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Emerald Article: Sociomaterial practice and the constitutive entanglement

of social and material resources: The case of construction work
Alexander Styhre

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Alexander Styhre, (2011),"Sociomaterial practice and the constitutive entanglement of social and material resources: The case of
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03055721111188502

Alexander Styhre, (2011),"Sociomaterial practice and the constitutive entanglement of social and material resources: The case of
construction work", VINE, Vol. 41 Iss: 4 pp. 384 - 400
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03055721111188502

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VINE
41,4 Sociomaterial practice and the
constitutive entanglement of
social and material resources
384
The case of construction work
Alexander Styhre
Department of Business Administration, School of Business,
Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract
Purpose – The concept of sociomaterial practice has been proposed as a term including materiality
as constitutive elements in any social practice. The concept also suggests that while social relations are
constituted by and mediated by materiality, materiality per se is enacted in a social context. Practice is
thus unfolding as a form of constitutive entanglement of social and material resources at hand. The
paper aims at discussing the concept of practice as what is mobilizing both material and intangible
resources.
Design/methodology/approach – The study draws on interviews with construction workers,
foremen, and site managers in three projects in a medium sized construction company.
Findings – The study suggests that while construction work is both regulated by piece-rate wage
systems and being largely composed of standard operation procedures, there is still a strong reliance
on collectively accomplished routines for communicating and interacting in the workplace. Rather
than being determined by and reducible to material conditions, social relations and mutual trust play a
key role in construction projects.
Originality/value – The concept of sociomaterial practice is opening up for a more articulated
recognition of the entanglement of social and material resources in organizing work. The study
presents first-hand data on how construction work rests on the collective capacity to combine both
material and social elements.
Keywords Sociomaterial practice, Construction industry, Materiality, Work, Project management,
Labour
Paper type Research paper

VINE: The journal of information and
knowledge management systems
Vol. 41 No. 4, 2011
pp. 384-400
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/03055721111188502
Introduction
The concept of practice has been increasingly used in the field of organization theory
and management studies (Geiger, 2009; Gherardi, 2009; Raelin, 2007; Schatzki et al.,
2001). Overcoming the century-long “agency or structure” conundrum in the social
sciences, practice is introduced as the elementary unit of analysis in organizations,
being recursively constituted by agency and actual practice while simultaneously
being regulating by instituted norms, ideologies, and routines. A practice is in this
view what is developed in a specific field as a collective enactment of legitimate and
widely endorsed standard operation procedures (Hendry, 2000; Jarzabkowski, 2004).
More recently, Suchman (2007) and Orlikowski (2007) have advocated the term
“sociomaterial practice” to fully recognize the influence and importance of materiality
in any social practice. The concept of sociomaterial practice is in many ways is
tangential with concepts such as work practices used in the communities of practice
literature (e.g. Wenger et al., 2002; Wenger and Snyder, 2000; Wenger, 2000. See also Sociomaterial
Sole and Edmondson, 2002). However, while the concept of work practice is grounded practice and
in an industry sociology framework, the term sociomaterial practice is more indebted
to the science and technology studies literature and the literature on information entanglement
systems (see, e.g. Hackett et al., 2008; Jasanoff et al., 1995; Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001).
In sociomaterial practice perspective, organization theory and the social sciences more
generally have downgraded materiality and emphasized the linguistic, discursive, and 385
narrative constitution of knowledge-claims and subjectivities. As opposed to this view,
underlining social life as a social construction and convention, materiality exists
outside of such linguistic conventions. This does not suggests that materiality is
occupying some “extra-social” domain where it is sheltered from social beliefs and
expectations; on the contrary, the very term sociomaterial practice underlines that
social life is materially constituted, entangled with the use of artefacts, technologies
and tools (Latour, 1991; Johnson, 2007), while technology and other material resources
acquire their role and meaning when being anchored in social conditions (Hård, 1994;
Bijker, 1995; Bijker et al., 1987). The concept of sociomaterial practice is thus appealing
for students of organizations that refuse to recognize an iron curtain between on the
one hand social resources and material resources on the other, but on the contrary sees
an entanglement between social beliefs and materialities; the one category do not make
sense without the other (Pickering, 1989; Tilley, 2001; Dale, 2005; Entwhistle and
Racamora, 2006; Leonardi and Barley, 2008).
The concern is still that the very term sociomaterial practice has primarily served a
role in establishing research frameworks that overcome such distinctions. To date,
there are relatively few studies using the very term sociomaterial practice to
understand activities and actions in organizations. That is, the term sociomaterial
practice has in the first place served a rhetorical purpose in a general recognition of
technology and other material resources that are being, if not overtly ignored, at least
relatively underappreciated vis-à-vis concept such as power, communication, and
ideology. This paper is reporting a study set in the construction industry suggesting
that construction work is of necessity the engagement with material resources – tools,
equipment, machines, wood, concrete, gypsum boards, clothing, etc. – while the social
conditions at the work site play a key role in regulating the day-to-day practices. Even
though the very building of, say, a house may appear as being relatively
uncomplicated in terms of division of labour, the logistics or materials, and the
routines for controlling and managing work, there is still a strong reliance on social
norms and jointly enacted standards for how to proceed in the work. Without the
accompanying leadership work of primarily the site mangers and the foreman, the
closest subordinate of the site manager, the “production flow” is disrupted and the
work cease to function as anticipated. The social elements of leadership work is
therefore playing a pivotal role as being the “infrastructure” of the transformation of
various materials into housing and other products generated in the construction
industry. Cases studies of for instance construction projects are for instance fertile soil
for generating a more contextual and situated understanding of terms like
sociomaterial practice, seeking to upgrade and recognize materiality in organization
theory and management studies.
The paper is structured as follows: First, the concept of agency is addressed.
Thereafter, the nature of construction work and its output, built environments, are
VINE discussed. Thereafter, the methodology of the study is accounted for. Next, the
41,4 empirical study is reported, and finally some implications are addressed.

