A Trichordal Temporal Approach to Digital Coordination: The Sociomaterial Mangling of the CERN Grid

Author List: Venters, Will; Oborn, Eivor; Barrett, Michael;
MIS Quarterly, 2014, Volume 38, Issue 3, Page 927-949.
This paper develops a sociomaterial perspective on digital coordination. It extends Pickering’s mangle of practice by using a trichordal approach to temporal emergence. We provide new understanding as to how the nonhuman and human agencies involved in coordination are embedded in the past, present, and future. We draw on an in-depth field study conducted between 2006 and 2010 of the development, introduction, and use of a computing grid infrastructure by the CERN particle physics community. Three coordination tensions are identified at different temporal dimensions, namelyobtaining adequate transparency in the present, modeling a future infrastructure, and the historical disciplining of social and material inertias. We propose and develop the concept of digital coordination, and contribute a trichordal temporal approach to understanding the development and use of digital infrastructure as being orientated to the past and future while emerging in the present.
Keywords: Grid computing; coordination; development; case study; mangle of practice; temporality; digital infrastructure; transparency; sustainable change; performativity; sociomaterial
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#222 0.203 research researchers framework future information systems important present agenda identify areas provide understanding contributions using literature studies paper potential review
#111 0.166 e-government collective sociomaterial material institutions actors practice particular organizational routines practices relations mindfulness different analysis ways draw agencies drawing ideas
#82 0.153 case study studies paper use research analysis interpretive identify qualitative approach understanding critical development managerial elements exploring points positivist presents
#256 0.128 coordination mechanisms work contingencies boundaries temporal coordinating vertical associated activities different coordinate suggests dispersed coordinated horizontal relative demand spatial hours
#178 0.102 digital divide use access artifacts internet inequality libraries shift library increasingly everyday societies understand world initiative initiatives embedded community dimensions
#16 0.094 infrastructure information flexibility new paper technology building infrastructures flexible development human creating provide despite challenge possible resources specific advances developing