Luciana D’Adderio, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Vern Glaser, University of Alberta, Canada
Marleen Huysman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Rodrigo Valadao, NEOMA Business School, France
Artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies have become widespread features of contemporary organizing, bearing profound
consequences that we do not yet fully understand. This has led scholars to call for the urgent development of theory, methods,
and case studies that enable a better understanding of how algorithms can “alter work and organizational realities” (Faraj
et al., 2018). Organizational research on the effects of algorithmic technologies has highlighted both positive and negative
potential. Some scholars have focused on how algorithms provide organizations with affordances that facilitate value creation
by automating structured and repetitive work (Davenport, 2018) and reshaping organizational culture (Fountaine et al., 2019;
Leonardi & Neeley, 2022; Schildt, 2020). Others have examined the dark side of these technologies, including how they enable
management to control workers (Kellogg et al., 2020), establish formal and inflexible rules that might strip away values based
means of working through social challenges (Lindebaum et al., 2019, 2022), and provide corporations with the ability to manipulate
individuals (Cameron, 2021; Cameron & Rahman, 2022) in ways that perpetuate power asymmetries (Curchod et al., 2020; Zuboff,
2022).
Despite this recent progress, we still lack the ability to capture empirically and theorize the generative and diverse possibilities
algorithmic technologies afford organizations (Raisch & Krakowski, 2021; von Krogh, 2018) while exploring their complex and
often invisible influence on organizations and organizing. This includes effects on the provision of services (Aristidou &
Barrett, 2018), collaboration between actors such as users and designers, professionals or across teams (Bailey & Barley,
2019; Karunakaran, 2022; Sergeeva et al., 2017; Waardenburg & Huysman, 2022), testing (Marres & Stark, 2020), production and
consumption of knowledge (Monteiro, 2022; Steele, 2016), and development of ethical AI systems (Floridi et al., 2018; Martin,
2019).
To overcome these limitations, we propose a Standing Working Group (SWG) focused on developing a deeper and more nuanced understanding
of algorithms as entangled, relational, emergent, and nested assemblages (Glaser et al., 2021) that evolve while fundamentally
transforming organizations and organizing. By taking this perspective, we can gain deeper insight into how algorithmic technologies
are reshaping organizational life while enabling more sophisticated explanations of their varied and emergent effects. This
approach allows us to make progress in our characterization of digital technologies and their effects while moving beyond
simplistic views of algorithms as either purely beneficial or detrimental to organizations.
These are examples of the important topics falling under the heading of digital biographies that are ripe for –and indeed
demand – urgent further exploration. These questions provide the intellectual framework and motivation for the proposed Standing
Working Group. EGOS has hosted sub-themes related to digital technologies in recent years, but none has systematically focused
on the complex co-production of algorithms and organizing. This includes the recent sub-theme “Digital biographies” convened
by D’Adderio, Glaser, and Huysman in 2024. A recent opening keynote at the same EGOS Milan Colloquium has shown how the word
‘digital’ has taken center stage in sub-theme titles and Organization Studies publications, clearly evidencing the potential
impact of this SWG on the academic community.
The topics of SWG´s 03 sub-themes at the next four EGOS Colloquia are the following:
Luciana D’Adderio is a Professor at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, and a Turing Fellow with The Alan Turing Institute of Data
Science and Artificial Intelligence. Her latest research investigates the use of AI in healthcare. Luciana has published in
leading Innovation, Management, Organizational and Information Systems journals and is currently a member of the Editorial
Board of Organization Science, Organization Studies and Information and Organizations. Together with Glaser and Pollock, she has been awarded the James G. March Prize 2022 for the paper: “The Biography of an
Algorithm: Performing algorithmic technologies in organizations” published in Organization Theory.
Vern Glaser is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise and the Eric Geddes Professor of Business in the department
of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management at the Alberta School of Business. He is the Academic Director for the University
of Alberta’s Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise and the Alberta Business Family Institute. Vern earned his
Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and his BA in Economics
from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Marleen Huysman is Professor of Knowledge and Organization at the School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she
leads the KIN research group and the KIN Center for Digital Innovation. She teaches and publishes on topics related to the
practices of developing and using digital technologies – in particular artificial intelligence –and new ways of working. Marleen’s
research has been published in various leading journals in the field of information systems and organization science. She
has organized two sub-themes as part of the SGW ‘Digital Technology, Media and Organization’.