Interlacing Situated and Algorithmic Modes of Knowledge Work: A Workplace Jurisdiction Perspective

Algorithmic technologies are challenging to integrate into knowledge work; they produce knowledge claims profoundly differently from the situated mode in which experts work. Because knowledge work is often accomplished through the flow or sequential progression of work across multiple occupations, knowledge claims must be legitimized and accepted across those occupations and not by just a single focal user group. Yet, we know little about the deeper changes that organizations must make regarding who has the legitimate expertise to produce knowledge claims and what counts as valuable knowledge when the algorithmic mode of knowledge work enters the workplace. To explore this, we draw on workplace jurisdictions as the foundation for dividing and coordinating work among occupations to study how the algorithmic mode of knowledge work becomes integrated with the situated flow of work, creating a new workplace jurisdiction. Our three-year ethnographic study of the radiology workflow in a medical center shows that interlacing practices weave together the two distinct modes of knowledge work by reorganizing existing relations among tasks, workplace artifacts, and technologies and enacting those reorganized relations. Contrary to the literature’s focus on the interface between algorithmic knowledge claims and a single focal user group, our study proposes a trans-group focus that refines scholarly understanding of how organizations can integrate algorithmic technologies with situated practices of professionals and their knowledge claims, as well as how new workplace jurisdictions emerge around technologies.