Agency and sociomaterial practice

As a theory of organizing, the concept of sociomaterial practice remains somewhat
386 elusive and inarticulate. Orlikowski (2007) suggests that “[t]he social and the material
are constitutively entangled in everyday life” and proposes the term “constitutive
entanglement” to escape giving privilege to either the social or the material but to
embrace “[a] form of mutual reciprocation”; “there is no social and that is not also
material, and no material that is also social,” Orlikowski (2007, p. 1437) assures.
Suchman (2005) is adding that objects used in practice are “radically situated,”
meaning that objects are acquiring their function through “ongoing, contingent
connections” to practicing subjects and other objects. This change in perspective is
sharing with the view of objects advocated by Simondon (1980) pointing at the gradual
“concretization” and “individualization” of technological objects through their use and
relationship to other objects; “The technical object is a unit of becoming,” Simondon
(1980, p. 12) contends. Suchman (2005, p. 394) thus concludes, consonant with
Orlikowski’s (2007) view, that “subjects and objects mutually implicate each other.”
Although Orlikowski (2007) is providing many examples of how this “constitutive
entanglement” enfolds social and material practices – the innovative Google search
engine developed Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, being one example – the theory of
sociomaterial practice is still relatively crude in terms of being based on the two
“grand” concepts of “the social” and “the material.” These two concepts are “black
boxes” that need to be subject to more detailed analysis. Expressed differently, these
are two analytical terms, useful when sketching broader theoretical frameworks that
nevertheless remain too general and too imprecise to be of any significant help in
actual empirical studies. One approach forward is to introduce the term “agency”,
implicit to the concept of practice as the acting subject mobilizing both material and
social resources. While agency may be poorly integrated or distributed across
individuals or groups, it is still a term that presupposes the capacity to act at will, to
take action, and to influence the course of action. Sewell (1992) emphasizes such a view
of agency:
To be an agent means to be capable of exerting some control over the social relations in which
one is enmeshed, which in turn implies the ability to transform those social relations to some
degree . . . agents are empowered to act with and against others by structures: they have
knowledge of the schemas that inform social life and have access to some measures of human
and nonhuman resources. Agency arises from the actor’s knowledge of schemas, which
means the ability to apply them to new contexts. Or, to put the same thing the other way
around, agency arises from the actor’s control of resources, which means the capacity to
reinterpret or mobilize an array of resources in terms of schemas other than those that
constituted the array. Agency is implied by the existence of structure (Sewell, 1992, p. 20).
Emirbayer (1997) speaks of agency as being both “path-dependent” and situated and as
being “dialogic” in nature:
Agency is always a dialogic process by which actors immersed in the durée of lived
experience engage with others in collectively organized action contexts, temporal as well as
spatial. Agency is path dependent as well as situationally embedded; it signifies modes of
 response to problems impinging upon it through sometimes broad expanses of time as well as Sociomaterial
space (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 294).
practice and
As suggested by Sewell (1992), agency is thus entangled with “structure,” a term that is entanglement
theoretically complicated but that may in this organizational setting mean routines,
roles, standard operations procedures, and other instituted operations that are widely
known and recognized in an organization or a field. Sewell (1992, p. 21) notes that 387
structures and “the human agencies they endow” are “laden with differences in power.”
For instance, the CEO of a corporation is endowed with more authority to make
decisions than any co-worker lower in the hierarchy. From the perspective of
sociomateral practice, agency is also entangled with the material resources at hand.
Garfinkel (1988) is here using the helpful term “a plenum of agencies” to denote the
variety of resources mobilized in the agent’s practice. Analytically and
methodologically, such a view of agency “[r]equires that we take into account all
human and nonhuman entities that, day by day, contribute to its building and
organizing,” Cooren (2006, p. 85) says. Agency is then the co-alignment of various
resources to accomplish socially and organizationally desirable outcomes. Also Pinch
(2008), invoking the concept of institutions, is underlining the dynamic relationship
between materiality and agency:
Institutions have an inescapable material dimension and part of the agency that actors bring
to institutions is their work in producing and reproducing (and sometimes changing) the
material dimensions of institutions. Likewise materiality itself exercises form of agency and
part of the agency that materiality brings to institutions is the work of producing and
reproducing (and sometimes changing) the social dimensions of institutions (Pinch, 2008,
p. 466).
What Orlikowski (2007) speaks of as the constitutive entanglement in organizing is
also relevant or agency and institutions; the material and the social are always
developed in tandem and eliminating the one component from the analysis reduces the
capacity for fully understanding agency and organizational practice at large. As have
been shown by the carefully designed and conducted ethnographic work of laboratory
work, the capacity of “fabricating nature” in the laboratory setting (Kohler, 1994; Knorr
Cetina, 1995; Rader, 2004) is by no means a trivial matter but demands a great deal of
scientific training, experience and experience to maintain and uphold an experimental
system capable of producing credible data that can serve as the “raw materials” in the
