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Marjolaine Rostain 

PhD Candidate

emlyon business school

Packaging Factory

Emergence of Improvisation through Human-Technology Entanglement on a Shop Floor

Abstract

This paper suggests that improvisation increases in organization through human-technology entanglement. In this paper I link problem solving on a production floor to workers' technological environment and demonstrate how workers overcome unknown technical problems through improvisation based on human-technology entanglement. In particular, I find that solving new kinds of problems is rooted in the improvisation they do by exchanging, feeling and searching with the technology they use. When unsolvable problems arise if workers provide solutions which engage the technology as an agent between them and the problem, they can create a novel solution to the technical issue they face.

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