We begin our year 2025 with presentations from Jenny Elo, Doctoral researcher (IT), and Matti Laukkarinen, Post-doctoral researcher (JSBE/Management).
Jenny is sharing us her latest findings on digital service innovations and combines two conference papers in her presentation: "Toward Continuous Digital Service Innovation: Implications for Organizations and Employees”. Continuous digital service innovation (CDSI) reflects a shift toward flexible, iterative, bottom-up approaches to service innovation in today’s rapidly evolving technology-dominated service context. This presentation will discuss findings from two recent conference papers that explore the implications of this new way of organizing for service innovation at both the organizational and individual levels. The first paper adopts a paradox lens to examine how organizations manage ongoing change and uncertainty. Drawing on data from two case studies, it identifies three interrelated tensions—flexibility versus stability, autonomy versus control, and parts versus whole—and proposes “both/and” strategies for managing these tensions. The second work-in-progress paper focuses on how CDSI affects employees in different roles. Preliminary findings from 35 semi-structured interviews across four organizations reveal the impact of CDSI on both instrumental (e.g., productivity) and humanistic outcomes (e.g., employee well-being and satisfaction) in these environments.
And Matti will talk about monitoring trace data in knowledge work and how employees and supervisors make sense of that: “Surveillance and Agency in the Datafied Workplace: The Role of Monitoring Trace Data in Knowledge Work”.
Matti’s work-in-progress study examines how supervisors and employees make sense of monitoring trace data in knowledge work. Based on 51 qualitative interviews, they argue that trace data monitoring, despite its quantitative appeal, is prone to distortions due to employees’ agency in manipulating data traces and supervisors’ reliance on incomplete representations of work performance. Additionally, they argue that trace data not only monitors but also provokes resistance and performative adaptations, as employees actively manipulate visibility to align with perceived expectations.
