Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1108/JOE-07-2026-159
Title (Primary) Guest editorial: Organizational ethnography and practice theories in the digital transformation of work
Author Schönian, K.; Ayeh, D. ORCID logo
Source Titel Journal of Organizational Ethnography
Year 2026
Department UPOL
Volume 15
Issue 2
Page From 177
Page To 186
Language englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Abstract

Digital and AI technologies increasingly permeate work activities and workplaces. Under conditions of remote and hybrid work especially, social practices become entangled with various digital forms such as data flows, digital devices and online platforms (Southerton and Halford, 2025). As these developments reshape the material arrangements, temporal rhythms and modes of coordination in everyday work, questions of how such configurations stabilize and change take on renewed relevance. This special issue places these enactments at the centre of analysis. By bringing practice theory into dialogue with organizational ethnography, it seeks to deepen our understanding of the digitalization of work and workplaces. More specifically, it highlights the potential of practice theory for understanding (organizational) change (Shove et al., 2012), as well as for providing theoretical and methodological frameworks to reconstruct these transformations through everyday doings and sayings. Accordingly, it examines the conditions that ethnographic fieldwork encounters in – and the insights it generates about – digitalized work environments and emphasizes its potential to study practices beyond traditional in-person observation.

Schönian, K., Ayeh, D. (2026):
Guest editorial: Organizational ethnography and practice theories in the digital transformation of work
J. Organ. Ethnogr. 15 (2), 177 - 186
10.1108/JOE-07-2026-159