research work (Rheinberger, 1997; Nutch, 1996). “Most scientific training is not about
testing nature but about testing the scientists to see if they have the requisite skills to
produce the correct answers,” Pinch (2008, p. 466) remarks. In summary then,
sociomaterial practice is based on an agency capable of mobilizing both material
resources such as scientific equipment and biological tissues in the case of the
laboratory, or tools and building materials in the case of the construction industry, and
social resources, scientific credibility and jointly enacted routines in the laboratory
setting and shared standard operation procedures and shared trust and sense of esprit
de corps in the construction industry. Being able to constitute viable assemblages of
material and social resources is thus a key to successful agency in both scientific
laboratory settings and – in our case – at construction sites.
VINE The built environment
41,4 Just like the work of laboratory scientists and lab technicians cannot be fully
understood unless the actual output – scientific data and analyses thereof articulated
in journal publications – the work of construction workers must be understood in the
context of their production. The construction industry is producing material artifacts
that are relatively often taken for granted or more or less dismissed as being of minor
388 interest per se. However, a reasonably complex theory of architecture or the building
process suggests that buildings are per se embodiments of social norms and material
possibilities (Wise, 1997). Buildings are thus in various ways playing the
interchangeable role of being symbols, enactments of social values and norms,
materializations of scientific doctrines and assumptions, and the construction of actual,
material spaces that regulate and control behavior (Francisco, 2007; Jones, 2006; Dodge
and Kitchin, 2005; Grosz, 2001; Suchman, 2000). Gieryn (2002, p. 35) underlines the key
and often unappreciated role buildings play in society and or individual humans:
“Buildings stabilize social life. They give structure to social institutions, durability to
social networks, persistence to behavior patterns. What we build solidifies society
against time and its incessant forces for change.” Therefore, in Gieryn’s (2002, p. 35)
view, “buildings . . . sit between agency and structure.” Winston Churchill famously
claimed that “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us” (cited in
Brand, 1994, p. 3), and this ability to almost subconsciously affecting human action and
relations is of importance for Gieryn (2002). Just like with machines more generally,
having the capacity of structuring action and agency, their role and influence at times
barely noticeable as long as they function. The technology philosopher Langdon
Winner is talking about this overlooking materiality until the event of its breakdown
as “technological somnambulism” (cited in Gieryn, 2002, p. 44). Expressed differently,
such technologies and buildings are “infrastructural” (Star, 1999; Star and Bowker,
2002) inasmuch as they are basically ignored or taken for granted. As Star (1999)
claims, when studying the infrastructure of a city or a society one may learn quite a bit
regarding the power relations and the allocation of resources in such societies. Gieryn
(2002, pp. 38-39) is also emphasizing this “negotiated order” (in Strauss’ (1993) term) of
buildings: “Once completed, buildings hide the many possibilities that did not get built,
as they bury the interests, politics, and power that shaped the one design that did.”
Gieryn (2002, p. 41) further explains is position:
Buildings are technological artefacts, made material objects, and humanly constructed
physical things. To see them this way brings buildings within the compass of a promising
theoretical orientation developed initially for the study of machines. The focus is on the
recursive qualities inherent in technological artefacts, at once, the product of human agency
and a stable force for structuring social actions. Buildings, as any machine or tool, are
simultaneously the consequence and structural cause of social practices.
Rather than being manifestation of a disinterested rationality of the architects,
designers, building engineers and construction workers, buildings are for Gieryn
(2002) the outcome from negotiations between stakeholders and the allocation of
resources in the economic regime of the market regulating the construction industry,
that is, blend of market activities orchestrated by smaller and larger – and
consequently more influential – clients, large public sector investors, major
multinational construction companies, and a great variety of small to medium-sized
construction companies. For Gieryn (2002), a building is never “just a building” but is a
joint accomplishment produced on basis of both material conditions and social Sociomaterial
relations, in brief, a sociomaterial practice. Adhering to such a perspective, practice and
construction work will be examined as what is of necessity a co-alignment of social
and material resources, eventually being laid down in the very construction which entanglement
sooner or later is being taken for granted and generating little or no attention from the
end-users or broader public being more concerned with everyday matters, leaving the
interest for the historical conditions for the erecting of the building to architecture 389
historians and others.
The construction industry is an industry like perhaps no other where the output
produced is as the same time strongly affecting everyday life while at the same time
the functioning of the industry is by and large ignored by the wider public. In addition,
even in the domain of organization theory and management studies, the construction
industry is surprisingly underrepresented and excluded from scholarly attention.
Much of the construction industry research is located to specialized construction
management journals, often dominated by engineering approaches and frameworks.
Therefore a more theoretically elaborate understanding of the construction industry
may help establishing analytical frameworks emphasizing the role of materiality as
being of importance for the analysis of organizations.

