Digital data are not just data online. They are generative, performative, and relational objects that organize people, structure values, and shape the possibilities for how we work, decide, and think in digital organizations. My research advances a people-centered theory of data in management and information systems by examining how data are designed, produced, and used across organizational settings, from the design of personal data and AI systems to the production of trace data in everyday work. Across these studies, I explore how data embed values, generate new organizational forms, and redefine what it means to know, act, and think in contemporary organizations. Below is a selection of my research that explores these questions across different contexts and organizational settings.
In this article, we move beyond the prevailing view of artificial intelligence (AI) as an independent entity within organizations, which, we argue, risks obscuring potential explanations of the effects of AI on organizing. Drawing on posthumanism, we propose an ontological shift in conceptualizing AI. We theorize that, instead of residing within algorithmic actors, AI arises from the relations...
Algorithms are increasingly seen as capable of autonomously initiating and managing interactions with humans—for example, through delegating the rights and responsibilities for successful outcomes of shared tasks without human intervention. While research into such interactions primarily focuses on dyadic configurations, complex settings where multiple agents work together have become a nexus of...
Data have accompanied large-scale organizing for centuries and are today the lifeblood of computational information systems. However, recent developments such as digital twins, synthetic data, and artificial intelligence call for renewed attention to the role of data in business and organizing in ways that both build on and break away from previous research traditions. This report summarizes...
Data-related harm and injustice are commonly viewed through instrumental, procedural, distributional, or representational theories of social justice. These theories do not account for the social injustice that occurs through the lack of recognition of individuals when data are first conceptualized. We explore the recognition of individuals in data conceptualization by drawing from information...
The digitalization of organizational settings can provide seemingly unprecedented visibility into knowledge work practices through trace data. Although trace data could be a boon for monitoring knowledge work that has traditionally eluded detailed oversight, the broader literature on data suggests that increasing behavioral visibility through trace data can also motivate reactions that reduce the...
Digital transformation has become a dominant phenomenon of interest among information systems scholars. To account for this phenomenon, it is imperative to develop a theoretical understanding of its processes and objects. We adapt a seminal organizational theory that conceptualizes organizations as interpretation systems to a possible future of organizations. We theorize digital transformation as...
Data are the building blocks of the ongoing digital revolution, yet there are still many unresolved questions regarding their role in the study of information systems (IS), management, and innovation. As data become increasingly pervasive elements of socio-economic life, we ask whether IS needs to expand the ways in which it conceptualizes data and their role in business and society. This panel...
I am an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst. My research examines digital data and how they shape how organizations work, think, and decide. I publish in leading journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and co-lead Data Studies Bibliography, a global community advancing scholarship on data as a core object of inquiry.