Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is rapidly making its mark as a practical, challenging and intriguing tool for studying organization. Its unique approach to connecting people, artifacts, institutions and organizations enables it to shed light on complexities that so far have escaped works in organization theory. In this book a number of European and American scholars apply ANT in the study of various aspects of organization, including technology, organizational change, routines, virtual organization, strategy, power, market mechanisms, consumer behaviour, public administration and knowledge management. Taken together, the chapters offer new and intriguing ways of organizational theorizing. The book is suitable for researchers and higher level students, and it serves as an excellent primer for those wanting to learning about ANT through the lens of organization theory.
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- Constructing macro actors according to ANT "My name is Lifebuoy". An actor-network emerging from an action-net Technological strategy as macro-actor: How humanness might be made of steel The little engine that could: On the "managing" qualities of technology Artifacts rule! How organizing happens in open source software projects Organizational routines and the macro-actor The organization as nexus of institutional macro actors: The story of a lopsided recruitment case Powers in a factory Macro-actors and the sounds of the silenced Inscribing organizational change with information technology The internet web portal as an enrolment advice The making of knowledge society: Intellectual capital and paradoxes of managing knowledge The re-formatting of electricity, and the making of a market Explaining the macro-actors in practice Productive power, organized markets and actor-network theory Actor-networks: ecology and entrepreneurs Net-working on a neonatal intensive care unit: The baby as virtual object