Methodology
The present study is based on a case study methodology (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gillham,
2000; David, 2006). Case study methodology is commonly recognized in early phases of
research programs, where there is not yet any comprehensive understanding of a field
or a theoretical framework. Case study research has its own historical trajectory being
developed in tandem to the quantitative methods resting on large scale samples,
survey methods, and descriptive and inferential statistics to find evidence for a number
of pre-defined hypotheses, starting perhaps with the so-called Chicago school sociology
tradition (Deegan, 2001) wherein specific communities, groups, or even
neighbourhoods (see, e.g. Whyte, 1993) were studied as dynamic and changeable
social coalitions. Case study research is thus a genuinely interdisciplinary research
method widely used in political science, anthropology, sociology, management studies,
and psychology. Case study methodology has at times been criticized for the failure to
provide “objective research findings” or for granting too much importance to anecdotal
evidence but such a critique has often been articulated on basis of a naı̈ve or simplistic
understanding of terms such as objectivity (see, e.g. Megill, 1994; Daston and Galison,
2007). Insightful and detailed case studies may provide important understandings of
how actors perceive their own domain of work and how they enact norms and
ideologies that both constitute them as moral and skilled members of a community
while maintaining some leeway in the day-to-day work. Case studies are in short a
meaningful research framework for the study of norms regarding the quality standard
of the work.
In the present study, three construction projects were included. The first project was
a home for the elderly being renovated, employing about six construction workers and
a site manager. The second project was a relatively large housing project where the
focal firm was collaborating with a larger construction company. At the site, about 20
construction workers from the focal firm were working at the time. The third project
was a relatively small project where a school cantina was built. The focal firm
VINE employed two construction workers and a site manager at the site. These three projects
41,4 are relatively representative of the industry where smaller projects, ranging for
perhaps a few weeks or months, are siding with large scale projects lasting for a year
or more. The focal firm, Alpha, is a medium size construction firm, hiring about
70 employees whereof most are construction workers. Alpha is providing a series of
services including new construction, renovation, and service work. In total
390 13 co-workers including construction workers, three site managers, and one foreman
were interviewed. All interviews were conducted at the work site, in the mobile offices
and lunchrooms being set up at each work site. Interviews included two interlocutors
in most of the cases. Previous experience from interviewing construction workers
suggests that they may be reluctant to speak freely during interviews but if more than
two persons participate, it is more likely that there will be a conversation that are both
helpful for the interviewer and the interviewees. This interview strategy was relatively
successful but it is sill noteworthy that some construction workers may prefer to speak
shortly to respond to posed questions. All the interviews were conducted by the author,
a senior researcher, and lasted for almost one hour each. The key passages of
interviews were transcribed the author verbatim generating about 40 pages of
interview transcripts. The transcripts were then coded through the procedure that
Strauss and Corbin (1998) speak of as “open coding.” This procedure was organized
into two separate steps: first, the individual interview transcripts were examined as
individual passages where different topics pertaining to the day-to-day work were
addressed and reflected on. These excerpts were given a label denoting the content of
the discussion, e.g. “changes in the work procedures,” “the need for monitoring the
work,” and similar mundane phrases. These categories corresponds to what Van
Maanen (1979) speaks of as “first-order concepts,” i.e. empirically grounded data.
Second, these isolated interview excerpts were jointly coded under shared, somewhat
broader labels such as “the importance of management,” “control systems,” “doing a
‘good job,’” and “renewal of industry.” These categories, “second-order concepts” in
Van Maanen’s (1979) vocabulary, thus drew together excerpts from the thirteen
interviews. In the next stage, categories, based on the shared codes, was structured into
an intelligible storyline that could be narrated within the framework of a research
article. By and large, the coding procedure is consistent with other qualitative studies
of work, see, e.g. Elsbach (2009) for a particularly detailed account of the coding of
interview data.

