Bill Doolin’s research while affiliated with Auckland University of Technology and other places

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an enforced ‘big bang’ adoption of working from home, involving the rapid implementation and diffusion of digital collaboration technologies. This radical shift to enforced working from home led to substantial changes in the practice of work. Using a qualitative research approach and drawing on the interview accounts of 29 knowledge workers required to work from home during the pandemic, the study identified five sociomaterial practices that were significantly disrupted and required reconfiguration of their constitutive social and material elements to renew them. The paper further shows evidence of the ongoing evolution of those sociomaterial practices among the participants, as temporary breakdowns in their performance led to further adjustments and fine-tuning. The study extends the body of knowledge on working from home and provides a fine-grained analysis of specific complexities of sociomaterial practice and change as actors utilize conceptual and contextual sensemaking to perceive and exploit possibilities for action in their unfolding practice of work. Against the backdrop of the increasing adoption of hybrid working in the aftermath of the pandemic, the paper offers four pillars derived from the findings that support the establishment of a conducive working from home environment.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is often used in organisational digitalisation efforts to automate work processes. RPA, and the software robots at its heart, is an equivocal and contentious technology Adopting the products of theorising approach, this study views metaphors as central sensemaking and sensegiving devices that shape the interpretation of RPA among stakeholders towards a preferred reality of ways of seeing and experiencing software robots. The empirical materials are drawn from research in three Australasian organisations that have implemented RPA. Grounding our analysis in the domains-interaction model, we identified three root metaphors: person, robot, and tool, their constitutive conceptual metaphors, and intended use as heuristics devices. Our findings show that metaphor is a powerful device that employees rely on to make sense of their experiences with a new digital technology that can potentially shape their roles, work practices and job design. In addition, managers and automation team members intentionally leverage metaphors to shape others’ perceptions of a software robot’s capabilities and limitations, its implication for human work, and its expanding benefits for organisations over time, among others. Metaphor as a precursor to more formal theory provides scholars with a vocabulary to understand disparate experiences with an emergent automation technology that can be further developed to generate a theory of seeing automation and working with automated agents.

Information systems are an integral part of environmental management infrastructures – complex assemblages of social and technical artifacts, human actors and sociomaterial routines enacted in the pursuit of environmental sustainability outcomes. We analyse the case of an environmental management infrastructure developed around a ‘vessel management system’ by a South Australian regulator between 2004 and 2013. The goal of this infrastructure was to sustain water quality by controlling the discharge of ‘greywater’ from vessels on South Australia’s inland waters. We conceptualise environmental management infrastructure, and the information systems they encompass, as the temporally emergent outcome of human agents’ attempts to extend their environmental management practice in a particular direction, and how that trajectory of emergence is shaped by the intersection of human agencies, material performances and disciplinary practices.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of the most popular process automation approaches, and many organisations in various industries have jumped on the RPA bandwagon. Yet, despite the vast uptake, organisations face many challenges during RPA implementation, leading to a high project failure rate. A clear framework with critical success factors is missing that can guide organisations in their RPA implementation endeavours and avoid the common pitfalls. Building on process and socio-technical theory, we addressed this gap by conducting a case study of an RPA implementation in an Australasian university. We interviewed 13 employees from the university and the RPA vendor. Our findings show how the RPA project unfolded and the intertwining effects on the different components of the socio-technical system at project, work system and organisational levels. Further, we propose eight socio-technical design principles that can guide organisations during their RPA implementations and may lead to higher success rates. https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2021/86

This paper reports the use of a qualitative methodology for conducting longitudinal case study research on software development. We provide a detailed description and explanation of appropriate methods of qualitative data collection and analysis that can be utilized by other researchers in the software engineering field. Our aim is to illustrate the utility of longitudinal case study research, as a complement to existing methodologies for studying software development, so as to enable the community to develop a fuller and richer understanding of this complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. We discuss the insights gained and lessons learned from applying a longitudinal qualitative approach to an empirical case study of a software development project in a large multi-national organization. We evaluate the methodology used to emphasize its strengths and to address the criticisms traditionally made of qualitative research.

