Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World - Edited by Paul M. Leonardi, Bonnie A. Nardi and Jannis Kallinikos

social structures such as roles, statuses, hierarchies, power relations, communication networks, and other similar constructs. Kallinikos (2011) calls such abstract social structures “institutional forces.” He suggests that institutions are temporally bound and, consequently, should not be simply seen as a way for researchers to vacillate between micro and macro levels of analysis, but that they are useful for moving from static to dynamic patterns of analysis such that each layer of sociomaterial imbrication becomes more substantial in that it shapes action in a path-dependent manner because of its history of accumulation. Defining and Interrelating Terms Early on, I argued that the goal of this chapter was to stimulate debate and discussion about popular terminology used in contemporary explanations of technology and organizing. In this spirit, I have reviewed the historical foundations of the terms “materiality,” “sociomateriality,” and “socio-technical systems” and I havemade some first, undoubtedly contentious, steps to define how these terms relate to one another. In doing so, I have placed certain boundaries around these concepts for the sake of definitional clarity. Below, I summarize the preceding discussions into a rough and entirely tentative glossary of terms: Materiality: The arrangement of an artifact’s physical and/or digital materials into particular forms that endure across differences in place and time and are important to users. Sociomateriality: Enactment of a particular set of activities that meld materiality with institutions, norms, discourses, and all other phenomena we typically define as “social.” Sociomaterial Practice: The space in which multiple human (social) agencies andmaterial agencies are imbricated (also called a “technical subsystem”). Social Agency: Coordinated human intentionality formed in partial response to perceptions of a technology’s material agency. Material Agency: Ways in which a technology’s materiality acts. Material agency is activated as humans approach technology with particular intentions and decide which elements of its materiality to use at a given time. Socio-Technical System: Recognition of a recursive (not simultaneous) shaping of abstract social constructs and a technical infrastructure that includes technology’s materiality and people’s localized responses to it. OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 17/8/2012, SPisocial constructs and a technical infrastructure that includes technology’s materiality and people’s localized responses to it. OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 17/8/2012, SPi Materiality and Organizing