Sociomaterial practices in construction work

The role of management
The construction industry is based on the project organization form inasmuch as each
firm in the industry is running a portfolio of projects ranging in size and duration. One
of the key challenges for the industry is to enable the accumulation of learning and
expertise both within and between these projects. A common criticism in the industry
is that each project is relatively isolated from the other projects and that the capacity to
exploit project-specific learnings and practices in the next or an adjacent project is
limited. At each construction site, there is a hierarchical organization of the work team.
The project is managed and led by the site manager who collaborates with one of a few
foremen who lead the work among the construction workers. In many cases,
construction workers not only represent the focal firms but are also representing their
own companies. This makes the structure of the construction site somewhat Sociomaterial
fragmented as some of the construction workers are employed by another company practice and
than the site manager but is still under his command. To sort out all these differences
in interests and concerns, the role played by the site manager and the foremen are of entanglement
central importance for the day-to-day work in the project, interviewees claimed. One of
the construction workers emphasized that a well-managed project enabled their work:
It is all about the management; how the construction sites are managed: the workplace 391
leadership, the clients. The production times have not been shortened, exactly. But the more
experienced you become, the more time you have in comparison to the situation before. You’re
less stressed these days (Interview #1).
His colleague continued: “He [the site manager] manages the construction site. Some
manages the site; others cannot manage the site . . . he delegates and coordinates, talks
to the lads and [make sure] the right man is at the right place” (Interview #1). “It is
quite a bit of a difference, or rather, an enormous difference [between site managers]”,
he contended. A good site manager is capable of maintaining a good “flow” in the
work, where materials and activities are being delivered and undertaken at the right
moment and thus avoiding stressful situations where a number of different categories
of construction workers were working on the same spot. “Site management needs to be
one step ahead” ,one of the construction workers said (Interview #2). The construction
workers also claimed that the site manager strongly influenced the culture of the
specific project:
Creating a good workplace spirit matters – that is worth everything. If you establish a good
work morale and there are lots of laughter during the breaks and there’s a bit of fun – that
matters. We’re in a good mood here. All the way through the project. The site managers bring
us some cake for the coffee on Fridays and spend some time having a chat. That makes some
difference, such small things, that it is not that negative all the time (Construction worker,
Interview #3).
One of his colleagues shares this view of the project:
This is one of the first projects where there is no ?us against them’ [attitude] . . . The site
manager, they have not been sitting at our table [during breaks] . . . If you work on a piece
rate, then it is not always crystal clear on how to share the money but there is a negotiation.
Both parts have their own plans and if the site manager listens to us on every break, then he
can use that against us (Construction worker, Interview #4).
The site managers themselves also thought they played a central role in establishing a
local project culture where the co-workers collaborated. One of the site managers,
working on major housing project lasting for a substantial period of time, emphasized
the time he had invested in creating a collaborative milieu where “the lads” felt they
were influencing the work process:
I work very much together with the lads, checking out what they are doing. I think that is an
important part of it all . . . You’re close to the production. You can quickly deal with problems
and concerns; you get an overview of the materials flow, if it is correct; you may complement
if there are things missing. You get a better flow in the work. You may also redirect people if
there’s too much folks around. So I work on being present in the production (Interview #5).
The concern was that one need to create a sense of esprit de corps among the
co-workers of else they may only think very narrow-minded in terms of only
VINE accomplishing their own work. Said the site manager, “Unless you have a proper site
41,4 management from the very beginning, you get workers running their own race, and
that’s not easy . . . Then you get co-workers saying ?I don’t give a shit, just spend my
eight hours [working] here,’ and then things don’t work” (Interview #5). The
construction workers claimed that their work was not easily further time-compressed.
The work was generally perceived to “take the time it takes” and they did not report
392 any specific degree of stress because they thought stress only impaired their work.
Says one construction worker:
There are not too many ways you can conduct the work. I can do it in my own way and in my
own pace. There’s no way to lower or higher the speed but there are a sequence of moments. If
you work with gypsum boards, you produce a certain number of square meters per hour and
there’s no way to hurry up but we do it in our own way. It doesn’t matter if the construction
times are shorter. Then they have to bring more people here (Interview #1).
His colleagues agreed on this position: “It takes the time it takes. The risk is that it may
take even longer. It is better to do the work properly right away than to return to do it
again” (Interview #2); “There’s no use stressing. Things just go wrong” (Interview #4);
“One mustn’t get stressed up. You just make mistakes. You need to calm down or else
you may have to redo the work.” (Interview #6).
Another construction worker also claimed that he was not overtly concerned about
the stress:
I don’t care. There is talk about the stress in construction but I don’t care. It works anyway . . .
You don’t feel too good about being stressed up. So I’m never stressed. If he [the foreman] tells
me that this job should take like two days and then it takes three – so what? I’ve done what I
could (Interview #4).
This lack of stress in the work derived largely from adequate planning and good “flow”
in the work, for instance, in terms of optimizing the number of construction workers at
the sight during different phases of the work:
Of course we’ve been on stressful projects. When there is a lack of planning, things get
stressed. You’re working in this apartment and there are eight other persons around. The
bottom line is that once you’ve lost [time] when working on the walls and the roof [outdoors]
that time is gone . . . It is much better having many workers in the beginning and fewer in the
end . . . You can work on your own in the apartment in that case (Interview #3).
According to the site manager, key to such a collaborative culture enabling a
comfortable work pace and reducing stress where the active participation of the
co-workers was accomplished was a new form of leadership where the site manager is
actively engaging his co-workers in sharing information and know-how as much as
possible at all stages of the project.
The problem is that unless you’re out there [on the construction site], the lads won’t tell about
issues if you haven’t implemented that routine. Many of them may use the last spike and then
they tell you they’re finished – it is quite common . . . . Then I may be one step ahead (Site
manager, Interview #5).
One of the concerns was still that some of co-workers were anxious not to get any
responsibilities:
 Too many are using a hierarchical leadership and I don’t really believe in it. I want to delegate Sociomaterial
more responsibilities. The problem is that once you delegate, some people think they will get
too big a responsibility. My goal with the delegation is to get informed about what is wrong. I practice and
take care of the responsibility, but you must help me on the way, damn it! (Interview #5) entanglement
This idea of contributing to the control of the work flow was recognized by the
construction workers: “We’re also responsible for taking part in the process . . . We
may have more experience than the site manager. We work on that. When you’ve been 393
around for some time, you know what may happen,” one of the very experienced
construction workers said (Interview #2).

