Allineare umani, tecnologie e saperi: il lavoro infrastrutturante negli ambienti tecnologicamente densi

Journal title STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI
Author/s Stefano Crabu
Publishing Year 2014 Issue 2014/1 Language Italian
Pages 23 P. 50-72 File size 248 KB
DOI 10.3280/SO2014-001003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This paper, based on the data collected during an organizational ethnography that was carried-out in a biomedical research center in Northern Italy, highlights the emerging dimensions of the technologically dense environment. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which organizational contexts are shaped by the infrastructuring work through which social actors seek to produce, use and locally translate a specific technological object, represented by the protocol used during biologists’ everyday practices. In this way, it is emphasized how the technologically dense environment should not be considered as containers of social actions, subjects and work activities defined by the formal organizational chart and regulatory requirements. They are, rather, an emerging outcome of a complex infrastructuring work oriented to shape a dialogue between human subjectivity and technological objects. From a theoretical point of view, it is argued that the notion of infrastructuring work may prove particularly valuable in shedding light on the mutual-generation relationship between organizational settings and activities of the production, use and translation of technologies.

Keywords: Scientific protocols; organizational practices; technologies in the workplace; infrastructuring work; organizational ethnography.

  1. Akrich, M., (1990), “De la sociologie des techniques à une sociologie des usages: l’impossible intégration du magnétoscope dans les réseaux câblés de première génération”, Techniques et Culture, 16: 83-110 (trad. it. “La de-scrizione degli oggetti tecnici”, in Mattozzi A. (a cura di), Il senso degli oggetti tecnici, Roma, Meltemi, 2006).
  2. Berg, M. (1997), Rationalizing Medical Work, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
  3. Berg, M. (1998), “Order(s) and Disorder(s): Of Protocols and Medical Practices”, in Mol A., Berg M. (eds.), Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies, Durham and London, Duke University Press.
  4. Borzeix, A., Fraenkel, B. (2001), Langage et travail. Communication, cognition, action, Paris, CNRS Éditions.
  5. Bowker, G.C., Star, S.L. (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, Cambridge, The MIT Press.
  6. Bruner, J. (1990), Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, Harvard University Press (trad. it. La ricerca del significato. Per una psicologia culturale, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1992).
  7. Bruni, A. (2003), Lo studio etnografico delle organizzazioni, Roma, Carocci.
  8. Bruni, A. (2004), “Tecnologie, oggetti e pratiche di lavoro quotidiane: il caso della cartella clinica informatizzata”, in Gherardi S., Strati A. (a cura di), Telemedicina. Fra tecnologia e organizzazione, Roma, Carocci.
  9. Bruni, A. (2005a), “Shadowing Software and Clinical Records: On the Ethnography of Non–Humans and Heterogeneous Context”, Organization, 12: 357-378. DOI: 10.1177/135050840505127
  10. Bruni, A. (2005b), “La socialità degli oggetti e la materialità dell’organizzare: umani e non-umani nei contesti lavorativi”, Studi Organizzativi, 1:113-129.
  11. Bruni, A. (2008), “La medicina come ingegneria dell’eterogeneo e pratica sociomateriale”, Rassegna italiana di sociologia, 49: 451-476. DOI: 10.1423/2767
  12. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. (2007), Studiare le pratiche lavorative, Bologna, Il Mulino. Bruni, A. Pinch, T., Schubert, C. (2013), “Technologically Dense Environments: What For? What Next?”, Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 4: 51-72.
  13. Cambrosio, A., Keating, P. (1988), ““Going Monoclonal”: Art, Science, and Magic in the Day-to-Day Use of Hybridoma Technology”, Social Problems, 35: 244-260.
  14. Casati, S., Crabu, S., Lavitrano, M., Turrini, M. (2012), “HeLa. Reconstructing an Immortal Bio”, Tecnoscienza. Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 3: 147-62.
  15. Clarke, A.E., Fujimura, J.H. (eds.) (1992), The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
  16. Collins, H.M. (1975), “The Seven Sexes: A Study of a Phenomenon of Replication of Experiments in Physics”, Sociology, 9: 205-224.
  17. Collins, H.M., Harrison, G.R. (1975), “Building a TEA Laser: The Caprices of Communication”, Social Studies of Science, 5: 441-450.
  18. Collins, H.M., Yearly, S. (1992), “Epistemological Chicken”, in Pickering A. (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago, University of Chicago.
