Analysis: When is a Breakdown?

What are we to make of these two events? Why do two experienced technical leaders re- spond so di�erently to interruptions associated with the use of electronic and networked computational objects? Why are the outcomes di�erent? To begin to answer these ques- tions, let us�rst look at what happenedbeforeany breakdown.

In both cases, we see evidence of what Heidegger would refer to asmalfunction

(Dreyfus1991, pp. 71-72) thatprecedesany actual breakdown. In Walt’s case, this is evid- enced by the issues he had with accessing the persistent link to the Google Hangout™ on his iPad™ and the various material enactments he must undertake to ‘hack’ the link to himself so that it is accessible from the iPad™. As a result, FaceTime™, rather than Google Hangouts™ is used and then, as a result of another remote party attending the stand-up, a combination of Skype™ and FaceTime™ is used. Also, within Walt’s episode, his colleague Robert is blocked from updating the iPad™ since he does not have theEtapassword. For Ari, a malfunction occurs when at the beginning of the Google Hangout™ with Maur- een when he inadvertently clicks the ‘Connect’ button twice, thus opening two hangout windows and causing a con�ict so that one of the windows has to be closed before the conversation with Maureen can proceed. In both of these cases, these ‘breakdowns’ are nominal in that they did not signi�cantly alter the relationship between subject and object. The object in these cases, the computational object, continued to be treated by the human as a tool. The path both Walt and Ari took here was improvisational (Orlikowski1996, cf. Orr1996, p. 1; Vera and Crossan2005; Yanow and Tsoukas2009, p. 1357; Weick2002); they both�gured out ways to work around the limitations they encountered without breaking the frame of the established subject-object relationship between human and computational object.

However, when, in Walt’s case, the power went out and, in Ari’s case, the com- puter crashed, these breakdowns did alter the subject-object relationship between human and computational object in distinct ways. In Walt’s case, his call was disconnected and he went through a period of sensemaking (Weick1995) as he determined that the power had gone o�from the evidence around him, while in Ari’s case, the computer screen went

grey—an indication of a system failure. In both cases, conversations enabled through computational objects were terminated mid-stream, dramatically changing the working context. The question then becomes ‘What kind of breakdowns were these?’ Were they

temporary breakdowns(Dreyfus1991, pp. 72-79) ortotal breakdowns (ibid., pp. 79-83)? I suggest here that the answer, to an important degree, depends on the response of the per- son to the computational object enacting the breakdown, which can be likened to a form of leadership where the individual either leads themselves (and others) towards a solution, thus enacting a temporary breakdown or remains mired in the breakdown, enacting a total breakdown.

In Walt’s case, the sensemaking (Weick 1995) process continued for some time into the breakdown where he tried to shift to other computational objects to re-establish communication but encountered further computational barriers, for example, in the form of the two-step veri�cation (Google2013a) that he was unable to cross. This was due to the fact he had not con�gured his computational object to provide the second-level au- thentication key. Through these kinds of encounters, Walt enacted a state where he was e�ectively immobilised through the selection of actions that did not adequately resolve the breakdown. This immobilisation is the ‘freezing up’ I referred to in the title of the episode and could also be referred to as a ‘deer in the headlights’. Yet, the possibility of an action Walt could have taken to resolve the breakdown remained. For example, he could have contacted the main o�ce and asked them for the phone number of the remote site in order to re-establish communications, however, this was not a possibility he considered. Instead, he focused his attention on attempting to resolve the issue by using other computational objects within his�eld of awareness to re-establish communication via alternative chan- nels. Indeed, this may have been a ‘rare event’ for Walt that ‘trigger[ed] learning because [...it ] expose[d] weaknesses and reveal[ed] unrealized behavioral potential’ (Christianson et al.2009, p. 846).

Meanwhile, Ari, in response to the system crash,�ipped his iPhone™ over and called the number of the colleague he had just been disconnected from. The lag between the time of the system crash and the reconnection did not exceed 30 seconds. Once recon- nected, he relied on his colleague to verbally lead him to where they were in the slide deck, since the voice call alone did not provide a visual reference to the slide deck. This was ar- guably slower and less e�cient than using a screen to reference the material, however, it worked, and it had the overall e�ect of reframing the breakdown, making it unimportant. Through Ari’s selection of action, the breakdown was e�ectively jettisoned; he impro- visationally selected another computational object that was arguably not as well-suited as the previous one given the lack of visual capability, however, it worked—it enabled the communication to be maintained and the joint work to be progressed through an impro-

visational refocusing into/through another computational object.