The importance of planning and documentation

Most of the interviewees claimed that the principal performance indicator was the
ability to deliver the project on time. Many interviewees could tell stories about how
they were finishing work just minutes before the opening of a shop or the formal
inspection of the site. In addition, shortening the times for the production phase was
generally regarded the principal strategic objective of the industry:
There are no other ways to reduce the costs than to shorten the construction time . . . The
construction time is what everyone is competing on. Who can build the fastest? In many cases
that mean . . . that there is no proper planning and the worker safety comes in the second
place. Unless you deliver in time, there are quite large fines (Construction worker, Interview
#4).
This strong emphasis on time underlined the importance of proper planning to make
the project run as effective as possible, and consequently, one of the construction
workers argued, work experience from the industry was the gold standard for efficient
site managers: “The only way to make things work, that is to have proper planning . . .
There is a need for about 15-20 years of experience [or the site manager] to make it
work” (Construction worker, Interview #4).
There were two major problems facing the site manager in terms of the planning
needed. First, they do not get the demanded time to plan their work, and second, there
are unanticipated disruptions in the work flow or new ideas introduced by, e.g. the
client that needs to be taken into account. One of the site managers accounted for this
difficulty:
The problem is that these projects are time compressed to the point where there are no
possibilities for decent planning of the work, and when you have done the planning there’s
someone [e.g. the client] coming up with a new idea and then you need to make a new
planning for the rest of the project. If I knew the beginning and the end, then I would have
been able to do the planning, no matter how tight the schedule is, but the concern is that I
never get that control and then both he [the client] and I get a problem (Site manager,
Interview #6).
“If we have a decent timetable from the beginning and if we can control the time, then
we’re able to deliver [good quality],” the site managers contended. Another concern
more generally in the industry was that the design work took long time and was often
inadequate and caused much confusion in the construction site. One of the construction
workers accounted for what he perceived as poor documentation on part of the
architects and designers:
VINE The design phase and all that, it takes so long time. It takes longer than the production phase
. . . In many cases we’re supposed to be finished before we even started . . . If we call the
41,4 architect to ask ?well, what did you think about this?’ ?It’s up to you to handle on the site.’
?But it’s your blueprint, you got to have some kind of idea.’ ?No, not really’ (Interview #4).
One the one hand, architects and designers provided documentation that gave some
leeway to the construction workers to adjust their solutions to local conditions; on the
394 other hand, the construction workers are told they should “build to the print,” follow
the documentation provided. In many situations there were then no clear guidelines on
how to handle this lack of information. One of the site mangers were also critical about
the standard of the documentation provided by the architect bureaus and the design
engineers:
I think the documentation [from the design phase] is a problem . . . Today there are many
young architects and design engineers . . . If you take a look at the documents, they need to be
examined, but the A-blueprint says something and the H-blueprint something else, and then
someone has told us to ?follow the existing building’ which is a third alternative . . . We had to
make a decision, to build as the house is designed originally . . . and in the other cases, follow
the blueprint . . . otherwise I would have to ask like 4,000 questions (Interview #6).
To avoid posing these “4,000 questions” site mangers generally used their trained
judgment to decide what technical solutions to use in the specific setting. Being based
on a combination of formal documentation, entrenched experience and know-how of
what works and what does not, and the analysis of the local conditions, a
well-functioning solution was often produced. In some cases there was however
inadequate demands that would add little to the utility or safety of the building and in
such cases the site manager informed the architect of design engineers about
alternatives. The site manager told a story about a prescribed fire-protection
installment that would costs like 50,000-100,000 Swedish crowns (about 5,000-10,000
Euros) but that would add very little extra value for the client and the end-user. In this
case, the issue was brought into the discussion with the architect and client and
eventually the design was changed and money was saved.

