Conference Agenda

The symposium focuses on the relationship between organization, diversity, and digitization. This reveals a tension between the different concepts. Organizations are situated in and equally confronted with heterogeneous social conditions (Wilz 2002). This results in different, often interlocking approaches that indicate the necessity of negotiating diversity in and of the organization. Heterogeneity as a challenging condition starts with the productive need to process different perspectives and individuals. Approaches such as "diversity management" or "managing diversity" see diversity as a resource that needs to be managed for the benefit of the organization. For example, diversity has a productive effect in the context of innovation labs, where the variety of perspectives fosters the generation of new solutions (Schröer 2021). In this way, organizations can realize heterotopic places (Adler/Weber 2018) in order to temporarily suspend the contradictory logics of action inscribed in them. Other approaches address the organization in its interweaving with social power relations, which make the organizations themselves actors in the reproduction of social inequalities. Following the socially institutionalized norm that relations of inequality are illegitimate (Pasero 2003), here concepts of equity and inclusion that adopt a power- and structure-reflexive perspective on organizations become relevant.

Organizations operate in a field of tension between very different logics of action, which is also evident in the ongoing digital transformation. The widely funded interdisciplinary research in the field of digitization, for example, focuses primarily on the introduction of digital technology in production and management processes and the need for digital skills. The focus is on how digitality is changing work and organizational processes (Büchner 2018). Although the importance of organizations for digitization is repeatedly emphasized digitization is mostly neither tied back to the organization's own logic (Wendt 2021) nor sufficiently related to societal demands and the associated paradoxes.

Digitization and diversity also have a tense relationship. While the spread of the internet was initially associated with the hope that new technical possibilities would enable democratic forms of deliberative interaction, this optimism has since been empirically corrected. This is illustrated not only by the debate about digital divide, the self-referentiality of echo chambers or the spread of hate speech, but above all by the criticism that algorithms regularly stabilize relations of inequality and thus counteract claims to diversity (Bender et al. 2021). The increasing spread of artificial intelligence, in particular, is leading to the demand that the use of digital technology must comply with ethical principles and reveals new forms of learning (Truschkat/Bormann i.E.)

An organizational educational perspective therefore draws attention to the fact that advancing digitization not only creates new needs for knowledge generation and use, but also necessitates the negotiation of new organizational orders. An organizational educational approach offers the possibility to bring organization, diversity, and digitization into a relationship and to discuss related practices of action. The symposium will bring together current contributions that deal with the tense relationship between digital transformation and diversity in organizations and will discuss further organizational education theory and research perspectives in this topic area.

Organizations are increasingly using digital structure-building tools to systematize and coordinate actions in the context of digital transformation. As a result, the notion of management and control, the relationship between formality and informality, or the way in which decisions are made are changing. Regarding organizational education, learning in, from, and between organizations takes place under changed conditions. The consequences of digitization for organizations are discussed and classified using three examples: Filing (1), Decision Making (2), and Algorithmization of knowledge-based work (3). The use of case software such as ICT (1) in social pedagogical case processing leads to the fact that digital processing logic puts professional action knowledge under pressure. Big Data-based risk assessment tools in early intervention and child protection (2) put the importance of personal experience into perspective. In the application of large language models (LLM) or diffusion models in artificial intelligence (3), organizations become independent of individual microdiversity in the production of alternatives. With this background, the contribution explores the question of whether the use of software realizes the old dream of rationalizing work processes or enables a qualitatively different form of coordinating procedures that are based on the division of labor.

Benanav, A. (2021). Automatisierung und die Zukunft der Arbeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Büchner, S./Dosdall, H. (2021). Organisation und Algorithmus. Wie algorithmische Kategorien, Vergleiche und Bewertungen durch Organisationen relevant gemacht werden. In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie KZfSS, 73, S. 333–357. Kelkar, S. (2018). Engineering a platform: The construction of interfaces, users, organizational roles, and the division of labor. In: new media & society, (20) 7, S. 2629-2646. Manhart, S., Wendt, T. (2022): Soziale Systeme? Systemtheorie digitaler Organisation. In: Soziale Systeme. Zeitschrift für soziologische Theorie 26 (1/2), im Druck. Wendt, T. (2021): Organized Futures. On the Ambiguity of the Digital Absorption of Uncertainty. In: Frontiers in Education 6:554336. Wendt, T., Manhart, S. (2020): Digital Decision Making als Entscheidung, nicht zu entscheiden. Zur Zukunft des Entscheidens in der Digitalisierung. In: Arbeit. Zeitschrift für Arbeitsforschung, Arbeitsgestaltung und Arbeitspolitik 29 (2), S. 143-160.

