The Algorithm and the Crowd: Considering the Materiality of Service Innovation

Author List: J., Wanda; Scott, Susan;
MIS Quarterly, 2015, Volume 39, Issue 1, Page 201-216.
This special issue acknowledges important innovations in the world of service and within this domain we are particularly interested in exploring the rise and influence of web-based crowd-sourcing and algorithmic rating and ranking mechanisms. We suggest that a useful way to make sense of these digital service innovations and their novel implications is to recognize that they are materialized in practice. We thus need effective conceptual and analytical tools that allow us to take materiality seriously in our studies of service innovation. To this end, we propose some theoretical ideas relating to a sociomaterial perspective, and then highlight empirically how this perspective helps us analyze the specific service materializations enacted through the algorithmic configuring of crowd-sourced data, and how these make a difference in practice to the outcomes produced.
Keywords: Algorithms; crowds; innovation; materiality; performativity; practice; sociomateriality
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List of Topics

#116 0.242 research study influence effects literature theoretical use understanding theory using impact behavior insights examine influences mechanisms specifically context perspective findings
#111 0.208 e-government collective sociomaterial material institutions actors practice particular organizational routines practices relations mindfulness different analysis ways draw agencies drawing ideas
#178 0.097 digital divide use access artifacts internet inequality libraries shift library increasingly everyday societies understand world initiative initiatives embedded community dimensions
#211 0.090 service services delivery quality providers technology information customer business provider asp e-service role variability science propose logic companies especially customers
#210 0.075 innovation innovations innovative organizing technological vision disruptive crowdsourcing path implemented explain base opportunities study diversity taking actors practice shape creation
#216 0.068 conceptual model modeling object-oriented domain models entities representation understanding diagrams schema semantic attributes represented representing object relationships concepts classes entity-relationship