Post Local Forms of Repair: The Case of Virtualised Technical Support

37 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2008

See all articles by Neil Pollock

Neil Pollock

University of Edinburgh

Robin Williams

University of Edinburgh - Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation

Christine Grimm

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Luciana D'Adderio

Strathclyde Business School

Date Written: October 9, 2008

Abstract

We address the seemingly implausible project of moving the technical support of complex organisational technologies online. We say 'implausible' because from the point of view of micro-sociological analysis, and the influential work of Julian Orr, there appears a consensus that the diagnosis and resolution of technical failures is an intrinsically local affair: technical problems are theorised as context specific, requiring specialists to have knowledge of and close interactions with local settings. However, more recently, there has been a push amongst technology producers for the development of online forms of support so that failures and problem-settings can be handled remotely. Today, and particularly in the area of organisational software, many failures are repaired at a distance. How is this possible given the consensus amongst sociologists? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a major software producer we show how technical support has been recast and inserted in a new geographical and temporal regime. This has implications for how sociologists of technology conceptualise the nature of technical failure as well as the situation in which repair occurs. We shift understandings of technical problems from a focus on rootedness to 'disentanglement' and 'exporting' (how problems are lifted out of local contexts and passed around globally distributed offices in search of requisite specialist expertise). From the point of view of the producer, this is seemingly an effective means to resolve failures, but it is also one with negative consequences. Thus, we describe how the support process is further modified and regulated in an attempt to rid it of unwanted features. Finally, we show how globalised online support reconfigures relationships between various actors. Our conclusions are that whilst the circumstances underpinning localist views of technical support are not abolished by virtualisation they are substantially reshaped by it. We suggest that different analytical approaches are needed that address tensions between local practices and technological restructuring, and their contradictory outcomes.

Keywords: techncial support, julian orr, interactionist sociology, localisation

Suggested Citation

Pollock, Neil and Williams, Robin and Grimm, Christine and D'Adderio, Luciana, Post Local Forms of Repair: The Case of Virtualised Technical Support (October 9, 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1281454 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1281454

Neil Pollock (Contact Author)

University of Edinburgh ( email )

Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9JY
United Kingdom

Robin Williams

University of Edinburgh - Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation ( email )

United Kingdom

Christine Grimm

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Luciana D'Adderio

Strathclyde Business School ( email )

100 Cathedral Street
Glasgow G1 1XU
United Kingdom

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