"Examining Materialisation Work in Data Reuse in Critical Care”

Abstract:

A core assumption of the IS field, repeated in numerous textbooks, is that data are a given. This view continues is also reflected in contemporary discussions of “big data” that describe data as a natural resource, “the new oil”, suggesting that data are out there waiting to be found. In this seminar I will seek to demonstrate that data are not a given, but rather they are a process. They are what is found when they are looked for. They are the product of situated practices, the enactment of which involves what I will call “materialisation work” in two senses of that term. That is, work is needed to materialise data, to bring them into being, but also to make them available such that they matter to organisations, that they contribute to organisational practices. I will argue that materialisation work has been largely overlooked in discussions of data in the IS and management literature. Without proper recognition of this work, however, the envisioned potential of data to contribute to organisational transformation/disruption would seem unlikely to be realised. I will draw on evidence from an ongoing study of data in critical care medicine to support these claims.

For bio. see: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/faculty-a-z/matthew-jones/