The Tech@Work group, headed by Marleen Huysman, is dedicated to shaping the future of work. These encompass data construction, developing, and implementation of AI, robotics, and changes at workplaces. In cultivating a stimulating and inclusive environment, the group provides a platform for both researchers and practitioners eager to comprehend the evolving work landscape influenced by emerging technologies. By transcending technological hype, the group actively collaborates with organizational professionals engaged in managing, developing, and utilizing these innovations. A distinctive aspect of the group's methodology is embedded research, characterized by the in-depth study of human-technology collaboration within its natural context and over time, often employing ethnographic methods. This comprehensive approach ensures a nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding technology at work, making the Tech@Work group an invaluable contributor to the discourse on the future of work.
Tech@Work
Professor Marleen Huysman on Work & Organisations
How will our work change? Tech@ Work and Marleen Huysman explore how AI affects organizations and how their employees learn, work, and collaborate
Tech@work: Research areas
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DataWork
On the Right Track? Studying the Use of Biometric Data to Manage People in a Sports Organisation
LA Downie, S Pachidi, M Huysman, E Hafermalz - Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023
Resourcing with data: Unpacking the process of creating data-driven value propositions
WA Günther, MHR Mehrizi, M Huysman, F Deken… - The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 2022
Juggling Street Work and Data Work: An Ethnography of Policing and Reporting Practices
L Waardenburg, A Sergeeva, M Huysman - Academy of Management Proceedings, 2022
Creativity in data work: case of developing training sets for machine learning
T Karacic, W Günther, AV Sergeeva, M Huysman
37th EGOS Colloquium: Organizing for an Inclusive Society: Meanings
Mind Your Data: An Empirical Analysis of How Data Influence Value Realization
W Günther, MH Rezazade Mehrizi, M Huysman, F Feldberg
Academy of Management Proceedings 2018 (1), 16399
Actualizing Value Potentials of Big Data Analytics in Organizations
WA Günther, MH Rezazade Mehrizi, F Feldberg, M Huysman
Academy of Management Proceedings 2016 (1), 13567
Debating big data: A literature review on realizing value from big data
WA Günther, MHR Mehrizi, M Huysman, F Feldberg - The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 2017
We’Re in a Bit of a Situation: The Embodied and Material Realities of Data-Driven Work
L Waardenburg, E Hafermalz
XX ISA World Congress of Sociology (June 25-July 1, 2023)
In Pursuit of Data: Negotiating Data Tensions Between Data Scientists and Users of AI Tools
E Van Den Broek, N Levina, A Sergeeva
Academy of Management Proceedings 2022 (1), 16942
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AI at Work
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing work, and predictions about job losses have reached newspaper headlines. Current debates on AI and work are typically framed around its consequences for jobs, though without empirically grounded research into both AI’s development and its implications for organizations and professionals. AI systems that are currently being developed and rolled out in organizations are crucially different from prior ‘rule based’ expert systems, bringing about novel risks for organizations and knowledge work. Their autonomous, self-learning capability and ability to black-box knowledge, may increase people’s dependencies on machines and even render whole categories of knowledge work obsolete, raising fundamental questions, such as whether the expertise of highly educated professionals will even be needed in the future. At the AI@Worklab we use a practice perspective to gain a deeper understanding of how and why AI systems impact knowledge work. Through longitudinal qualitative studies of multiple cases, mainly with the use of ethnographic methods, we study how AI developers come to understand the domain for which they develop their AI systems as well as how managers introduce AI systems and how the introduction of AI systems reconfigure work. As such we trace the broader unintended consequences of AI systems for expertise at work in real-world settings. Such understanding is urgently needed to empirically interrogate the often-pessimistic scenarios expressed by commentators. With our research we contribute to theories of technology’s role in knowledge, professional and organizational change.
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Robotics at Work
Professional service robots aim to serve as partners in teams and are employed in unstructured work environments. Rigorous academic knowledge is thus needed to understand how robots are used in practice and with what consequence for work. Such knowledge can generate a productive dialogue between engineering science and organization science, creating synergy between traditionally disconnected fields and ensuring that robots support rather than undermine people's work lives.
Dr. Anastasia Sergeeva works on a Vidi grant by NWO to explain how work is changing when robots are entering work settings to serve as partners of humans. Together with her team, Ph.D. candidate Melissa Sexton and Ph.D. candidate Mila Arakelian, Dr. Anastasia Sergeeva will conduct several ethnographic studies of professional service robots at work to develop novel methods and approaches to recognize the embeddedness of the robot into work teams, as well as richness, unruliness, and institutional nature of work domains.
The project aims to develop actionable principles for the design and development of robots, as well as guidelines for managers that are planning to introduce robots to a workspace.
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Workplaces
AI@Work Research Group
The AI@Work research group transcends the boundaries between technology and organizational practice. It comprises engineers trained in the sociology of work and social scientists with hands-on training in AI techniques.
Tamara Thuis
PhD Candidate at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) Erasmus University Rotterda
