Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization

A great deal of research on geographically distributed organizing focuses on communication among members; however, in the face of increasingly large, complex and interdependent infrastructure, scholars must also examine instances of technology-supported coordination that function by replacing rather than enhancing human communication among organizational members. Central to this are complex processes of delegation — in which organizational work and agency are passed back and forth across the shifting line between “social” and “technical” elements. Building on work in the sociology of science, this paper extends the concept of delegation and applies it to thorny questions around the work of sustaining organization over time. We explore two examples from the Open Science Grid (OSG), an initiative that distributes computational resources to geographically dispersed and otherwise loosely coordinated research teams. Our first case is one of successful delegation, as automated access to resources is extended to a new group of distributed scientists. We then turn our attention to a case where the process of delegation breaks down, revealing the usually invisible work needed to sustain “seamless” integration. As these cases show, delegation is complex, fragile, and central to the nature of contemporary organizing. Specifically, delegation: 1) reconfigures the organization of work; 2) transforms how outcomes are accomplished; 3) redistributes responsibility for organizational decision-making; and 4) shifts the visibility and invisibility of both actors and their work.