The discourse on the digitalization of (work)organizations is predominantly characterized by a technology-deterministic perspective that focuses primarily on the (everyday) consequences and possibilities of digitalization (cf. Nassehi 2019). Also, from a gender-political perspective, mainly the potentials and risks of technology usage for gender relations in organizations are discussed, which arise, for example, through changed possibilities of flexibility or the phenomenon of biased algorithms. In this sense, technologies are often already recognized in their socio-technical construction, whereas organizations tend to be addressed as neutral frameworks of digitization (cf. Carstensen/ Prietl 2021; BMFSFJ 2021). From an organizational theoretical perspective, however, questions are becoming increasingly virulent that focus on a more active role of organizations in digitalization and the emergence of new cultural forms based on digital infrastructures. In particular, the concept of digitality (Stalder 2016) raises a perspective that emphasizes the cultural significance of digitalization for organizations. In this sense, organizations and their actors are no longer exclusively confronted with the introduction of technologies, but rather are actively involved in the production of a new culture of digitality, which becomes visible in changed organizational practices (cf. Büchner 2018). However, it also becomes clear that the more the debate about digitization in organizations turns to a cultural approach, the less influence a gender-sensitive perspective has had so far. This becomes particularly relevant because, from a praxeological perspective, the central actors in the creation of a new digitality are not neutral entities, but are situated in gendered power relations themselves. (ct. Acker 1990; Wajcman 2010). To address this desideratum, the constitutive relevance of gender for organizational digitality will be demonstrated, building on concepts from feminist organizational and technology research. In addition, initial praxeological considerations for capturing gender in organizational digitality will be presented and subsequently discussed using the example of organizational digitality of workspaces in universities.

Acker, J. (1990): Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. In: Gender & Society. 4/1. S. 58-139 BMBFSJ (2021): Digitalisierung Geschlechtergerecht Gestalten. Dritter Gleichstellungsbericht der Bundesregierung. 10. Juni 2021, Berlin. https://www.bmfsfj.de/resource/blob/184544/665a7070dbc68f9984fe968dc05fd139/dritter-gleichstellungsbericht-bundestagsdrucksache-data.pdf Büchner, S. (2018). Zum Verhältnis von Digitalisierung und Organisation. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 47(5), S. 332-348. Carstensen, Tanja; Prietl, Bianca (2021): Digitalisierung und Geschlecht: Traditionslinien feministischer Auseinandersetzung mit neuen Technologien und gegenwärtige Herausforderungen. In: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Geschlechterstudien 27 (1-2021), S. 29–44. Nassehi, A. (2019). Muster. Theorie der digitalen Gesellschaft. München: C.H. Beck. Stalder, F. (2016). Kultur der Digitalität. (1. Aufl.). Berlin: Suhrkamp. Wajcman, J. (2010). Feminist theories of technology. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(1), 143–152. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24232027

The presentation is embedded within the START (Self-Determination through technological support of Autonomy, Resilience and organisational Transformation) project in AT/CH (funding: FFG). One of START’s aims is to ensure and strengthen a self-determined life style for people with disabilities (PWD). START therefor co-develops an IT tool. This will digitally facilitate PWD’s access to a multitude of services or activities. Such services continue to be offered to a large extent by classical organisations that provide support for PWD. Just like other organisations, also organisations from this sector have been confronted with the effects of digitalisation (Bosse/Haage 2020:529f). Wherever digital services and tools are being introduced, aspects of education become an issue: for individual users inside the organisation (‘learning in organisations’), for the organisation as a whole (‘learning by organisations’) and for the ecosystems that the organisations are embedded in (‘learning between organisations’). In my PhD thesis I will pay attention to a new analytical sequence that I call ‘preceding digital situations’ and ‘subsequent target situations’ in the lives of service users (PWD) who (will) use digital tools like START’s prototype. A ‘preceding digital situation’ involves an IT tool to initiate, plan, prepare to guide or document a subsequent ‘target situation’, i.e. an activity of everyday life (like eating, cooking, shopping) and/or a suitable support service (feeding, mobility assistance, etc.). I hypothesise that (in this context) preceding digital situations can show a severe lack of self-determination, while most emphasis by the organisation’s staff or IT developers is put on ensuring and strengthening self-determination in the ‘target situations’. The (comparatively short) event of using the digital tool is not even regarded as a situation itself. My presentation will focus on the first part of the sequence: the often overlooked ‘digital situations’. It will showcase various examples, gathered by vignettes on situations (Miko-Schefzig 2022:114ff). They can help to raise awareness about action logics at the intersection of organisation, diversity and (constantly advancing) digitalisation (in the social field). Furthermore, they can contribute to negotiate new organisational orders and practices of action.