Answering the call for alternative approaches to researching project management, we explore the evaluation of project success from a subjectivist perspective. An in-depth, longitudinal case study of information systems development in a large manufacturing company was used to investigate how various project stakeholders subjectively perceived the project outcome and what evaluation criteria they drew on in doing so. A conceptual framework is developed for understanding and analyzing evaluations of project success, both formal and informal. The framework highlights how different stakeholder perspectives influence the perceived outcome(s) of a project, and how project evaluations may differ between stakeholders and across time.

Information systems can be an integral part of environmental management practices enacted in the pursuit of environmental sustainability outcomes. We analyse the specific case of an environmental information system developed by a South Australian environmental regulator. The information system was intended to support efforts to sustain water quality by controlling the discharge of 'greywater' from vessels using South Australia's inland waters. We conceptualize the information system as the outcome of a continuing, though non-deterministic, trajectory of interacting material and human agencies, in the form of technology and routines. In our analysis, we trace how these basic building blocks of the system came to be, and how they shaped the emergent environmental information system in particular ways.

“In this paper, we explain how resettled refugees use information and communication technology (ICT) to respond to their changed circumstances and, in doing so, enhance their well-being and effective participation in a new society. Focusing on three modes of ICT-mediated information practices (ie, orienting, instrumental, and expressive), we identify eight patterns of ICT use: learning about a new environment, keeping informed, transacting online, communicating with others, managing everyday life, sustaining support networks, maintaining transnational ties, and expressing cultural identity. Further, we draw on a temporal theory of human agency to explain how current dilemmas and contingencies, cultural identities and connections to the past, and future expectations and aspirations shape resettled refugees' enactment of these patterns of ICT-mediated information practices. We show that, as resettled refugees move between multiple and overlapping temporal-relational contexts, ICT use makes a difference to managing their bifurcated lives.”

The extraction of unconventional hydrocarbons, particularly through hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), has generated both support and opposition in many countries around the globe. Along with arguments about economic benefits, decarbonisation, transition fuels and groundwater contamination, etc., the rapid expansion of this industry presents a pressing problem as regards the disposal of the resultant waste – including drilling and cutting material, oil and gas residues, various chemicals used in the process, salts and produced water. One putative solution – ‘landfarming’ – is a disposal process that involves spreading oil and gas waste on to land and mixing it with topsoil to allow bioremediation of the hydrocarbons. This paper examines the case of landfarming in New Zealand where the practice has proved controversial due to its association with fracking, fears about the contamination of agricultural land and potential danger to milk supplies. Drawing upon Gieryn’s notion of cultural cartography and boundary work as well as the literature on the politics of scale it analyses the struggles for epistemic authority regarding the safety of landfarming. The paper concludes that scalar practices were central to the production of knowledge (and ignorance) in these credibility struggles, and that the prevailing cultural cartography of knowledge remained the arbiter and basis for policy. The case has wider implications in terms of the management of waste from unconventional hydrocarbons as well as other environmental issues in which the politics of scale figure in contested knowledge claims.

The social inclusion of newly resettled refugees is a significant issue confronting both refugees and their host societies. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly viewed as a useful resource in programs that provide settlement services or promote participation in society. This paper moves beyond the conventional discussion on the digital divide to explore what people are actually able to do and achieve with ICTs. We draw on an analysis of the use of ICTs for particular purposes by more than 50 resettled refugees to develop an explanation of the process by which ICT use contributes to their social inclusion. We propose that ICT constitutes a resource from which a set of five valuable capabilities is derived: to participate in an information society, to communicate effectively, to understand a new society, to be socially connected, and to express a cultural identity. In realizing these capabilities through ICT use, refugees exercise their agency and enhance their well-being in ways that assist them to function effectively in a new society and regain control over their disrupted lives.