox? Large Language Models, Why They Matter, and What We Should Do About Them. University of Michigan Technology Assessment Project, https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/research/research-report/whats-in-the-chatterbox.
• Rahman, H.A., Karunakaran, A., & Cameron, L.D. (2024): “Taming platform power: Taking accountability into account in the management of platforms.” Academy of Management Annals, 18 (1), 251–294.
• Reinecke, K., & Bernstein, A. (2013): “Knowing what a user likes: A design science approach to interfaces that automatically adapt to culture.” MIS Quarterly, 37 (2), 427–453.
• Straub, D., Keil, M., & Brenner, W. (1997): “Testing the technology acceptance model across cultures: A three country study.” Information & Management, 33 (1), 1–11.
• Sturm, C., Oh, A., Linxen, S., Abdelnour Nocera, J., Dray, S., & Reinecke, K. (2015): “How WEIRD is HCI? Extending HCI Principles to other Countries and Cultures.” In: CHI EA ‘15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2425–2428; https://doi.org/10.1145/2702613.2702656.
• Thelen, K.A. (2018): “Regulating Uber: The Politics of the Platform Economy in Europe and the United States.” Perspectives on Politics, 16 (4), 938–953.
• Thomason, B., & Gibson, C.B. (2024): “A Meta-Theory of Global Work Encounters.” Academy of Management Review, 49 (3), 636–661.
• Värlander, S., Hinds, P., Thomason, B., Pearce, B.M., & Altman, H. (2016): “Enacting a constellation of logics: How transferred practices are recontextualized in a global organization.” Academy of Management Discoveries, 2 (1), 79–107.
• Wolff, J. (2021): “How Is Technology Changing the World, and How Should the World Change Technology?” Global Perspectives, 2 (1), https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2021.27353.
• World Economic Forum (2023): Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023. Flagship Report, https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Top_10_Emerging_Technologies_of_2023.pdf.
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