Bosse, Ingo; Haage, Anne (2020): Digitalisierung in der Behindertenhilfe. In: Handbuch Soziale Arbeit und Digitalisierung. Pp. 529-539. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juvena Miko-Schefzig, Katharina (2022): Forschen mit Vignetten. Gruppen, Organisationen, Transformation. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juvena

Digital technologies are increasingly finding their way into the provision of social services. For social organizations, this presents a wide range of opportunities and challenges. To meet these challenges, an interdisciplinary consortium consisting of five scientific organizations, three IT companies and 14 social institutions in Austria is working on the "Digital Social Route Map" project. The core of the project is the creation of a digital tool that helps people find information about services to solve social problems. The aim is to create an innovative product that, with the help of target-group and demand-oriented use of adequate digital technologies, creates added value for those affected as well as for social service providers compared to existing offers. The consortium works in an integrative and participative process with potential users and different organizations. The implementation of the "Digital Social Route Map" poses numerous challenges for the organizations involved in the project, as they are caught between the diverse opportunities offered by digital technologies and the heterogeneous demands of (potential) stakeholders. Particularly in the areas in which digital technologies find their way into direct client work, multi-layered technical, ethical, and organizational questions arise that can stand in "contradictory relationship to professional logics of social work" (Kutscher et al. 2020). Among other things, social organizations have to deal with data protection concepts and IT security, ensure equal technical access for their (vulnerable) stakeholder groups, consider the impact on the relationship with and trust by clients, and ensure the quality and diversity of services. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the stakeholder groups requires that aspects of diversity - which are of central importance for (social) organizations - be given special focus when organizations implement digitization processes (Mayer/Vanderheiden 2014; Becker 2016; Dreas 2019). On the one hand, digitization can create further barriers to access, but at the same time it can also represent an opportunity to establish diversified, innovative, needs-based, and low-threshold services. In this respect, working with these ambivalences of integrating new technologies is a crucial aspect in the digitization process of social organizations and their services (Deckert/ Langer 2018; Grunwald 2018; Roehl/ Asselmeyer 2017). In order to address the described tensions and ambivalences between digitalization and diversity-conscious service orientation, social organizations need to engage in experimental and disinhibiting learning and transformation processes. In this contribution, experiences from a practice-oriented research project are shared that exemplify how social organizations can deal with these processes.

Becker, M. (2016). Was ist Diversity Management? In K. Fereidooni & A. P. Zeoli (Hrsg.), Managing Diversity. Die diversitätsbewusste Ausrichtung des Bildungs- und Kulturwesens, der Wirtschaft und Verwaltung (S. 291–317). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Deckert, R., & Langer, A. (2018). Digitalisierung und Technisierung sozialer Dienstleistungen. In K. Grunwald & A. Langer (Hrsg.), Sozialwirtschaft. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Praxis (S. 872–889). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Dreas, S. A. (2019). Diversity Management in Organisationen der Sozialwirtschaft. Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Grunwald, K. (2018). Organisationsentwicklung/ Change Management in und von sozialwirtschaftlichen Organisationen. In K. Grunwald & A. Langer (Hrsg.), Sozialwirtschaft. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Praxis (S. 333–356). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Kutscher, N., Ley, T., Seelmeyer, U., Siller, F., Tillmann, A., & Zorn, I. (Hrsg.). (2020). Handbuch Soziale Arbeit und Digitalisierung. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa. Mayer, C.-H., & Vanderheiden, E. (Hrsg.) (2014). Handbuch Interkulturelle Öffnung. Grundlagen, Best Practice, Tools. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rubrecht. Roehl, H., & Asselmeyer, H. (Hrsg.). (2017). Organisationen klug gestalten. Das Handbuch für Organisationsentwicklung und Change Management. Stuttgart: Schäffer-Poeschel.