Projekt

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The Digital Cases research project examines how complex information and case management software in professional organizations structures the processing of cases, meaning the handling of patients, the provisioning of social assistance, and the management of legal procedures. Using the example of case information and case management systems, this project aims to develop the relationship between organization, technology and profession in a theoretical and conceptual way. Digital Cases engages in a comparison of the structuring effect of case information systems in a hospital, a social services agency, and a court of law, thereby traversing a range of organizational typologies. This opens up a crucial middle ground of theory formation to examine the structural effects of these systems in professional organizations. The project uses an ethnographic approach that centers upon participatory observation and the shadowing of software. To harvest the potential inherent in the generalization of ethnographic research, a new method of co-ethnography will be tested after a phase of individual case ethnography. In doing so, the ethnographers temporarily change "their" field, meaning for example from the hospital to the Youth Welfare Office, to generate comparative knowledge on the structuring of casework during the observation phase.

• Prof. Dr. Stefanie Büchner

  Universität Hannover
  Philosophische Fakultät
  Institut für Soziologie
  Hannover
  

• Discourse Strategies of Implementing Algorithmic Decision Support Systems: The Case of the Austrian Employment Service

• Digital Transformation(s): On the Entanglement of Long-Term Processes and Digital Social Change. An Introduction