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Our new digital co-workers: How introducing an RPA changes the relational fabric of work
Mälardalen University, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Industrial Economics and Organisation.
Mälardalen University, School of Business, Society and Engineering, Industrial Economics and Organisation.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2294-7898
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Workplace technologies today not only support work but also perform it. Whereas the general debate often focuses on quantitative effect in terms of possible jobs lost, what is still largely missing is how workplace technologies impact the quality of employee’s work-life, in particular for office and administrative work. By mobilizing the literature conceptualizing work as accomplished in digital/human configurations, in this article we aim at unpacking how introducing digital automation technologies may lead to repositioning the human worker at work. We study the very start of introducing an RPA in a Swedish municipality with an ethnographic sensibility. Building on close readings of three episodes, we discuss how such the human/digital emergent configuration produced a re-distribution of categories of tasks and responsibilities and, consequently, a dichotomous distinction between human and digital co-workers. This means also a changing fabric of relationships supporting work, which could be characterized in terms of asymmetrical co-workership. 

Keywords [en]
RPA, Digital Automation, Co-workership
National Category
Business Administration
Research subject
Industrial Economics and Organisations
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-64639OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-64639DiVA, id: diva2:1808511
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2016-07210
Note

Version submitted to publication and in review, submitted for being part of compelation thesis

Available from: 2023-10-31 Created: 2023-10-31 Last updated: 2023-11-06Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Digital automation of administrative work: How automating reconfigures administrative work
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Digital automation of administrative work: How automating reconfigures administrative work
2023 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This thesis is an examination of how digital automation of administrative work unfolds in practice. It sets out to understand how administrative work changes as it is digitally automated and how such changes have wider consequences beyond the performance of specific work tasks. A case study design is used, focusing on digital automation through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) at a Swedish municipality, and the methods to produce data include interviews, observations, and document analysis. The thesis contributes to the body of literature that understands work as practices performed by diverse configurations of social and material elements, a body of literature that spans the fields of organization studies and information systems research. It comprises five papers:Paper I builds a foundation for the thesis by examining the automation process and conceptualizing it as configuring work. This is a dynamic process of mutual reconfiguration of work practice, digital technology, and organizational arrangements through which a new agentive configuration of work is approached. Paper II explores the ways in which a new dichotomy of human and digital coworkers emerges and the role of social responsibility and context for work as a new division of labor emerges. Paper III takes a broader look at the effects of digital technology on the organizing of work and proposes the conceptualization of hyper-taylorization as a way of understanding how the rationale of digital automation technology comes to enhance Taylorism in terms of making work digitally legible, predictable, and controllable. Paper IV shifts the focus again to the ethics of digital automation, utilizing an example from the case study to explore ethical and managerial implications when digitally automating. Paper V is a conceptual paper that aims to conceptualize the thesis's core theoretical contribution, which is to understand digital automation of administrative work as not just a change in how work is performed but a change regarding how knowledge about work is created and the conditions of knowledge creation. Within this framework, “work” is understood as performing an epistemic machineryrelated to the materiality of the configuration that performs work. Thus, The paper concludes that digital automation, at least in technological history, implies an epistemological shift of administrative work towards a more strictly rationalistic way of understanding the world at the expense of a pluralistic set of ways of creating knowledge and understanding the world.The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of this shift and how the political terrain of administrative work comes to be abandoned as it is digitally automated.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalens universitet, 2023
Series
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations, ISSN 1651-4238 ; 392
National Category
Business Administration
Research subject
Industrial Economics and Organisations
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-64640 (URN)978-91-7485-619-4 (ISBN)
Public defence
2023-12-13, Delta, Mälardalens universitet, Västerås, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2016-07210
Available from: 2023-11-01 Created: 2023-10-31 Last updated: 2023-11-22Bibliographically approved

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Andersson, ChristofferCrevani, Lucia

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