Project Details
Projekt
2C-NOW: Collaboration and Coordination in Networks of Work - Phase 2: Hybrid Workgroups and Workspaces
Subject Area
Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442171294
In Phase 2 of our project, we extend and deepen our existing research findings in two main directions. First, we build on our trace analytics work to extend our methodological toolkit through the design of trace ethnographic methods and tools. Second, we develop in-depth empirical studies of recent transformations to work routines and work practices arising from the growth in hybrid work and hybrid workgroups in organisations. Together, these provide both empirical evidence and insights into how new arrangements for hybrid work are transforming working worlds and enable rich contextual analyses of hybrid workgroups and emerging coordinative practices. Our goals are to 1) develop and apply digital ethnographic methods to provide rich contextual analyses of the rhythms and flows of everyday work in hybrid and distributed work settings, 2) analyse and understand emerging sequences of coordination work to identify emerging work routines and patterns of interaction in hybrid and distributed workgroups, and 3) to examine the ways that technologies and artefacts are mobilised in the design of digital workspaces. Through our university-industry research initiative (IndustryConnect) we have, over the past ten years, been following the emergence and design of digital workplaces in a group of more than 35 DACH organisations. In Phase 2, we continue to work closely with these organisations to develop longitudinal digital workplace case studies. Through further interviews, surveys and focus group methods, we gather organisational data about hybrid workgroups and hybrid working arrangements. In addition, innovative digital ethnographic methods in the form of digital hybrid work diaries and work visualisation methods will be developed and used to capture, visualise and analyse new forms of rich, longitudinal data about the everyday rhythms and work routines of distributed and hybrid workgroups. In the context of the overarching framework of the Priority Programme SPP2267, our work contributes to understandings at the micro- and meso-levels of activity, examining transformations to technologies, work practices and routines as they arise for individuals, workgroups and organisations. In terms of the three motion dynamics, we address all three dynamics by investigating 1) how work practices are being shaped (and are shaping) the use of collaboration technologies to organise and coordinate everyday work (permeating); 2) how organisations assemble their collaboration platforms and the ways that collaboration technologies are adopted and diffuse across organisations (making available) and 3) how work practices evolve and whether (or not) they become standardised and embedded as organisational-level work routines (perpetuating). In Phase 2, we extend the interdisciplinary nature of our inquiries and contribute important methods, datasets and case studies to the planned joint work with the WZB, University of Bielefeld and TU Berlin.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
