Making the numbers : agency in computer-generated formal representations of sales work

This research builds on the literature on information technology and organizations to suggest an alternative to the current understanding of the production of computer-generated formal representations of work. This literature sees computer-generated formal representations of work as automatic outcomes of information technology that managers use to scrutinize employees. My ethnography of a desk-based sales unit suggests that managers have incentives to forfeit surveillance and instead apply their efforts to use information technology to build a facade of compliance with prescribed goals and prescribed rules, roles, and procedures. I show that such a facade requires continuous maintenance work and that it is employees, not managers, that have to engage in this work. Specifically, I show that employees need to engage in unprescribed work to earn the right to use formal information systems to represent work that they have not actually carried out. I explain how employees improvise a shadow information system to coordinate their unprescribed work across time.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Cunha, José João Marques de Oliveria Vieira da

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wanda J. Orlikowski.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34682

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34682