Eurograd message

                Dear colleagues,

Please find below an announcement and call for abstracts for a conference
hosted at the CRC Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen,
Germany.

Kind regards,
Tobias Rhl



Dr. Tobias Rhl

University of Teacher Education Zurich
Center for Education and Digital Transformation
Lagerstrasse 2, 8090 Zrich

Call for Abstracts: Synchronizing Data in Organizations

Siegen, September 910, 2021
Organized by Siri Lamoureaux, Tobias Rhl, Matthias Rhr, Nadine Taha, Axel
Volmar
With keynotes by Janet Vertesi (Princeton) and Hendrik Vollmer (Warwick)
Organizations have always produced and relied on a wide variety of different
forms of data. Originating from different sources and times, they are
aggregated and operationalized with the aid of technologies and become part of
situated data practices. Thus, data seem to be in constant need of
synchronization to enable their harmonious use across places and times. At the
same time, practices of synchronization within organizations themselves rely
on certain forms of data and data processing technologies. Synchronization,
however, should not be considered a smooth technical process, as data are
visible for and directed at different publics and can appear as open and
mundane in some instances and as exclusive and confidential in others.
Moreover, data tend to be selective, incomplete or even broken (Pink et al.
2018). As lively data (Lupton 2016), they are open to interpretation, carry
a history and may yield future potential. They also seem to be in constant
need of care and are subject to various forms of data work, as they need to be
stored, retrieved, cleaned up or re-/formatted for specific purposes.
Above all, data shape and are shaped by organizational and social
temporalities (Wajcman and Dodd 2016), temporal and normative orderings
(Coletta et al. 2020) as well as complex media ecologies and infrastructures
of time (Volmar and Stine 2021). Their usefulness for the present moment
needs to be established in situ and determined in relation to the availability
of technologies and other data. Such forms of data synchronization include the
intra-organizational curation, transformation and adjustment of data in
everyday work practices as well as inter-organizational forms of data
exchange. Even though it is well known that prognoses are likely to fall short
and that the future can never be fully anticipated and planned, data-driven
future-making practices (Wenzel et al. 2020) based on digitally networked
information infrastructures are becoming increasingly ubiquitous within
organizations. Data is used to make sense of the organizational pasts, predict
future challenges, and guide decision-making processes in the face of
organizational environments increasingly perceived as volatile, uncertain,
complex and ambiguous (VUCA). In this regard, data form the basis for the
creation of fictional expectations (Beckert 2016) that lend credibility and
accountability to decisions.
Data synchronize and are being synchronized as part of organizational
practices (Nicolini and Monteiro 2017). Organizations in particular make use
of a range of technologies and media that makes this possible  ranging from
relatively simple tools like calendars (Hoof 2019), timetables (Zerubavel
1982) and clocks (Gregg and Kneese 2019) to planning tables (Conrad 2019),
databases (Haigh 2009), real time bidding systems (Vurdubakis 2019), and other
logistical media (Peters 2015; Rossiter 2015). Moreover, data circulates in
infrastructures, which exert their influence through formats, standards,
platforms, APIs etc., what and how data can be handled. Consequently,
synchronizing data also transforms how organizations operate and coordinate
work practices. When, for example, organizations coordinate workers via
digital platforms, the relationship between organizations and their workforce
shifts from traditional forms of managerial control towards algorithmic
management of gig economies (Rosenberger and Stark 2015; Duggan et al. 2020).
With cloud computing and big data (boyd and Crawford 2012), organizations rely
increasingly on data created by other organizations and that now may collide
with data practices and tacit knowledge already present within the
organization. As boundaries of organizations become less clearly defined
(Bchner 2019), different data practices and their diverging temporalities are
further confronted with each other.
This conference aims to investigate how organizations deal or have dealt with
the temporal and socio-technical heterogeneity of various forms of data. How
do new ways of data aggregation and processing adjust temporal patterns of
work, governance, leadership, collaboration and decision-making, and how, in
turn, do changing forms of cooperative planning and data practices alter what
kinds of data (such as qualitative data, user data, sensor data etc.) emerge
and are being used in organizations? How are organizational data translated,
interpreted and related to other data? How are they represented and
re-represented (Gerson and Star 1985), and what frictions arise between new
forms of data processing and situated work practices? What kind of
accountability relations (Woolgar and Neyland 2013; Neyland and Coopmans
2014) and accounting assemblages (Vollmer 2018) are enacted through these
processes? What are problems, challenges and issues revolving around data and
temporality in organizations? Therefore, we invite scholars to explore the
specific temporal indices of data in and between organizations along with the
practices that shape or are shaped by those data.
Conceptually, the workshop aims towards a mutual and reciprocal development
and appreciation of media studies and organizational research in various
disciplines. The practice turn in organizational research leads to an
understanding of media and technology not as mere tools, but as constitutive
of organizational work and its social order (Schubert and Rhl 2019;
Orlikowski 2017). Accordingly, organizations are seen as sites where media and
practices of organizing meet (Schatzki 2006). At the same time, media studies
have taken an increasing interest in how media and data technologies reshape
organizational practices and how these dynamics reflect back on the meaning of
the notion medium itself (Beyes, Holt and Pias 2019; Schttpelz 2017). We
understand organizations broadly as sites where people coordinate their
activities and thus do not want to limit contributions to organizations, such
as business enterprises or public administrations, but also invite research on
political movements and activist groups.
We look forward to receiving proposals for oral presentations of 2025 mins
from a broad range of disciplines  such as media and communication studies,
sociology, organizational and management research, science and technology
studies, socioinformatics/CSCW, infrastructure studies, anthropology, history
and others  that address issues of synchronization, prediction, coordination,
translation, interpretation etc. in relation to the dis-/continuity of
heterogeneous data and their role for organizational practices and
operations.
We see data as socially and temporally multiple, heterogeneous and ubiquitous.
They are circulating more and more through organizations but also between
organizations and external entities and other stakeholders. Following these
assumptions we are particularly  but not exclusively  interested in the
following themes:

  1.  Legacy of data: While data can be extracted, migrated and thus
translated or channeled into new contexts, they always bear traces of the
situations in which they have been produced or aggregated. How do
organizations deal with the inevitable inconsistencies and asychronities of
data? How is data that was produced in the past made relevant for the
situation at hand?
  2.  Interoperability of data: Data must be worked on before its
synchronization which is evidenced in the many practices of sorting,
filtering, caring, repairing and formatting data and also in the process of
defining common interfaces for sharing, extracting, migrating and exchanging
data. This is arguably one of the biggest data-related problems in
organizations today  making sense of heterogeneous data sets. How is data
made interoperable and prepared for synchronization? What is inevitably lost
when data is cleaned and translated in this process?
  3.  Reversibility and accountability of data: Due to the necessity for
evidence that organizations are confronted with  not exclusively, but
increasingly when algorithmic decision making is involved  processes of
merging and matching different data sets and algorithmic data chains must be
traceable, and thus demand a range of additional data documentation as well as
agreements and conventions. How does data documentation interfere with issues
of synchronization? To what extent can reversibility and accountability be
described as practices of data synchronization?
Please submit abstracts of 300 to 500 words, along with a title and a short
biography (max. 150 words) by February 28, 2021 to
syncdata@gmx.net
Note: We plan on conducting the conference on location in Siegen. Should
future COVID-related restrictions prohibit the event to be held in physical
co-presence, it will take place online. The format will be adjusted
accordingly.
References
Beckert, Jens. 2016. Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist
Dynamics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beyes, Timon, Robin Holt, and Claus Pias, eds. 2019. The Oxford Handbook of
Media, Technology, and Organization Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bchner, Stefanie. 2018. Zum Verhltnis von Digitalisierung und
Organisation. Zeitschrift fr Soziologie 47 (5): 332348.

https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2018-0121.
Coletta, Claudio, Tobias Rhl, and Susann Wagenknecht. 2020. On Time:
Temporal and Normative Orderings of Mobilities. Mobilities 15 (5): 63546.

https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2020.1805958.
Conrad, Lisa. 2019. Planning Table. In Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology,
and Organization Studies, edited by Timon Beyes, Robin Holt, and Claus Pias,
32132. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duggan, James, Ultan Sherman, Ronan Carbery, and Anthony McDonnell. 2020.
Algorithmic Management and App-Work in the Gig Economy: A Research Agenda for
Employment Relations and HRM. Human Resource Management Journal 30 (1):
11432. 
https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12258.
Gerson, Elihu M. and Star, Susan Leigh. 1985. Representation and
re-representation in scientific work. Tremont Technical Report. San
Francisco: Tremont Research Institute.
Gregg, Melissa, and Tamara Kneese. 2019. Clock. In Oxford Handbook of Media,
Technology and Organisation, edited by Timon Beyes, Robin Holt, and Claus
Pias, 95105. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haigh, Thomas. 2009. How Data Got its Base: Generalized Information Storage
Software in the 1950s and 60s. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31
(4): 625.
Hoof, Florian. 2019. Calendar. In Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology, and
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Lupton, Deborah. 2016. Foreword. Lively Devices, Lively Data and Lively
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Neyland, Daniel, and Catelijne Coopmans. 2014. Visual Accountability. The
Sociological Review 62 (1): 123.
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Praxeology of Organisational and Management Studies. In The SAGE handbook of
process organization studies, edited by Ann Langley and Haridimos Tsukas,
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Peters, John Durham. 2015. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of
Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press-
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607081138.
Pink, Sarah, Minna Ruckenstein, Robert Willim, and Melisa Duque. 2018. Broken
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Rossiter, Ned. 2015. Coded Vanilla: Logistical Media and the Determination of
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Schatzki, Theodore R. 2006. On Organizations as They Happen. Organization
Studies 27 (12): 186373. 
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Schubert, Cornelius, and Tobias Rhl. 2019. Ethnography and Organisations.
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(2): 16481. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794117744748.
Schttpelz, Erhard. 2017. Infrastructural Media and Public Media. Media in
Action 1 (1): 1361.
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Accounts and the Broader Case for Accounting Theory. Accounting,
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Volmar, Axel, and Kyle Stine, eds. 2021. Media Infrastructures and the
Politics of Digital Time: Essays on Hardwired Temporalities. Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press (forthcoming).
Vurdubakis, Theodore. 2019. Real Time Bidding System. In Oxford Handbook of
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Holt, and Claus Pias, 391  400. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wenzel, Matthias, Hannes Krmer, Jochen Koch, and Andreas Reckwitz. 2020.
Future and Organization Studies: On the Rediscovery of a Problematic Temporal
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