One might think that previous experience may have something to do with these di�erences. Following this logic, I discussed this idea with Ari after the incident and he reported that this sort of thing had happened when he was in other remote locations, suggesting that he had learned from those previous experiences. Yet, Walt also told his colleague, once the power was restored, that he had experienced something similar before and said that he felt that he had been viewed as a ‘hacker’ when he had previously gone to an Internet café to re-establish communications. So it is not the case that Walt lacked the experience. Reading both situations di�ractively through the lens of Ciborra (2004) , the improvisational and hacking elements that can lead to ‘radical innovation’ (ibid., p. 29) were present in both, but failed to materialise for Walt.

It would also be easy and predictable to generally critique what could be called a lack of preparedness in the face of this interruption and argue that Walt should have ensured he had the phone number to the other location and that if he was going to use two- step veri�cation (Google2013a) that he should have had the authentication application set up on his phone so that he could log in when necessary. And perhaps Walt should follow such advice, however, my point is broader than a knee-jerk ‘blame the leader’ analysis. Here Grint observes that:

[W]e seem to have a problem with Nietzschean anxiety over the determina- tion of causation. In other words, when situations appear both threatening and ambiguous we seem to demand a clear causal agency; because if we can- not establish this agency then ‘the problem’ is potentially irresolvable [...] In the presence of such a potential conclusion the tendency seems to be [...] to�nd ‘the culprit’ by looking harder, not to accept the conclusion. In short, such intolerable Nietzschean anxiety guides us back into the search for a com- mander to resolve the irresolvable crisis (2010b, pp. 24-25).

Instead, I would like to propose, following Grint, that we look elsewhere for other explanations for these di�erent outcomes. Speci�cally, I’d like to hone in on the leader- ship dimension ofpurpose(see�gure2.4on page32), and make some comparisons between

what was observed between Walt and Ari that suggest di�erent orientations to purpose. Through the remainder of this analysis, I will show that di�erent purposes produce dif- ferent leadership outcomes.

Speci�cally, recall that Walt has an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) as part of his array of equipment to support remote pairing.7 _{It is clear, when hearing Walt speak} about the process he went through to set up the remote pairing console, that he has given

a great deal of thought and attention to the selection of the equipment in service of the remote pairing practice. In particular, the provisioning of a uninterruptible power supply (UPS) suggests that speci�c thought has been given to power failures. However, Walt’s purpose in having a UPS for a potential power failure may have been to protect the com- putational technology and data being worked on in the event of a power failure rather than the preservation of communication with other humans. Indeed, it was observed that Walt did move to shut down his main computer shortly after the power failed and did this

beforehe attempted to reconnect with his human colleague. One way this can be inter- preted is that Walt prioritised the computational objectoverthe human—that his purpose

resulting from his thinking about power failure was to protect the computational objects from damage rather than protect communications from being severed.

In contrast, while Ari, being a programmer himself, was adept with technology, his purpose can be interpreted as being much more human-centric. When his machine enacted the system crash, he did not even try to restart the machine untilafterhe�ipped his phone over and had his caller back on the line. His apparent purpose was human communication over computational recovery.

This interpretive subtlety, if accurate, tells us a lot about the ways in which purpose relates to leadership practice. Purpose is about ends or goals and, from the perspective of human behaviour, appears to drive the means to achieve them. Thus, a purpose to protect the computational technology drives actions that serve those ends but do little to re-establish the communication that the power failure severed. Meanwhile, Ari’s singular focus on human communication led to a di�erent set of actions that were more e�ective than Walt’s in terms of maintaining the conversation.

Thus, based on the informant’s response, in Walt’s case, we have atotal breakdown

(Dreyfus1991, pp. 79-83) while in Ari’s we have atemporary breakdown(ibid., pp. 72-79), with the di�erence between them being the underlying purpose each individual held with respect to the context. The implication here is that when a ‘breakdown’ occurs, that it is only seen as a breakdown in relation to people’s response to it. Given two similar circumstances, as I have shown, an improvisational response can lead to a swift resolution, virtually obscuring the breakdown from experience (Yanow and Tsoukas2009, p. 1357). In the other case, I have shown that some responses can lead to a ‘freezing up’ that, in a very important sense, is the substantiation of a breakdown. Hence, if the ‘freezing up’ can be avoided, it is less likely the event will be understood as a breakdown.

For these reasons, I argue that the leadership dimension ofpurpose, as depicted in�gure 2.4on page32, is crucial to include when considering the di�erences in a hu- man leadership responses to a breakdown involving a computational object. Further, I am arguing that the same human response to the breakdown is a critical component in

determining whether such a breakdown istotalortemporary(Dreyfus1991, pp. 72-83).

Due to indeterminacy, while it can never be guaranteed that a given response will produce an outcome that transforms a breakdown into one or the other category, the data suggests improvisational attempts to switch to another mode are more fruitful than ‘freezing up’, in that ‘freezing up’ cannot o�er a transformative frame through which the breakdown is later experienced astemporary (ibid., pp. 72-79). In other words, while an improvisational response may not succeed, ‘freezing up’, by its very nature, has no hope of transcending the threshold betweentotalandtemporarybreakdown (ibid., pp. 72-83).