Shortening production times

In general, there was a firm belief that it was complicated to speed up the work tempo
because there were really no perceived possibilities for higher work pace without
lowered quality or increased injuries and stress among the co-workers. The increases
in efficiency were commonly regarded to derive from the work ethics of doing things
right the first time and in optimizing the materials logistic and reduce the waste of
materials. “It is hard to think in new terms. Things are built the same way, it is hard to
develop . . . In the end, things remain very traditional,” one of the construction workers
said (Interview #3). “The ways of working are basically the same,” his colleague
contended. What still bothered the construction workers was the lack of training when
new tools or materials were implemented. One of the construction workers provided an
example: “We might get a delivery and they tell us, ?put that up!’ ?But what is it?’ ?It’s a
new thing.’ And then we say, ?but we’ve never seen anything like it before.’ ?Well, it’s
your responsibility to put it together anyway’” (Interview #4). In other cases, tools that
are developed to reduce the heavy workload are simply not possible to use because
there are no required workspace available for the tools. In such cases, construction
workers tend to speak cynically about the lack of understanding for their work
situation and the careless attitude to their work in the engineering quarters where such Sociomaterial
tools are developed and procured. practice and
In summary, construction work at the actual site is strongly determined by the
social organization. Even though the work is well-known for the construction workers entanglement
and highly repetitious while depending on some trained judgment to adjust to local
conditions, the local project culture plays a central role for the actual and perceived
effectiveness of the work. In particular, it is the site manager and his closest 395
subordinates the foremen who set the stage for a successful construction project. Seen
in this way, no matter how standardized the construction work is, there is a strong
emphasis on establishing local routines for communication and exchange of
information. In comparison to for instance a manufacturing production system,
relatively fixed in comparison to the construction project, there is a need for continually
infusing the construction project with shared values and norms.

