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The construction industry is one of the least automated industries. In the aspect of automation, the technical understanding is very dominant. Focus has mostly been on tools, robots and industrialisation. sociomaterial design shows us that what may first appear technologically deterministic can be replaced and actually call for reinvisioning the traditional focus. The purpose of this study is to introduce the agency of a sociomaterial designer in construction.

This is a conceptual paper with an empirical example. To understand the sociomaterial complexity and dynamics of automation, practice theories are applied. To test this approach, the authors give an example from a Danish (global) supplier engaged in a development project about technical aid (tools) in mounting and assembling gypsum walls.

The sociomaterial-designer can help to understand and make innovation happen when doing automation in construction; as the centre of innovation in construction processes, she works all day with practice, together with practitioners, focusing on material arrangements as located not only in practice, but also in the artefacts. She can help the supplier of construction materials in understanding different professional practices and the transformation to use smarter tools.

This research is within a new practice domain “sociomaterial-design” and it has to follow up with an empirical study that covers a development project with a sociomaterial-design approach.

Developing competences (agency) as a sociomaterial-designer when linking the sociotechnical understanding of Automation with practice.

This research showcases how sociomaterial perspectives can inform automation in construction.

The purpose of this paper is to address the research question of how human actors and technology interact together in practices in the context of a sharing economy. The theoretical foundation of this paper is based on the existing literature about the sharing economy and studies that have been carried out examining value co-creation and sociomateriality.

This paper adopts a qualitative case study method for the empirical investigation. Using theoretical sampling, Xbed, an internet, unmanned and self-service hotel platform based in Guangzhou, China, was chosen for the empirical investigation. The case was built on multiple sources of data, including archival materials, on-site fieldwork and in-depth interviews. Then, the case was interpreted based on a number of theoretical concepts, with a particular emphasis on the sociomaterial perspective.

This paper shows how human actors and technology interact with one another in a number of interrelated ways, which collectively result in the value co-creation necessary for creating a sharing economy. The authors have found that various forms of sociomateriality (the intersection between technology, work and organization) play a key role in co-creation and that interactions between these sociomaterial assemblages (assemblage-to-assemblage (A2A)) drive the development of a sharing economy. These sociomaterial assemblages have dynamic and evolving characteristics.

The authors argue that the key to the success of a sharing economy lies in how to engage participating actors with material entities (e.g. technology applications) to form action-enabling sociomaterial assemblages, as well as in determining how these assemblages can be systematically arranged to collectively form a larger assemblage. We suggest that managers need to conceive how relations between the social and the material realms can be structured by adopting a service logic that aims to help the beneficiary function better. The authors also suggest that managers have to consider what assemblages are necessary and how they are connected, to construct a full access-based service.

This paper conceptualizes the sharing economy as a system of value co-creation practices and empirically examines such practices from a sociomaterial perspective. This paper adopts the concept of sociomaterial assemblages to investigate sharing practices, through which the knowledge of the role of technology in the development of a sharing economy is enhanced. This paper also expands the knowledge of service-dominant logic by using a microfoundation perspective to look at the value co-creation that emerges as a result of the interaction between sociomaterial assemblages. These assemblages also act as constitutive elements of a service ecosystem.

Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

The concept of sociomaterial practice has been proposed as a term including materiality as constitutive elements in any social practice. The concept also suggests that while social relations are constituted by and mediated by materiality, materiality per se is enacted in a social context. Practice is thus unfolding as a form of constitutive entanglement of social and material resources at hand. The paper aims at discussing the concept of practice as what is mobilizing both material and intangible resources.

The study draws on interviews with construction workers, foremen, and site managers in three projects in a medium sized construction company.

The study suggests that while construction work is both regulated by piece‐rate wage systems and being largely composed of standard operation procedures, there is still a strong reliance on collectively accomplished routines for communicating and interacting in the workplace. Rather than being determined by and reducible to material conditions, social relations and mutual trust play a key role in construction projects.

The concept of sociomaterial practice is opening up for a more articulated recognition of the entanglement of social and material resources in organizing work. The study presents first‐hand data on how construction work rests on the collective capacity to combine both material and social elements.

To explore the methodological implications of sociomaterial theory for qualitative research about practice. The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential and limitations of video stimulus to discussion about practice as embodied and material, and to theorise this in terms of epistemic objects.

A video based on a residential child and family service in Sydney was used as a stimulus in six focus group discussions with researchers and professionals in child and family health. Three focus groups were held in Sweden, and three in the British Isles, settings where a similar approach to supporting families with young children is established. A sociomaterial perspective, drawing on Schatzki's practice theory and Knorr Cetina's notion of epistemic objects informed the design and methodologically focused analysis.

The use of video is shown to be successful in facilitating and prompting participants to reflect and comment on practice as embodied and material. However, the analysis also accounts for more problematic nature of this approach, exploring the affective connections and illusion of totality that can be associated with video screenings. An alternative, based on line drawings, is suggested, and the paper concludes by raising further questions about data reduction and stimulus artefacts.

The turn to sociomaterial theory has huge potential, but its methodological implications remain unexplored. This paper contributes original perspectives relating to the use of video in a qualitative study, offering innovative theorisation and discussion of stimulus material as epistemic objects, which offers fresh insights into significant methodological prospects and problems.

This study aims to examine how a collaboration technology is used by three organizational groups. The main focus is on the interplay between the users’ perceptions (of the technology and of the knowledge shared) and the material properties of the collaboration technology.

