Reconfiguring Boundary Relations: Robotic Innovations in Pharmacy Work

Michael Barrett (), Eivor Oborn (), Wanda J. Orlikowski () and JoAnne Yates ()
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Michael Barrett: Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1AG, United Kingdom
Eivor Oborn: School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW2 0EX, United Kingdom
Wanda J. Orlikowski: MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
JoAnne Yates: MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

Organization Science, 2012, vol. 23, issue 5, 1448-1466

Abstract: Robotics is a rapidly expanding area of digital innovation with important implications for organizational practice in multioccupational settings. This paper explores the influence of robotic innovations on the boundary dynamics of three different occupational groups—pharmacists, technicians, and assistants—working in a hospital pharmacy. We extend Pickering's tuning approach [Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science . University of Chicago Press, Chicago] to examine the temporally emergent process that entangled the mechanical elements and digital inscriptions of a dispensing robot with the everyday practices of hospital pharmacy work. We found that engagement with the robot's hybrid and dynamic materiality over time reconfigured boundary relations among the three occupational groups, with important and contradictory consequences for the pharmacy workers' skills, jurisdictions, status, and visibility.

Keywords: digital; innovation; boundary relations; robots; materiality; pharmacy; health care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

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