This is an exploratory paper that aims to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in two particular spaces in society: the museum and the cemetery. Using empirical evidence from two research projects, the paper considers similarities and differences between the two sites, which are further explored through theoretical ideas about the social life of things and the agency of absence. Examin...

Ensuring the reliable and continuous operations of complex, unpredictable, and unstable smart infrastructures, such as computerized and automated power grids or water distribution systems, is a persisting organizational challenge and a societal concern. As technologies are inherently unreliable and, especially, the behavior of complex technological systems is unpredictable, the reliability and ...

We live, contends Alexander Galloway, in an algorithmic culture. Algorithms are now inescapably embedded into everyday life transforming processes and objects from cultural artefacts into “smart” systems. But unlike most algorithms, which are obscured behind the black box of post-industrial processes, intelligent personal assistant softwares such as Apple’s Siri are imbued with voice and person...

Our research focuses on the fast-changing landscape of contemporary social media where user-generated content is increasingly being used to evaluate a wide range of products and services. The move to online valuations is raising important questions about how valuations change when they are produced online by consumers, and what outcomes they generate for the organizations being evaluated. To ad...

The things of the world are not simply neutral objects which stand before us for our contemplation. Each one of them symbolises or recalls a particular way of behaving, provoking in us reactions which are either favourable or unfavourable. This is why people’s tastes, character, and the attitude they adopt to the world and to particular things can be deciphered from the objects with which they ...

Research for this paper suggests that there is still an alarming lack of success of IS projects in industry today. Two critical success factors that have been examined to date are project manager performance and IS planning maturity. However, the previous studies have bypassed the relative impact of the two factors in combination. This study proposes and empirically tests a model that examines ...

The aim of this essay is to put forward a performative, sociomaterial perspective on Information Systems (IS) success and failure in organisations by focusing intently upon the discursive-material nature of IS development and use in practice. Through the application of Actor Network Theory (ANT) to the case of an IS that transacts insurance products we demonstrate the contribution of such a per...

Recent discourse in archaeological theory has highlighted that the discipline’s approach to existence and materiality is firmly entrenched in traditions of modern thought (Thomas 1996, 2004; Tilley 2004). It has also been shown that archaeological methodology has a tendency to be used as an interpretative metaphor by other modern disciplines in the description of their own methodologies (Miller...

This paper presents a qualitative thematic analysis of reader comments posted in connection to a series of articles published after Encyclopaedia Britannica’s announcement to forego its print edition. It shows how ideas of what information is, are entangled with ideas of what a certain medium is and does. Two research questions guide the analysis: 1) How are encyclopedias as information sources...

While there has been some research on coordination in FLOSS, such research has focused on coordination within a project or within a group. The area of cross-project coordination, where shared goals are tenuous or non-existent, has been under-researched. This paper explores the question of how multiple projects working on a single piece of existing software in the FLOSS environment can coordinat...