Two theoretical frameworks (social representations and sociomaterial practice perspective) examine collaboration technology use to better understand the underlying dynamics. The research is conducted as a case study in a US company where a collaboration technology was being implemented.

The findings reveal a process model showing how social dynamics and users’ perceptions of what the collaboration technology can do and cannot do to share the users’ knowledge influence the users’ behaviour. Based on these perceptions, users will twist or amend their interpretation of the reality (the material properties of the technology) to justify their use of the collaboration technology.

This research is conducted as a single case study. However, the significant amount of time spent at the research site allowed for a very rich description of the events and processes involved.

This study offers guidelines on what influences use and adoption of collaboration technologies. It highlights the importance of providing more than just training, as social dynamics and users’ perceptions continuously influence users’ behaviour.

By combining two complementary theoretical frameworks, this study provides a novel and more in-depth explanation of collaboration technology use (or lack thereof).

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of sociomateriality to exhibit how the social and material are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice in a particular organization of study.

The authors conduct an ethnographic case study of the North-South metro line project in Amsterdam and use the methods of participant-observation, in-depth interviewing and a desk study.

The authors showcase the process of sociomaterial entanglement by focussing on the history and context of the project, the agency and performativity of the material and sociomaterial (re)configuration via ritual performance. The authors found the notion of performativity not only concern the enactment of boundaries between the social and material, but also the blurring of such boundaries.

Sociomateriality theory remains difficult to grasp. The implication is the need to provide new lenses to engage this theory empirically.

The authors provide a multi-layered lens for organization researchers to engage sociomateriality theory at a contextual, organizational and practice level.

Insights from a historical and contextual perspective can help practitioners to become aware of the diverse and dynamic ways in which social and material entities are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice.

The authors provide a unique empirical account to exhibit the entanglement and (re)configuration between the social and material in a particular organization of study. This paper studies a tangible organizational setting whereas prior research in sociomateriality mainly focussed on routines in IT and IS. Finally, the authors suggest the ethnographic method to study sociomaterial entanglement from a historical and contextual perspective.

This paper aims to examine the professional learning of rural police officers.

This qualitative case study involved interviews and focus groups with 34 police officers in Northern Scotland. The interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analysed, drawing on practice‐based and sociomaterial learning theories, by members of the research team.

The two key skills for effective rural policing were mobilising available human and material resources in the moment, and learning how to police and live in a rural community. The professional learning of rural police is spatial, emergent, embodied and deeply enmeshed in specificities, and is developed through interactions between human and non‐human actors.

This paper argues that, in order to understand professional learning, it is imperative to examine how work practices are fully entangled in social and material relations.

Applying sociomaterial approaches to issues of professional learning can illuminate previously obscured actors and gives a fuller picture of how professional practice is developed, sustained and modified. Learning is conceived as attuning to available knowledge resources and drawing on the knowledge strategies that are the most productive in the moment. The issues raised in this paper pertain to other professionals working in rural areas, and more generally to the theoretical framing of professional practice.

This paper aims to introduce, explain and illustrate the concept of “sites of emergent learning” (SEL), which pinpoints particular instances of learning in everyday practice. This concept is located within contemporary practice-oriented and sociomaterial approaches to understanding workplace learning.

This conceptual development has been resourced by a secondary analysis of data from three workplace learning studies. These were: an ethnographic study of a residential parenting service; a case study of learning among engineers working on a railway construction site; and a case study of a multicultural unit that aims to enhance health services for a diverse community. All were based in the Sydney metropolitan area. The secondary analysis was undertaken by identifying regular practices within each setting where professionals discuss past and future work. These were then subjected to theoretical scrutiny, identifying common and distinctive features.

SEL were identified within the handover, site-walks and catch-up meeting practices. They arise through and are constituted in relationships between social practices and the materialities of work. SEL involve negotiating, exploring and questioning practice and knowledge associated with it; they are instances within work practices in which work is done about how work gets done, developing new understandings of the past to reshape visions for the future. Alongside these commonalities, each site of emergent learning displayed distinctive features shaped by the particularities of the practices and materialities of each site.

This concept is presented as a valuable tool to assist researchers of workplace learning. It elucidates particular learning-intensive features of practice, extending sociomaterial conceptualisations of professional and workplace learning.

This paper aims to investigate how families’ sociomaterial experiences in engineering programs held in libraries and a museum influence their creative engineering practices and the creativity expressed in their products derived from their inquiry-driven engineering activities.

This research project takes a naturalistic inquiry using qualitative and quantitative analyses based on video records from activities of 31 parent–child pairs and on creativity assessment of products that used littleBits as prototyping tools.

Families engaged in two sociomaterial experiences related to engineering – collaborative idea exchange and ongoing generative tinkering with materials – which supported the emergence of novel ideas and feasible solutions during the informal engineering programs. Families in the high novelty score group experienced multiple instances of collaborative idea exchange and ongoing generative tinkering with materials, co-constructed through parent-child collaboration, that were expansive toward further idea and solution generation. Families in the low novelty score group experienced brief collaborative idea exchange and material tinkering with specific idea suggestions and high involvement from the parent. An in-depth case study of one family further illustrated that equal engagement by the parent and child as they tinkered with the technology supported families’ creative engineering practices.

This analysis adds to the information sciences and learning sciences literatures with an account that integrates methodologies from sociocultural and engineering design research to understand the relationship between families’ engagement in creative engineering practices and their products. Implications for practitioners include suggestions for designing spaces to support families’ collaborative idea exchange and ongoing generative tinkering to facilitate the development of creative engineering practices during short-term engineering programs.