Discussion
Construction work in the actual site is relatively standardized in terms of few new
technologies or tools being used or implemented and large number of repetitious tasks
being performed (especially in larger construction such as housing projects). In
addition, the wage system in the industry is characterized by bonuses based on the
collective performance of the work team. Still, give these factors that enable a
predictable work situation, there are large differences between sites, companies, and
leadership practice. Interviewees could tell entertaining horror stories about
mismanagement or poor, ineffective practice in the various sites they have worked
over the years. From the outside, construction work may appear is if it is
self-organizing but it is in fact strong emphasis on the capacity to collectively enact
working routines that is widely recognized among the community of construction
workers at the site. This collective enactment of “fair” and “effective” work routines,
the site manager and the foremen play a central role in establishing and maintaining a
work situation where all co-workers are being integrated in to both the work system
and in the community of the work team. While many construction workers had
extensive experience from the field and knew how to proceed in the work, they strongly
emphasized the need for creating a sense of community in the day-to-day work. The
material transformation of buildings materials into houses and other build
environment through the use of tools, equipment, and know-how was thus
embedded in joint interests, a sense of community and shared purpose and routines,
and means for communication at the work site. Using the analytical framework
discussed in the literature review, the construction site is an eminent example of a
sociomaterial practice. The use of material resources was strongly shaped by the social
conditions at the site. For instance, materialities where of necessity evaluated and
judged on basis of social conditions, and a new form of gypsum board used in
bathrooms and toilets were for example dismissed because it both added extra work
for the construction workers and was perceived as a potential health hazard as the
producers of the material prescribed the use of protection clothing when working with
it. At the same time, social conditions were determined by the technologies, tools, and
other materials used in the work. New tools or techniques such as electric screwdrivers
created new routines for how to organize and structure the work, and it was
commonplace for the carpenters to work in couples because they were handling,
VINE e.g. gypsum boards that were too heavy to handle for one single person. The
41,4 construction workers were, just like policemen in American movies and TV series,
organized into teams consisting of two co-workers, spending at times significant
periods of their working lives together. At cases, there was a strong sense of
camaraderie between long-term partners, filling in the answers of one another during
interviews of making references to “us” and “we” rather than advocating personal
396 opinions.
In a sociomaterial practice perspective (Suchman, 2007; Orlikowski, 2007), the
elementary unit of organization analysis is the practice conducted in a field of
expertise. In our case, the practice is the production of build environments, mostly
either new produced or repaired housing. In order to understand the practice of
construction workers, the social and economic conditions of the industry, in many
ways shaping and influencing behaviours and beliefs, must be understood, but there is
also a need for recognizing the material resources involved in this specific form of
practice. Technologies, safety equipment, clothing, and other seemingly insignificant
or widely taken for granted resources should be recognized as constitutive elements in
the day-to-day work in the construction industry. As social theorists such as Gieryn
(2002) and Star (1999) demonstrate, built environments tend to be taken for granted as
soon as they are in place, functioning as anticipated, and becoming familiar through
their use. Only through the examination of the early reception of for instance new
media can one learn how new technologies and tools are enacted and brought into the
fabric of everyday life (Morley, 2007; Boddy, 2004; Sconce, 2000; Fischer, 1992). The
tools and technologies used in producing these built environments are sharing the fate
of being largely ignored as central to the organization of this form of production.
Science and technology studies suggest that technologies are in many ways
manifestations of collectively enacted beliefs and assumptions and therefore it is
complicated to disentangle the aggregate of theory, laboratory equipment, inscriptions,
and epistemic objects into separate categories (Rheinberger, 1997). Instead, such
tinkered experimental systems are creating epistemic objects that are closely entangled
with the experimental system and cannot be fully under-stood outside of this
idiosyncratic system (Barad, 2007). Similarly, when examining sociomaterial practices,
the tools and the technologies are either ignored entirely or given an extraordinary
status as being detached from the know-how and expertise of its user as if the tools per
se would be capable of accomplishing anything on their own – they become what
Hackman (1989, p. 32) calls “heroic devices.” Instead, tools and technologies are
constitutive elements in a domain of practice that cannot be reduced to its brute
materiality; instead, tools and technologies are always bound up with social conditions
and make their contributions through being elements in a broader social setting
wherein they are combined with both tangible and intangible resources (Suchman,
2005). To exemplify, the screws and the screwdrivers used by construction workers to
build walls in apartments are capable of accomplishing relatively little unless being in
the hands of skilled craftsmen which in turn are part of a larger production processes
where, e.g. gypsum boards are available and delivered in a timely manner to each place
where the construction workers are operating for the time being. In addition, the
capacity of these construction workers to inform their colleagues and site management
concerns that may potentially affect the planning of the work, these tools are not
making a significant difference in terms of output.
 The term sociomaterial practice is leading our attention as organization researchers Sociomaterial
to this constitutive entanglement of social and material resources and helps us practice and
penetrating the surface that normally veils the infrastructure of contemporary society.
Especially in the case of studying “low status jobs” where the technologies used are not entanglement
attracting our attention (the broom of the house-cleaner, for instance. See Ehrenreich,
2001), terms such a sociomaterial practice is helping us maintain the focus on how
specific skills are developed and executed in certain domains of society. When 397
studying high status jobs such as biosciences in laboratory settings, researchers may
easily be intrigued and fascinated by the sophisticated technologies, commanding
much training and skills to both understand and to use effectively. Therefore,
sociomaterial practice is in its own specific way a concept that may nourish a certain
sensitivity or curiosity regarding the nature of practice. Seen in this way, it is widening
rather than narrowing the scope of organization studies.

Conclusion
This paper aims at critically discussing the concept of sociomaterial practice as an
alternative view of practice as what is constituted by material and social resources.
Arguing that the term is helpful moving beyond a strictly linguistic or symbolic view
of practice and to recognize materiality as a socially embedded resources structuring
and shaping social conditions, there is also a relative lack of studies of sociomaterial
practices. A study of three construction sites demonstrated that even though
construction work consist of repeated standard operations and include few new
innovations, it is a form of production that nevertheless is grounded in social relations
between site management and the construction workers. Emphasizing the significant
differences between the well managed and well functioning construction projects,
interviewees claimed that the attitude and skills of the effective site managers and his
foremen made a great difference in terms of creating a work situation where the work
team collaborated as a community and where information was effectively
disseminated and concerns shared at an early stage. Speaking in terms of the
analytical vocabulary of sociomaterial practice, the seemingly overtly material
characteristics of the construction work was thus embedded in social and cultural
conditions that helped accomplishing a good “flow” in the work which benefitted both
the construction workers and the company. This study thus contributes to the theory
of social practice and sociomaterial practice more specifically through unearthing the
constitutive role of social relations in any form of reasonably complex endeavour. The
concept of sociomaterial practice is therefore of central importance in the advancement
an organization studies research agenda that ventures beyond the symbolic and
linguistic constitution of organization and that seeks to bring back materiality into
organization studies

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Corresponding author
Alexander Styhre can be contacted at: Alexander.Styhre@handels.gu.se

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