Page 62 - Journal of Management Inquiry, July 2018

276 Journal of Management Inquiry 27(3)

main display froze from time to time, or the whole program (Sutcliffe, 2011). In addition, the inscribed rules and the
crashed so that neither medical care staff nor surgeons or the “digital coercion” of the tool enforce reluctance to simplify
manager of the operation theaters could use the OTAP before interpretations. Rules mandate a close confrontation of each
it has been rebooted with the help of the IT administration. In case and its subsequent management within the big picture of
these cases, the manager of the operation theaters “did all I other cases, while the changing buttons avoid working in the
could do to keep things going” (Second interview manager dreaded autopilot mode.
of the operation theaters). He provided information about
ongoing operations, either by drawing on the printouts and Inscribing Temporality
saved screens of the OTAP, or by calling the surgeons, or by
going into the operation theaters himself. He also reported The OTAP was not only involved in managing time con-
that in case of a longer breakdown, the printouts were pinned straints of nonhuman agents, such as the availability of oper-
on walls and doors, so that surgeons and medical care staff ation theaters or medical instruments, but also employees. In
could see what is going on. addition to time constraints, the OTAP played a role in repre-
senting and maintaining expectations, which connect past
Inscribing the big picture and mindful organizing. Our evidence experiences with ongoing and future events. We find that the
points toward multiple ways in which inscribing the big pic- tool’s inscriptions of temporality are not only directly related
ture via the OTAP has positive influences on processes of to mindful organizing but also indirectly because they also
mindful organizing. First, our findings suggest that the digi- shape two of the practices of inscribing the big picture. Two
tal and material instantiations of the OTAP enhance the speed practices shed light on these complex relations: “transform-
and quality of gathering the details of work while staying ing the unexpected into schemes” and “anticipating or pre-
aware of the big picture. While comparing the paper based dicting deviations.”
with the digital version of the OTAP speeds up the sensing of
changes, the mouse-over effect captures details that are rep- Transforming the unexpected into schemes. An obvious start-
resented by the spatially distributed instantiations of the tool ing point for understanding the way temporality is inscribed
which then provides the big picture to several professional in and through the OTAP relates to the emergency categori-
groups. In this way, the materiality of the tool’s inscrip- zation system. In it, new patients were labeled in categories
tions—material or digital—is beneficial to the process of ranging from E (i.e., preplanned) to A (emergencies so
sensitivity to operations. important that an ongoing surgery would be put on hold to
Second, creating a distributed picture facilitated perspec- clear the operation theater). These categories define temporal
tive taking and deference to expertise by visualizing ongoing boundaries because they punctuate when activities start and
activities and expectations about planned activities and end, and convey this information to different user groups
enabling multiple actors to access this information. By show- (Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). By doing so, the categorization
ing portioned and updated information to distributed indi- system translates emergencies as one type of unexpected
viduals, the OTAP supports the establishment, maintenance, events into events, which can be planned and worked upon.
and adjustment of collective cognition about emerging and Unexpected events become manageable because the OTAP’s
possibly unexpected situations. Accurate representations inscriptions assign start and end points, rules of prioritization
synthesized the distributed information into a nuanced and and how to cope with ongoing operations (via the emergency
shared understanding. This fosters all of the five processes, categorization) as well as near-future events (e.g., newly reg-
except commitment to resilience. istered surgeries, rescheduled surgeries). Our data also bring
Third, the findings suggest that the mindfulness and reli- the visual-material aspect of expectations to the fore: The
ability of everyday work performances are to a crucial extent sizes of the boxes on the screen represent expectations about
based on codified rules. The Weickian perspective tends to surgeries’ durations. The boxes’ spatial relation to other
treat mindfulness as the opposite of rule-based routine boxes not only indicates expectations about the temporal
behavior. We find, however, that sticking to rules and sequence (what comes first, what is parallel) but also their
assigned roles and trying to avoid rescheduling do not neces- relative importance because longer surgeries were expected
sarily reduce mindfulness but are rather means to improve to bear a greater risk that something unexpected can occur.
the reliability of work. The example of “digital coercion” The latter is codified in the scheduling rule that the longest
shows how simple codified rules force users of the OTAP to surgery must never be the last in one shift. When reschedul-
stay mindful in routine procedures. Nevertheless, inscribed ing occurred, the representation of time in the tool via the
rules do not determine behavior but must be enacted in prac- size and location of boxes changed, which would then, again,
tice. In our case, the practices are characterized by a “can do structure actors’ anticipations of the next events.
attitude,” which enhances the speed of coping with unfore-
seen events and increases the range of solutions available in Anticipating or predicting deviations. Another facet of inscrib-
a situation—a characteristic of commitment to resilience ing temporality through the OTAP was raised when we asked