Learning to demo: the sociomateriality of newcomer participation in engineering research practices

An understanding of newcomer participation is important both from the perspective of engineering organizations and to prepare future engineers but we know little about how newcomers to engineering practices traverse their trajectory of participation. Prior work on newcomers has addressed socialization processes but has overlooked the sociomaterial nature of engineering practices and its consequences for newcomer participation. In this paper, I present an in-depth case study of a newcomer navigating his early days in an industrial research and development laboratory. I identify ‘demoing’, or the use of prototypes to communicate research outcomes, as a highly valued practice at the studied firm and trace a newcomer’s participation from entry until his first demo, which signaled significant progress toward full participation. I argue that as engineers move from being novices toward fuller participation, they need to become sociomaterial experts – both socially adept and proficient at using materiality in conjunction with each other.