  19. Cooper, R., Law, J. (1995), “Distal and Proximal Visions of Organization”, in Bacharach, S., Gagliardi, P., Mundell, B. (eds.), Studies of Organizations in the European Tradition, Greenwich, Jai Press (trad. it. “Visioni distali e prossimali dell’organizzazione”, in Bacharach S., Gagliardi, P., Mundell, B. (a cura di), Il pensiero organizzativo europeo, Milano, Guerini e Associati).
  20. Doing, P. (2008), “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise a Discipline: The Past, Present, and Future Politics of Laboratory Studies in STS”, in Hackett E.J., Amsterdamska O., Lynch M.E., Wajcman J. (eds.), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (third edition), Cambridge, The MIT Press.
  21. Drew, P., Heritage, J.C. (1992), “Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction”, in Drew P., Heritage J. (eds.), Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  22. Egyedi, T.M., Mehos D.C. (eds.) (2012), Inverse Infrastructures: Disrupting Networks from Below, Northampton, Edward Elgar Publishing.
  23. Fujimura, J. (1995), “Ecologies of Action: Recombining Genes, Molecularizing Cancer, and Transforming Biology”, in Star S. L. (ed.), Ecologies of Knowledge:Work and Politics in Science and Technology, Albany, State University of New York Press.
  24. Gherardi, S. (2008), “La tecnologia come pratica sociale: un quadro interpretativo”, in Gherardi S. (a cura di), Apprendimento tecnologico e tecnologie di apprendimento, Bologna, Il Mulino. Gherardi, S. (2012), How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods, Northampton, Edward Elgar Publishing.
  25. Gherardi, S., Nicolini, D. (2004), Apprendimento e conoscenza nelle organizzazioni, Roma, Carocci.
  26. Grosjean, M., Lacoste, M. (1999), “L’oral et l’écrit dans les communications de travail ou les illusions du ‘tout-écrit’(à l’hôpital)”, Sociologie du Travail, 98: 439-461.
  27. Hindmarsh J., Pilnick A. (2002), “The Tacit Order of Teamwork: Collaboration and
  28. Embodied Conduct in Anesthesia, Sociological Quarterly, 43: 139-164. DOI: 10.1111/J.1533-8525.2002.TB00044.
  29. Landecker, H. (2007), Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
  30. Lash, S. (2001), “Technological Forms of Life”, Theory, Culture and Society, 18: 105-120. DOI: 10.1177/0263276012205166
  31. Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge, Harvard University Press (trad. it. La scienza in azione. Introduzione alla sociologia della scienza, Roma, Edizioni di Comunità, 1998).
  32. Latour, B. (1992), Aramis ou l’amour des techniques, Paris, La Découverte.
  33. Latour, B. (1993), La clef de Berlin et autres leçons d’un amateur de sciences, Paris, La Découverte.
  34. Latour, B., Woolgar, S. (1979), Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
  35. Law, J. (1994), Organizing modernity. Oxford, Blackwell.
  36. Law, J., Mol, A. (1995), “Notes on Materiality and Sociality”, Sociological Review, 43, 2: 274-294. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.1995.tb00604.
  37. Lynch, M.E. (1985), Art and Artifact in Laboratoty Science: A study of shop work and shop talk in a research laboratory, London, Routledge.
  38. Lynch, M.E. (2002), “Protocols, practices, and the reproduction of technique in molecular biology”, British Journal of Sociology, 53: 203-20. DOI: 10.1080/0007131022013330
  39. Löwy, I. (1995), “La standardisation de l’inconnu: les protocoles thérapeutiques en cancérologie”, Techniques & Culture, 25-26:73-108.
  40. March, J.G. (1988), Decisions and Organizations, New York, Basil Blackwell (trad. it. Decisioni e organizzazioni, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993).
  41. Michael, M. (1996), Constructing Identities: The Social, the Nonhuman and Change, London, Sage.
  42. Mongili, A. (2007), Tecnologia e Società, Roma, Carocci. Knorr Cetina, K. (1981), The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science, Oxford, Pergamon Press.
  43. Knorr Cetina, K. (1997), “Sociality with Objects”, Theory, Culture and Society, 14: 1-30. DOI: 10.1177/02632769701400400
  44. Knorr Cetina, K. (1995), “Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to the Study of Science”, in Jasanoff S., Markle G.E., Peterson J.C., Pinch T. (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, London, Sage.
  45. Kunda, G. (2006), Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation (revised edition), Philadelphia, Temple University Press.
  46. Neresini, F. (2008), “Dentro e fuori dal laboratorio. Trasformazioni della tecnoscienza e analisi sociologica”, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 49: 349-76.
