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- Andersson, Christoffer
(författare)
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Digital automation of administrative work : How automating reconfigures administrative work
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- 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.
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- Berg, Martin, 1977-
(författare)
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Att fånga tidens tempo : Humanistisk och samhällsvetenskaplig forskning i näringslivet
- 2011
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Konferensbidrag (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Riksbankens Jubileumsfond har sedan 2009 ett pilotprogram, Flexit, där forskare inom humaniora och samhällsvetenskap får möjlighet att arbeta som in-house forskare i den privata sektorn under tre år. Flexits syften är att:bygga broar mellan humanistisk och samhällsvetenskaplig forskning och näringslivet,underlätta kunskapsutbyte och stimulera kontakter så att fler organisationer utanför universitetsvärlden kan se och nyttja kompetensen hos disputerade humanister och samhällsvetare.påverka meriteringssystemet så att akademin i högre grad värderar erfarenheter från företagsvärlden, och vice versa, visa alternativa karriärmöjligheter för forskare inom humaniora och samhällsvetenskap.Två av forskarna från den första omgången, Martin Berg och Susanna Toivanen, berättar om sina erfarenheter inom programmet. Susanna Toivanen berättar hur det är att forska om framtidens kontorsarbetsplatser, och vilka möjligheter och utmaningar det innebär att bedriva forskning i samverkan med ett stort byggbolag. Susanna är verksam som samhällsvetenskaplig forskare på NCC Property Development på företagets kontor i Västra Hamnen i Malmö.Martin Berg delar med sig av sina erfarenheter av att forska om sociala medier på en webb- och strategibyrå som har ena foten i Malmö och den andra på internet. Martin är sociolog och verksam som forskare på Good Old i Malmö.Maria Wikse fungerar som samtalsledare.
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- Berg, Martin, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Att samverka
- 2014. - 1
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Ingår i: Efter festen. - Lund : Studentlitteratur. - 9789144094809 ; , s. 197-212
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 5. |
- Berg, Martin, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Automated Welfare Futures : Interrogating Automated Decision-Making in the Nordics
- 2022
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How can we, as social scientists, make sense of the promises and implications of automated and data-driven systems that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and essential for the Nordic welfare states? What are the theoretical and methodological tensions and possibilities that these systems pose to research when they assemble and disassemble existing structures, organisational logics and dependencies?Over the last few years, critical social science research has established that data harvesting and digital tracking, in particular, pose a general societal challenge that risks undermining Nordic values of autonomy and equity and the overall welfare of people. At the same time, the welfare state and welfare provision are increasingly characterised by processes of datafication, promoting uses of data analytics and automated decision-making (ADM). Researchers have flagged datafication as a specific concern for the public sector in relation to questions of ADM systems, and other forms of data-driven optimization. Despite the burgeoning literature on various concerns and the ethical guidelines and regulatory initiatives that try to respond to them, however, we have engaged so far with a limited range of theoretical and methodological approaches to explore the social dynamics at play in concrete contexts of ADM.This roundtable brings together key scholars that engage critically with the social aims and implications of datafication to address how ADM is imagined, practised and experienced in different empirical contexts and across various organisational levels in the Nordics. The roundtable will open with short ’provocations’ through which the speakers present and contextualise concepts they have used or would like to promote in the study of emerging automated and data-driven systems. The provocations are followed by a joint discussion about how these concepts can support sociological research that studies the promises and implications of automated and data-driven systems as part of the myths and realities of the Nordic welfare states, now and in the future.
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- Berg, Martin, 1977-
(författare)
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Automation as an empty signifier : Interrogating automated work futures and their non-technologies
- 2022
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper explores the role of anticipated futures of automation in public administration. Engaging with ethnographic research with stakeholders from roughly ten municipalities in Sweden, this paper examines the tension between different ways of imagining automated work futures and the extent to which they are associated with (or not) technologies. Automating data-driven processes is believed to alleviate administrative drudgery and support a goal-driven, efficient public sector. Various stakeholders participate in the implementation of automation systems, including corporate actors, managers, politicians, and civil servants. This group of stakeholders has diverse perspectives and expectations regarding the future of work automation and its role in the organisation of public services. Some see automated work processes as a way to boost efficiency, productivity, and precision through algorithmic data processing; others, however, see them as ways to allow professionals to spend less time on repetitive, rule-based, and seemingly tedious tasks, so that they can focus on their core professional practice. Challenging established narratives about work automation, this paper suggests how automation can be used to visualise, think about, and communicate organisational change without involving any technology per se, but rather as an empty signifier to which future-making practices can be affixed and legitimised. By emphasising social expectations and experiences, the paper interrogates emerging automated work futures in ways that move beyond techno-optimism and economic-political goals of efficiency and optimisation, not the least by showing that automation is situated, social and contingent.
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| 7. |
- Berg, Martin, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Automation in the Wild : exploring empathy
- 2015
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Ingår i: Un/Certainty. - Melbourne : RMIT University. - 9780994333018 ; , s. 50-55
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 9. |
- Berg, Martin, 1977-
(författare)
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Behind the Screen : Communicative capitalism and automated social structures
- 2012
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- During the last few years, numerous journal articles aiming at discerning the impact and possible meanings of social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter have been published. It is often argued that SNS significantly diverge from earlier forms of web communities since they are centred around the individual actor rather than themes of interest. An important aspect of these changes is that SNS allow for the construction of a public or semi-public profile through which it is possible to put on display a list of shared social connections which, in turn, makes it viable to browse the social connections of other users. Although being important aspects of SNS, these observations do not account for the automated data processing of harvested personal information that constitute the very motor of these sites. Drawing on an analysis of an extensive empirical material consisting of approximately 470 self-reflexive diary entries on the subject of Facebook use, authored by people between the ages of 22 and 68 together with an exploration of the ways in which Facebook gathers and processes personal and interactional data in order to provide what is assumed to be an enhanced user experience, this paper aims at establishing a sociological understanding of the interrelationship between social practices and automated social structures on Facebook. Taken as a whole, this paper contributes to an understanding of SNS by relating social practices to the automated social structures that (for commercial reasons) emerge within SNS thus rendering creative identity performances problematic. In so doing, it provides an important account of how bodies, selves and technologies intersect and relate to new forms of power in contemporary communicative capitalism.
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| 10. |
- Berg, Martin, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Beräkningsmedier
- 2021
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Ingår i: Introduktion till medieteknik. - Lund : Studentlitteratur AB. - 9789144141671 ; , s. 261-269
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Vad kan falska nyheter, VR-glasögon och aktivitetsarmband lära oss om medieteknik som forskningsämne? Med utgångspunkt i tre forskningsbaserade exempel introducerar vi beräkningsmedier som ett nyckelbegrepp för framtida medieteknisk forskning. Begreppet bidrar till att ta fram digitala teknologiers datafierande karaktär och deras inflytande på relationen mellan människor och deras kroppar, mellan medier och vad som uppfattas vara verkligt i en medialiserad värld. Detta hjälper oss att bedriva vetenskaplig forskning inom ämnet medieteknik på sätt som både skapar förståelse för och bidrar till utvecklingen av digitala medier med hänsyn till deras tekniska, sociala, kulturella och ekonomiska förutsättningar.
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