Moreover, the arguments I have presented in this chapter are an attempt to make good on Sandberg and Tsoukas’ call to develop more open-ended theories that are in align- ment with the logic of practice (2011, p. 339), that is, the local logics in place where the practice is observed. Thus, the theoretical perspective I have o�ered here suggests that the way a leader responds to a breakdown in practice is a signi�cant determinant of whether it will ultimately be considered astemporaryortotal(Dreyfus1991, pp. 72-83). It invites the reader to consider the role ofpurpose (see�gure 2.4 on page 32), both for the hu-

man and the computational object plays. For the human, this chapter shows that purpose makes available certain choices to the person making them, while occluding others. For the computational object, the breakdown maligns the purpose of the object, disrupting the subject-object relationship and forcing the human to either circumvent the breakdown or become mired within it.

These are views that resonate strongly with the actor-network theory (ANT) con- ception of objects ‘striking back’ (Latour2000), however, in my view, what events such as those reported in this chapter really begin to touch on is the notion ofagency. If, as Callon suggests, ‘a veritable battle is being fought’ (1986a, p. 11) between various non-human objects and humans in pursuit of the latter’s goals, this raises the question of the agency of the objects. More radically, Barad suggests a view of agency that permeates all matter when she suggests that:

[M]atter plays an agentive role in its iterative materialization. This is an im- portant reason, but not the only reason, that the space of agency is much lar- ger than that postulated in many other critical social theories (2007, p. 177).

For this reason, this question of a reconceptualisation of agency is one I take up in chapter7.

6.5 Summation

In this chapter, I have focused on breakdowns as a means to better understand an everyday aspect of leadership—the choices people in leadership positions make regarding computa- tional objects as part of their material-discursive practice. I have presented two di�erent cases where breakdowns transformed the relationship between subject and object and un- folded with entirely di�erent outcomes.

In the�rst episode presented, I showed how the decisions made led to a state of ‘freezing up’ on the part of the subject and, where the relationship between subject and object remained, as Verbeek refers to it, ‘disturbed’ (2005, p. 80). This state can also be described as a sort of paralysis where the subject was unable to move forward and was, therefore, at the mercy of the breakdown. Further, the subject in question was noted to have become agitated and to have remained so for some time after the power came back on, a response that appears to be linked to the perception of the breakdown. For these reasons, I suggest that this case is aptly described as atotal breakdown (Dreyfus 1991, pp. 79-83) where leadership practice does not have the desired impact.

In the second episode, I presented a very similar set of circumstances where a sim- ilar breakdown also interrupts the relationship between the subject and the computational object, which, at the point of the interruption, plays the role of the projective mechanism through which a conversation with a business associate (as well as speci�c information being discussed in the meeting) is focused, making it the locus of attention for the practice (Guimbretière2002, pp. 15-19,2003, p. 53). This has been a consistent role for the com- putational object throughout observations, as also evidenced in chapters4and5. When breakdowns disrupt this role, this presents a challenge to on-going leadership practice.

When Ari’s system crash occurred, these projective and focalising functions of the computational object e�ectively withdrew, and the computational object no longer played this same role. Throughout the breakdown, its relationship to the subject changed profoundly. However, unlike the�rst case, the person faced with this breakdown identi�ed another computational object with slightly lesser capabilities and e�ectively employed it to re-establish the conversation in a mode I have characterised as improvisational (Yanow and Tsoukas2009, p. 1357). I have argued that this improvisational response opened the possibility for lessening the impact of the breakdown to be lessened, transforming it into atemporary breakdown(Dreyfus1991, pp. 72-79).

While not arguing for a prescriptive stance in the sense that a standardised re- sponse will guarantee an improved outcome, I do argue that an improvisational response (Yanow and Tsoukas2009, p. 1357) is superior to freezing up’. This is because impro- visation, at the very least, o�ers the possibility of circumventing the breakdown, whereas

‘freezing up’ does not. However, such ‘freezing up’ can provide important learning exper- iences from which the person can later recognise and to better address future situations (Christianson et al.2009, p. 846).

In addition, I have argued that the leadership dimension of purpose as depicted

in�gure2.4on page32, is a useful lens through which to explore these starkly di�erent responses. I have o�ered an interpretation that placespurposeas a crucial mechanism for providing a way of seeing the world, whereby certain possible choices are made visible through their identi�cation withpurpose.

This theoretical view not only provides a plausible explanation for the observed phenomena (Weick1989, p. 517), but may also hold more generalisable implications; that

purposemay also play a similar role of making available possible choices in any and all material-discursive practices, not merely those associated with the computational object. And�nally, by exploring these episodes, I touched on questions of agency these cases raised and possible reconceptualisations that may be useful in light of the data presented throughout. These are questions I take up in greater depth in the next chapter.