What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination
What difference does robotic telepresence make to the coordination of complex, dynamic, and distributed knowledge work? We explored this question in a post-surgical intensive care unit where medical workers struggled to coordinate their work in the face of different assessments of their extremely si...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110674 |
| _version_ | 1811083458782429184 |
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| author | Beane, Matthew Ian Orlikowski, Wanda J. |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Beane, Matthew Ian Orlikowski, Wanda J. |
| author_sort | Beane, Matthew Ian |
| collection | MIT |
| description | What difference does robotic telepresence make to the coordination of complex, dynamic, and distributed knowledge work? We explored this question in a post-surgical intensive care unit where medical workers struggled to coordinate their work in the face of different assessments of their extremely sick patients. Our in-depth field study examined night rounds, a central routine for coordinating work in this unit that was performed remotely through different technologies. We found that night rounds that are materially enacted through robotic telepresence intensify coordination outcomes both positively and negatively, resulting in contrary implications for subsequent coordination of work. We further found that these differences in intensification depend on whether preparatory work is more or less distanced from the bedside. We develop a theoretical account of these findings by explaining how the coordination of complex, dynamic, and distributed work is crucially related to how that work is materially enacted over time. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:33:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/110674 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:33:24Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1106742022-10-01T09:45:21Z What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination Beane, Matthew Ian Orlikowski, Wanda J. Sloan School of Management Orlikowski, Wanda J. Beane, Matthew Ian Orlikowski, Wanda J. What difference does robotic telepresence make to the coordination of complex, dynamic, and distributed knowledge work? We explored this question in a post-surgical intensive care unit where medical workers struggled to coordinate their work in the face of different assessments of their extremely sick patients. Our in-depth field study examined night rounds, a central routine for coordinating work in this unit that was performed remotely through different technologies. We found that night rounds that are materially enacted through robotic telepresence intensify coordination outcomes both positively and negatively, resulting in contrary implications for subsequent coordination of work. We further found that these differences in intensification depend on whether preparatory work is more or less distanced from the bedside. We develop a theoretical account of these findings by explaining how the coordination of complex, dynamic, and distributed work is crucially related to how that work is materially enacted over time. 2017-07-12T16:05:14Z 2017-07-12T16:05:14Z 2015-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1047-7039 1526-5455 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110674 Beane, Matt, and Wanda J. Orlikowski. “What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination.” Organization Science 26, no. 6 (December 2015): 1553–1573. en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2015.1004 Organization Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Prof. Orlikowski |
| spellingShingle | Beane, Matthew Ian Orlikowski, Wanda J. What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title | What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title_full | What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title_fullStr | What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title_full_unstemmed | What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title_short | What Difference Does a Robot Make? The Material Enactment of Distributed Coordination |
| title_sort | what difference does a robot make the material enactment of distributed coordination |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110674 |
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