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Faculty of Management Research Workshop; Samer Faraj, McGill University
Details
Losing Touch: An Embodiment Perspective On Coordination In Robotic Surgery
Samer Faraj, McGill University
Because new technologies allow new performances, mediations, representations, and information flows, they are often associated with changes in how coordination is achieved. Current coordination research emphasizes its situated and emergent nature, but seldom accounts for the role of embodied action. Building on a 25-month field study of the da Vinci robot, an endoscopic system for minimally invasive surgery, we bring to the fore the role of the body in how coordination was reconfigured in response to a change in technological mediation. Using the robot, surgeons experienced both an augmentation as well as a reduction of what they can do with their bodies in terms of haptic, visual and auditory perception, and manipulative dexterity. These bodily augmentations and reductions affected joint task performance and led to coordinative adaptations (e.g., spatial relocating, redistributing tasks, accommodating novel perceptual dependencies, and mounting novel responses) that, over time, resulted in reconfiguration of roles, including: expanded occupational knowledge, emergence of new specializations, and shifts in status and boundaries. By emphasizing the importance of the body in coordination, this paper suggests that an embodiment perspective is important for explaining how and why coordination evolves following the introduction of a new technology.
Please contact faculty administration should you wish to attend.
Food Provided (Refreshments will be provided from 12pm-12:30pm prior to the workshop in the 4th floor faculty lounge area.)
Where
Bayes Business School, 106 Bunhill Row
3003
106 Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TZ, UK
Speakers
Samer Faraj
Samer Faraj is professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Technology, Innovation and Organization. His current research focuses on complex collaboration and on how emergent technologies are transforming organizing and allowing new forms of coordination to emerge. He has published in outlets such as: Management Science, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Annals of Emergency Medicine. He has served as senior Editor at both Organization Science and Information Systems Research.