Making digital work flow: accomplishing waste collection through practices of repair

Purpose This article explores the role of human–technology interactions in the digital transformation of everyday waste work, questioning the idea of ready-to-use technology and examining what is needed to make work flow. Design/methodology/approach Based on ethnographic field research in two waste management companies in Germany, we analyze the intersections between the lived experiences of waste workers and the material forms of digitalization. More specifically, we ask how digitalization is accomplished through everyday sociomaterial work practices. Findings In an era of increasingly digitalized waste work, we argue that it is repairing which ensures that waste work flows. We identified repair practices that can help us understand how the observed interactive adaptations and adjustments of activities serve to restore a sense of order and meaning (i.e. care for technologies, workflows, and people) in contexts of novel uncertainties associated with the introduction of digital technologies. Originality/value We suggest that looking at human–technology interactions from an ethnographic perspective and through a practice theoretical lens offers unique insights into processes of organizational transformation involving digital technologies. Our approach provides a methodological and theoretical framework for revealing otherwise invisible work and disenchanting innovation as, in practice, a disruptive event.