  47. Neresini, F., Viteritti, A. (forthcoming), “The Laboratory Kit: Infrastructure or Boundary Object?”, in Mongili A., Pellegrino G. (a cura di), Information Infrastructures: Boudaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  48. Orlikowski, W.J. (2007), “Sociomaterial practices: Exploring Technology at Work”, Organization Studies, 28: 1435-1448. DOI: 10.1177/017084060708113
  49. Orlikowski, W.J., Scott S.V. (2008), “Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization”, Academy of Management Annals, 2: 433-474. DOI: 10.1080/1941652080221164
  50. Parolin, L. (2011), Tecnologia e sapere pratico nella società della conoscenza, Milano, Franco Angeli.
  51. Pettigrew, A., McNulty, T. (1995), “Power and Influence in and around the Boardroom”, Human Relations, 48: 845-873. DOI: 10.1177/00187267950480080
  52. Sackett D.L., Straus E.S., Richardson W.S., Rosenberg W., Haynes B.R. (2000), Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM, Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone.
  53. Scott, P. (1991), “Levers and Counterweights: A Laboratory That Failed to Raise the World”, Social Studies of Science, 21: 7-35. DOI: 10.1177/03063129102100100
  54. Schwartz, H., Jacobs, J. (1979) Qualitative Sociology. A Method to the Madness, New York, The Free Press.
  55. Silverman, D. (1997), Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice, London, Sage.
  56. Skloot, R. (2010), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, New York, Crown Publishers (trad. it. La vita immortale di Henrietta Lacks, Milano, Adelphi, 2011). Star, S.L. (ed.) (1995), Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and Politics in Science and Technology, Albany, State University of New York Press.
  57. Star, S.L. (1999), “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”, American Behavioral Scientist, 43: 377-391. DOI: 10.1177/0002764992195532
  58. Star, S.L., Griesemer J.R. (1989), “Institutional Ecology, “Translations”, and Coherence: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–1939”, Social Studies of Science, 19: 387-420.
  59. Star, S.L., Ruhleder, K. (1996), “Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces”, Information Systems Research 7: 111-134. DOI: 10.1287/ISRE.7.1.11
  60. Star, S.L., Strauss, A.L. (1999), “Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice. The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work”, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, 8: 9-30. DOI: 10.1023/A:100865110535
  61. Star, S.L., Bowker G.C. (2006), “How to Infrastructure”, in Lievrouw L.A., Livingstone S. (eds.), Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of ICTs, London, Sage.
  62. Suchman, L., Blomberg, J., Orr, J.E., Trigg, R. (1999), “Reconstructing Technology as Social Practice”, American Behavioral Scientist, 43: 392-408. DOI: 10.1177/0002764992195533
  63. Suchman, L. (2000), “Organizing Alignment: A Case of Bridge-Building”, Organization, 7: 311-327. DOI: 10.1177/13505084007200
  64. Suchman, L. (2007), Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (second edition), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  65. Timmermans, S. (2000), “Technology and Medical Practice”, in Bird C., Conrad P., Fremont A. (eds.), Handbook of Medical Sociology (fifth edition), Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall.
  66. Timmermans, S., Berg, M. (1997), “Standardization in Action: Achieving Local Universality through Medical Protocols”, Social Studies of Science, 26: 769-99. DOI: 10.1177/03063129702700200
  67. Timmermans, S., Berg, M. (2003), The Gold Standard: The Challenge of Evidence–Based Medicine and Standardization in Health Care, Philadelphia, Temple University Press.
  68. Timmermans, S., Epstein, S. (2010), “A World full of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a Sociology of Standardization”, Annual Review of Sociology, 36: 69-89. DOI: 10.1146/ANNUREV.SOC.012809.10262
  69. Viteritti, A. (2012), Scienza in Formazione. Corpi, materialità e scrittura in laboratorio, Milano, Guerini Scientifica.
  70. Wiener. C.L. (2000), The Elusive Quest: Accountability in Hospitals, New York, Aldine de Gruyter.

  • Assessing the technological maturity of small enterprises through a collaborative approach Andrea Tomo, in STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI 2/2019 pp.147
    DOI: 10.3280/SO2018-002007
  • Real and apparent changes of organizational processes in the era of big data analytics Marcello Martinez, Primiano Di Nauta, Debora Sarno, in STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI 2/2018 pp.91
    DOI: 10.3280/SO2017-002005

Stefano Crabu, Allineare umani, tecnologie e saperi: il lavoro infrastrutturante negli ambienti tecnologicamente densi in "STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI " 1/2014, pp 50-72, DOI: 10.3280/SO2014-001003